Tell City Leaders to Put People Over Pavement!

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The housing market in St Pete is like a cruel game of musical chairs. There aren't enough homes, so people of modest incomes are being squeezed out and forced to commute longer distances. 

The solution to this problem has to include building more housing, and more types of housing, especially in areas well served by transit like the SunRunner corridor.

A simple way to accomplish this is to remove a wasteful rule that prevents more housing from being built: off-street parking mandates.

When a property owner wants to build on her land, the city currently requires her to build an arbitrary number of parking spaces, regardless of demand. This means less housing is built, and the homes that are built are more expensive because the cost of building excess parking is passed on to the consumer.

The city is currently updating the zoning code along the SunRunner corridor, with City Council scheduled to conduct a public hearing on April 16 and a final vote on May 14. But the current draft includes wasteful parking mandates that undermine the whole purpose of the zoning changes.

Under the city's plan, even properties across the street from SunRunner stations will be forced to build an arbitrary amount of off-street parking. We can fix this!