HELENA — Among nearly two dozen suggestions included in a report released this week by Gov. Greg Gianforte’s housing task force is a proposal that, if adopted by next year’s Legislature, could prevent Montana’s largest cities from requiring that parking spaces be included with new multifamily housing developments.
That recommendation, authored by Bozeman housing activist Mark Egge, argues that requiring fewer parking spaces for urban-density development will make it cheaper and easier to build affordable housing units. It also argues that larger Montana cities can use public transit systems to make cars less necessary for residents and that private sector developers will still include parking with many projects.
“More than half of renter households in Montana have one or zero vehicles available, yet in most Montana cities any dwelling with two or more bedrooms would be required to have multiple parking spaces,” the report says. “Parking spaces add measurably to the cost of housing.”
The task force says surface parking stalls typically add $5,000 each to the cost of a development project, and that including underground parking in a housing development can cost as much as $60,000 per space. The site-planning logistics involved in satisfying parking requirements also commonly stymie efforts to add accessory dwelling units alongside existing homes or to build duplex-style housing on currently vacant lots — both approaches that are commonly cited as ways to address Montana’s ongoing housing shortage while minimizing sprawl onto open space.
Montana cities commonly require developers to provide parking in an effort to keep vehicles belonging to people living in new developments from spilling over into on-street parking stalls available to existing residents. Bozeman’s development code, for example, generally requires two parking spaces for each new dwelling unit with two or more bedrooms — though the city does let developers count on-street parking bordering a project toward that quota.
The task force recommendation suggests considering legislation modeled after a bill passed by Colorado earlier this year. That measure bans minimum parking requirements for projects with access to public transit in cities and counties that have a metropolitan planning organization, an entity required by the federal government for coordinating transportation planning in urban areas of 50,000 residents or more. In Montana, metropolitan planning organizations currently exist around Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, Bozeman and Helena.
Gianforte, a Republican who is up for re-election in November, established the housing task force in 2022. An initial round of task force suggestions proposed before the 2023 Montana Legislature helped inform a slate of housing bills that won bipartisan support last year.
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Other proposals in the new round of housing task force recommendations include preventing cities from enforcing minimum lot sizes, exempting middle-density housing from some building code requirements, and establishing a state tax credit program to subsidize the construction of more apartments affordable to low-income residents.
Gianforte praised the new round of task force recommendations in general terms at a Wednesday task force meeting, but didn’t address the parking proposal specifically.
A spokesperson for the governor’s office, Kaitlin Price, declined on Thursday to say whether the governor has an opinion on the parking proposal, writing in an email that Gianforte “looks forward to working with leaders at state agencies to review the Task Force’s recommendations to further build upon the state’s pro-housing reforms to increase the supply of affordable, attainable housing for Montanans.”
“He also encourages local leaders to review the recommendations to determine which ones may address their local housing challenges,” Price continued.
The full version of the new task force report is available here.
This story was updated Aug. 26, 2024, to note that the Helena area is also part of a newly formed metropolitan planning organization.
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