A way to help ease the city’s housing shortage by getting rid of outdated zoning rules “written to segregate our city” – that’s how Baltimore Council President Zeke Cohen kicked off a hearing on a bill that would eliminate the requirement for apartment developers to include parking in their projects.

Strikingly, though, opposition to the bill was dominated yesterday by Black women community leaders from majority Black neighborhoods, with several of them taking offense at the characterization of the measure (part of a package strongly backed by Mayor Brandon Scott) as a way address structural racism.

“That excuse for this bill is misinformed at best, and insulting at worst,” said Mereida Goodman, president of the Garwyn Oaks United Neighbors Association.

Black homeowners comprise the majority of residents in her Northwest Baltimore umbrella organization, Goodman said, citing Forest Park, Hanlon, Howard Park and Callaway-Garrison, among others.

“These are low-to-moderate income residents who own their own single-family homes,” she said, and they see reducing access to parking as a threat to their “stable, livable, affordable and attractive neighborhoods.”

“I pay far too much money for my home and in taxes to have to play the Hunger Games to park in my neighborhood,” added Garwyn Oaks resident Renee Mitchell.

“I pay far too much money for my home and in taxes to have to play the Hunger Games to park in my neighborhood”  – Renee Mitchell, Garwyn Oaks.

Also denouncing the bill was an East Baltimore resident who lives near the Johns Hopkins Medical Complex and said she took off work to come to the daytime hearing.

“It is a fight every day” to find parking, said Cynthia Gross, describing herself as an elder often forced to walk a long way to park her car.

Gross blasted proponents of the measure for not informing neighborhoods like hers about the bill.

“I have not seen you at any of my community association meetings,” she said, pointing a finger at sponsor Zac Blanchard (11th) and the rest of the Land Use and Transportation Committee.

Reservoir Hill Association President Keondra Prier told the panel her community “is not in love with parking,” but lost access to public transportation thanks to city government decisions to “dismantle” it decades ago.

“In my neighborhood in 1950 we had access to three streetcar lines,” she said, noting that now 60% of her neighborhood relies on personal vehicles to get around.

A measure that further hampers drivers and appeared to her to favor bicycle riders “makes no sense,” Prier said. “People already see it as a sign of gentrification.”

“People already see it as a sign of gentrification”  – Keondra Prier, Reservoir Hill Association president.

“I am a fifth generation of Historic Ebeneezer AME Church at 20 West Montgomery Street,” began another opponent, Lisa Harvin, who bemoaned the difficulty for her congregation and others in the area have finding parking on days when Ravens or Orioles games are happening in town.

The same concern was expressed by Betty Bland-Thomas, representing one of the oldest Black communities in the city, Sharp Leadenhall. Sonia Eaddy, representing Poppleton, another historic Black city neighborhood, described how residents of the new apartment buildings added to their neighborhood in recent years force legacy residents to park blocks away.

Parking conflicts there, she said, “have resulted in violence, verbal and physical fights and arrests.”

Fostering “infill housing”

By the end of the hearing (and before a subsequent hearing on Bill 25-0064, another bill in Scott’s package), chairman Ryan Dorsey announced there would be no vote on either measure.

“We will consider a vote on these bills at our next hearing a week from today,” (September 18 at 10 a.m.),  at which time any amendments will be considered as well, Dorsey said.

The Scott administration’s sweeping zoning legislation – including a bill to allow more multi-family housing in low-density areas, a bill to allow more lot coverage in rowhouse neighborhoods, and another to eliminate the two-staircase requirement for certain apartment buildings – has been a top second-term priority, supported by Cohen and other Council members.

Under Blanchard’s bill, the city would repeal parking minimums that require a certain amount of parking as part of new development.

An information sheet distributed at the meeting for what is being called “The Spaces for People Act” explained that it newly exempts categories including: multi-family property between 4 and 19 homes, and C-3 and C4 zones, city commercial districts.

“Eliminating these arbitrary requirements gives us far more flexibility to build housing in a range of locations,” Kevin Lindamood, president and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless, testified.

Also the president of HCH Real Estate Co., Lindamood said the ability to do “infill housing” would smooth the way for a range of new housing to be built, which would help ease homelessness in the city.

“Parking flexibility allows homebuilders to determine the number of parking spaces needed, rather than requiring them to fulfill arbitrary mandates”  – Flier for Bill.

“Parking flexibility allows homebuilders and local businesses to determine the number of parking spaces needed, rather than requiring them to fulfill arbitrary parking mandates,” Blanchard’s flier stated. “The bill does not prevent new parking from being built or take away existing parking.”

Advocates explained that the benefits of eliminating parking minimums will be seen over time, as the lower cost of development stimulates more housing supply, and those savings are passed on to renters.

“What we’ve seen in Buffalo and Seattle, following major parking reforms, is that over 70% of new buildings still included parking,” Daniel Herriges, of the Parking Reform Network said, testifying remotely.

“But over 60% of the new homes permitted in those cities would have been illegal under the prior code,” he noted.

One of the major boosters of the bill, the advocacy group Bikemore argues the change would foster more affordable construction and more pedestrian-oriented design.

“I’ve heard this from property owner after property owne that they are building more parking than they need to build and its sitting empty,” Bikemore executive director Jed Weeks said.

“We can get better quality building and we can get more affordable housing and all we have to do is just stop overbuilding something that’s just literally not being used,” he said.

“Why is this city-wide?”

Blanchard’s parking bill encountered headwinds not just from the hornet’s nest of angry residents, but from two skeptical committee members.

Explaining that her northwest district of mostly single family homes is largely car dependent, Vice Chair Sharon Middleton said,”I’m trying to figure out how this would help those kinds of communities.”

“We have a terrible public transportation system, so in those areas, cars are very important,” she said, repeatedly asking why the bill’s provisions were written to apply citywide.

Also pressing Blanchard was Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, who said the bill would make make parking more difficult for the growing number of seniors in her southwest district as well as people with disabilities.

She was not satisfied with his response that residents can get a disability space designated in front of their home or that neighborhoods could apply to become Residential Parking Permit areas.

“To disagree with that a bit,” she began. “What about when you have communities like Lakeland, Mt. Winans and Ridgley’s Delight and even Cherry Hill where parking is an issue in the later hours and  those individuals are not able to get in front of their house?”

To his point about Residential Parking Permit areas, she raised the oft-heard complaint that parking enforcement is inadequate in the city. A DOT official told the committee they are working to improve it.

“Backbone of the city”

It was “not quite a barnburner,” as Dorsey put it at one point, but the hearing on the two bills did stretch on for more than three-and-half hours, providing some minor drama at one point.

Former Councilman Jody Landers had blistering observations about all of the bills in Scott’s package.

“I have not been able to identify a single neighborhood association that’s clamoring for increased housing density, larger building footprints, less off-street parking and less open or green space,” he declared.

“It’s difficult to understand how these proposals, which seem to cater more to outside investment interests than to the voices of those who live here, will address the needs of current residents,” Landers continued, eventually going over the allotted two minutes for witnesses to testify and persisting after Dorsey warned him to stop. The meeting was halted briefly .

The proposals seem to cater more to outside investment interests than to the voices of those who live here”  – former city councilman Jody Landers.

Another longtime figure involved in city zoning matters, attorney John C. Murphy, made a point that echoed Landers’ argument.

“In all my years of practice I didn’t understand the implication that single family zoning was a means of segregation – that’s an incorrect assumption,” Murphy said.

The people in single-family homes, he said, don’t resent new neighbors but simply the headache of not being able to park their cars.

“The single family neighborhoods are really the backbone of this city,” Murphy told the committee. “We really have to protect them.”