Citing a continued deficit in housing across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Thursday that will expand a ban on local governments requiring parking spaces at developments near transit areas.

Authored by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, Assembly Bill 2553 builds on preceding legislation from 2022 that did away with parking minimums in residential, retail and commercial development within a half mile of major transit stops.

The legislation, part of a bill package signed Thursday, serves the state’s overlapping goals of building its way out of its housing crisis and weaning off the public’s reliance on cars to get around.

“The original sin in this state is affordability,” Newsom said at a press conference in San Francisco with state and local leaders. “That’s the challenge we are trying to address here today.”

Kurt Canfield, an organizer with Car-Lite Long Beach, explained that state law previously defined a major transit area as any intersection of at least two bus routes at a frequency of 15 minutes or less during the morning and afternoon commute periods.

AB 2553 expands that timeframe to 20 minutes or less, which adds a plethora of half-mile zones throughout Long Beach that will now qualify: along parts of the harborfront, around Cal State University Long Beach, and near the 2ND & PCH shopping center and Alamitos Bay Marina.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Those zones add to areas in Downtown, Midtown and North Long Beach that were already exempted from the parking requirements because they were near transit hubs like the Metro A Line.

Change won’t come overnight, Canfield said. The law doesn’t take effect until January, and the city may need several months to update its building code.

In a statement Friday, a city spokesperson said they are “aware of the recent passing of AB 2553.”

“While it is currently unclear exactly how this may impact current and/or future development in Long Beach, Community Development staff will/are actively looking into the potential impacts,” they said in a statement. “The City will continue to follow all state and local laws regarding development in the city.”

But the impact will be seen in the coming months, Canfield said, especially in the construction of affordable housing.

“Opportunities for affordable housing developments to start cropping up that wouldn’t have been feasible otherwise,” he said. “Because affordable housing is really the one that gets hit hard by parking requirements.”

For decades, the planning of housing and commercial spaces has been tied to the availability of parking; building codes required developers to provide a certain number of parking spaces which drives up construction costs and, ultimately, rent.

But this has stymied the state in escaping its housing woes. Scott Choppin, founder of Urban Pacific Realty Advisors, said parking can cost up to $50,000 per unit — a death knell to some projects.

“These (laws) have all given relief to a friction point that has existed for forever, which is parking standards that don’t work in the real world,” Choppin said.

In Long Beach, according to the city’s sixth cycle of its housing element, developers need to construct 26,502 units between 2021 and 2029 — about 3,300 units each year. More than 11,000 of those units — about 42% — need to be for “low-” to “extremely-low-” income levels, which is equivalent to making between $23,700 and $63,100 per year.

It’s why many projects are not financially viable, at least outside high-end units that do little for multi-family and lower-income households.

“I know that people see it and think, ‘It’s gonna be really hard to park my car now,” Canfield said. “But the reality is we need to reduce the number of cars that we have in Long Beach, so that public transit becomes a better option, so that biking becomes a safer option. And there’s no way to do that besides starting with the number of cars that we physically permit to be in the city.”

But this may come as a blow to drivers in larger cities, who routinely find themselves hunting for a spot. Some of these concerns are overblown, Canfield said.

“Most people think that means they’re going to have zero parking,” Canfield said. “That’s not what any developer does. … Developers study it heavily. They figure out who their target renter is, they know what fraction of cars that person tends to own and they build that amount of parking.”

Most developers still include parking, but at an amount driven by market demand instead of a government standard. Bank lenders often won’t loan to developers that don’t include at least some parking. And if tenants need parking from a space that doesn’t have it, they simply look elsewhere. “They vote with their feet,” Choppin said.

The reality is that some parking is needed for development, Choppin said, giving the example of  Executive Directive One, or ED1, which was passed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in her first week in office.

The premise of ED1 is simple: rapid-fire approvals on affordable housing projects that narrow the planning timelines from months to weeks. As of July, Bass’ office touted the program for expediting more than 18,000 affordable units.

But there is serious concern whether these units will be leased, Choppin said, which he said can be tied to many things, from concerns over hastened environmental reviews to their total removal of parking.

“It’s interesting because we’re starting to delve into the realm of unanticipated, unintended consequences,” Choppin said.  “There is a limit to how much rent reduction people are willing to pursue, versus what they’ll give up for their parking.”