Portland Bike Parking Rules Mean Higher Rents

Forbes Business Policy Portland Bike Parking Rules Mean Higher Rents Roger Valdez Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Roger Valdez is Director of the Center for Housing Economics. Following Oct 2, 2023, 09:30am EDT | Press play to listen to this article! Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Portland is known for its love of bicycles; does it love housing too? getty Last month I posted about another big spending measure on the ballot in a west coast city, Seattle, that is throwing more money at the housing “crisis.

” In that post I pointed out how billions of dollars in previous subsidies have been spent inefficiently. One project paid for by a previous measure cost $46 million for 95 units or $484,210 per unit , almost as much as buying a 1,200 square foot house. If the housing crisis is about prices, then we know that there must not be enough supply, an in many west coast cities, supply is limited by regulation.

Bike parking regulations in Portland, Oregon are a perfect example of how bad government leads to higher prices, stoking demand for more money from the very government that caused the trouble in the first place. First of all, many people would probably be surprised to find out that some cities mandate parking for bikes. This is especially true if you’ve been paying attention to efforts to reduce an eliminate requirements for parking cars.

This is an effort that has been going for some time, and weirdly has opponents from the right and the left . I wrote a letter a couple years back to the Bellevue City Council making the case that if people want parking for their cars, developers will build it because they don’t want vacant units. Setting arbitrary mandates on parking forces people living the building – whether they have cars or not – to foot the bill in their monthly rent.

In that letter I wrote, “There is a simple fact about parking spots: they are expensive. A respected study by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute found that depending on the kind of parking, spots can cost as much as $300 per month. In Seattle, the total up front cost of an average spot is as much as $20,000.

” Victor Duong, Project manager @ Leeb Architects, bicycling advocate, and former Portland Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) member, contacted me about proposed changes to Portland’s code that would address bicycle parking requirements; he’s also written a letter. MORE FOR YOU Spooked Russians Welded Six-Foot-Tall Drone Armor On A 64-Year-Old T-54B Tank Flashing Red Warning 33 Trillion U S Debt Death Spiral Could Suddenly Trigger A Bitcoin Price Vicious Circle AEW WrestleDream 2023 Results: Winners And Grades As Edge Debuts Duong found me because of a similar controversy in Seattle years ago over bike parking. We weighed in on that issue, pointing out that arbitrary bike parking ratios have the same effect that car parking mandates do: they add costs to housing that make it more expensive for renters, and especially people with fewer dollars to spend on housing.

The headline on that post Duong read was, Seattle’s new bike parking requirements show how regulation kills housing . “Seattle’s bicycle parking concerns” Duong said, are “mirroring our concerns here. ” In short, Portland’s code leans on housing developers to provide in unit requirements for bike storage that crowd out living space and hallways; this means having to increase the sizes of the units.

And as I wrote in my post years ago, that pushes up rents. When the Seattle City Council doomed microhousing with meddlesome regulations years ago, I pointed out then that anything that forces larger, fewer units increases rents. I used an example of from a real project facing a requirement to increase unit size from 180 square feet to 220 square feet which would cost the project 10 units.

“And what effect does this have on rents? If we take the rent per net square feet and allocate that to the fewer, larger rooms (down to 25 from 35), the rents on the remaining rooms go up from $800 per month per room, to $1,120 per month per room, an increase of $320. ” Duong points out a similar loss of units in his letter. “The previous revision of the bike parking code removed approximately 1-2 units for every 200 units, the current bike parking code now removes approximately 1 out of 15 units.

” And Duong says these changes come at a time “when housing production demanded an increase in efficiency. ” The frustrating thing for Duong and many other housing professionals is that the requirement doesn’t change the number of bikes that can be parked. The bike parking requirement was identified in a City of Portland survey as the single greatest problem with housing production.

When regulation overreaches, it chokes supply, that increases prices and rents, and then people who are the most vulnerable to price increases, are hurt the most. When this happens, instead of reversing course, cities like Seattle ask for more money to subsidize the higher prices they created. Later this month, the City of Portland will consider changes to address the bike parking problem.

Let’s hope they listen to Duong who closes his argument with an iconic line: “We are crafting a city for people, not just buildings and bikes. ” Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website .

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