Parking Wasn’t on the Radar at Housing California’s Annual Conference

But It Should Be.

At this year’s Housing California Conference, conversations focused on displacement, housing production, and cross-sector collaboration. Parking barely came up. That absence precludes a key opportunity to build more affordable housing. 

Across panels on updating regional planning standards (SB 375), fair housing, and local housing tools, speakers returned to a familiar challenge: California is still struggling to deliver enough homes in places where people can live without having to drive everywhere. We are not short on ideas. We are short on implementation.

Yet one of the most immediate, proven tools for unlocking housing was mostly missing from the conversation: parking policy. When it did come up, it was an exciting and promising story. 

Less parking, more housing

Parking requirements quietly shape what gets built, where, and at what cost. When cities require a set number of parking spaces, they are also requiring more land, more construction, and higher rents. These costs can be the difference between a project moving forward or not.

In one session, staff from the City of Sacramento shared how eliminating parking minimums in 2024 has helped remove barriers to building housing. By no longer requiring a fixed number of parking spaces, the city has reduced development costs, simplified project design, and made it easier for both affordable and market-rate housing projects to move forward. They described how removing these mandates gives developers more flexibility, reduces upfront costs, and helps projects that might not have penciled out or come together budget-wise actually get built.

Sacramento’s move reflects what we are seeing across California. When you remove unnecessary parking mandates, you give housing a chance to pencil out. You also open the door to more flexible, community-serving uses of space.

This is exactly what we are working toward through SPOT SJ.

Reimagining travel in downtown San Jose

In San Jose, Transform’s SPOT SJ project is showing that parking is not just a constraint — it’s an opportunity. Better parking management can support small businesses, reduce housing costs, and make it easier to repurpose space for people. The question is not whether parking exists. It is how we use it.

What stood out at Housing California was how aligned the broader housing conversation already is with this shift. Panels emphasized transit-oriented development, climate goals, and reinvestment without displacement. All of those goals depend on using land more efficiently.

You cannot fully get there while overbuilding parking that will mostly sit empty.

Centering parking in the housing affordability conversation

If we want to move from policy goals to real outcomes, car parking and transportation need to move from the sidelines to the center of the conversation. Not as technical details, but as core housing strategies.

Because sometimes the most powerful housing solution is not building more. It is removing what gets in the way.