Executive Summary

Affordable housing and safe, accessible transportation options are cornerstones to economic opportunity. But outdated parking mandates tie the cost of shelter to the storage of cars, making housing less affordable and limiting choices for residents who rely on walking, biking or transit. 

This is particularly true in Urban Honolulu where constructing podium parking can add over $55,000 to the cost of a single affordable rental unit; and up to $77,000 for market-rate, for-sale units.

These costs are passed on to residents in the form of higher housing prices—reducing the number of affordable units developers can build and, in some cases, threatening the feasibility of entire housing projects. Beyond the dollar cost increase, parking mandates also consume valuable land that could be used for homes, parks or other community spaces. 

In 2020, the City and County of Honolulu passed Ordinance 20-41, eliminating costly parking mandates for new housing and commercial development in a few key areas:

• Primary Urban Center (PUC) and ʻEwa Development Plan areas (except in the residential, agricultural, and preservation zoning districts); 

• Areas within 0.5 miles of a rail transit station; and 

• Transit-oriented development (TOD) special districts. 

This measure complements Ordinance 19-8, which eliminated parking mandates for affordable rental housing developments on Oʻahu.

This report examines the economic and social impacts of parking mandates on Oʻahu, and the effectiveness of Ordinance 20-41. A review of 82 housing developments in TOD areas approved from 2010–2025 shows that permitted parking units decreased by over 12 percent following passage of Ordinance 20-41. 

This trend is largely driven by rental housing development. Since 2021, rental projects have reduced average parking to 0.75 parking spaces per unit. In comparison, for-sale projects have only reduced to 1.40 parking spaces per unit.

This report also provides recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the county’s parking laws, as a way to improve housing affordability. These recommendations include:

1. Implementing parking maximums in TOD zones to cap excessive parking supply.

2. Decoupling housing and parking costs, ensuring residents don’t pay for parking they don’t need.

3. Expanding the elimination of parking mandates outside of TOD areas.

4. Transitioning multifamily approvals to ministerial processes. 

5. Improving transparency and data collection of parking during permitting and approval processes, including public reporting of parking allocations in project permits and counting parking toward Floor Area Ratio (FAR).

To inform this policy report, the team relied on four key research methods: a review of existing studies and reports on parking; a review of best practices for parking requirements; interviews with developers building in Honolulu’s TOD areas; and an analysis of the number of approved parking stalls for City Council-approved housing projects in TOD areas before and after the passage of Ordinance 20-41.