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Oversupply: Parking Taking up Valuable Space

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What’s the Problem?

Parking lots do not generate commercial activity, and too much parking restricts the amount of land that can be devoted to restaurants, retail spaces, offices, and residences. A successful downtown has the minimum number of parking spaces needed to allow customers, workers, and residents to store their cars when they are nearby. The most successful downtowns will feature sidewalks full of pedestrians, walking between the barber and the bank, the doctor’s office and the post office, stopping for lunch and doing some shopping. Many trips but only one parking space. With the space saved from reduced parking additional commercial or residential spaces can draw more people to the downtown, and more taxes for your community.

Strategies

There are many strategies available to keep downtown parking to a minimum:

  • Reduce or eliminate minimum parking requirements for some or all uses downtown.
  • Allow or require developers to pay into a fund to be used for building public parking rather than providing parking spaces (see fees-in-lieu).
  • Allow property owners with excess on-site parking to lease extra spaces or charge the public to use them during the site’s off-peak hours (see shared parking), or allow them to redevelop the excess space as building space if they can show that the spaces they are losing are not needed or if they pay into a fund to be used for building public parking in the future (see fees-in-lieu).
  • Establish maximum allowances for how much parking may be built by use and/or by neighborhood (see parking maximums).
  • Establish flexible parking requirements based on:
  • alternative mode access (especially proximity of transit, but also pedestrian and bicycle facilities)
  • expected demographics of residential developments (age, income, other auto-ownership factors)
  • parking studies providing data to support requests to reduce or increase parking
  • implementation of programs to reduce the need for parking spaces, such as parking cash out, un-bundled parking, shared parking, priority parking for carpools, or car sharing (see parking and transportation demand management)
  • Count on-street parking towards minimum parking requirements (see flexible minimum requirements).
  • Provide pedestrian and bicycle amenities and bike parking facilities (see parking and transportation demand management).
  • Use excess parking areas during non-peak demand times for activities that draw people to the downtown area – farmer’s markets and weekend festivals, for example.
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Not Enough Parking Downtown

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What’s the Problem?

A successful downtown will often generate a high demand for parking – a positive sign, but also a potential problem. Parking shortages in a busy downtown area can mean that shoppers and visitors coming to patronize downtown businesses have trouble finding parking, discouraging them from coming back; that people will circle around looking for parking, congesting roads and polluting the air needlessly; and/or that some people determined to make a quick stop will simply double-park and block both parked cars and traffic. The source of the problem can be too few existing spaces, the location of these spaces, or the use of these spaces. Downtown parking problems can also be related to commercial vehicles and loading and unloading areas.

The first step to resolving a downtown parking shortage is to get more information on the roots of the problem by conducting a parking study, ideally evaluating the supply of parking as well as the demand, by block and by time and day. Basic guidance on how to do a count and examples of some recent local counts are available in this toolkit. (See How To Do A Parking Study.) Besides providing counts of existing use, surveys are also helpful in determining community priorities. Many communities have used surveys of local businesses to help determine parking needs. It is often a good idea to involve local merchants and employers in parking studies looking at turnover (how long people stay in a parking space) to show them how it impacts their business, and ask them to survey their customers about their parking needs. It is also smart to involve residents, particularly those who live nearby or frequently use the area, to determine their need to park and drive, and the impact parking in the downtown has on their neighborhoods, especially whether there are spillover impacts.

Since drivers need to park for different lengths, near different locations, and during different times of the day, “enough parking” will vary with all three. There must be parking available for 15 minutes, for two hours, and all day. It must be located within convenient walking distance of destinations. And it needs to be sufficient to meet midday demands, evening needs, and weekend peaks. But since all these needs vary, available parking can be flexible. Designating all parking as short term makes more parking spaces available by creating turnover, but customers of many businesses can’t finish in 15 or 30 minutes. However, peak demand for quick turnover spaces may be greatest during AM and PM commute times, or around noon, while restaurants and shops will want longer term parking but later in the day or on weekends. Customers carrying packages are likely to need shorter walks than those who are not. Many truck deliveries would prefer to arrive early or late in the day, but need parking right at the destination.

Strategies

Based on the outcomes of the parking study, you can decide how best to proceed:

On-street parking is insufficient, but pay lots or garages are underutilized.

  • Charge for on-street parking where demand exceeds supply. If there are already meters for on-street parking, raise hourly rates, or allow meter rates to vary with demand (see charging for parking).
  • To make this more palatable, make payment easy using advanced meter technology, and/or establish a parking benefit district to reinvest part or all of the revenue from parking fees in maintenance or improvements for the district where it is generated.
  • Discourage shop owners and employees from parking in front of their stores (see employee parking programs).
  • o Adjust time limits to encourage shoppers rather than employees/commuters to use on-street parking (see time limits).
  • Implement or encourage downtown property owners and developers to participate in programs to reduce parking demand and traffic, such as car sharing, bicycle parking and amenities, subsidized transit passes, etc (see parking and transportation demand management).

Public lots and on-street spaces are full, but some private lots are underutilized during periods of peak parking demand.

  • Allow and encourage shared private parking between uses with parking demands peaking at different times of the day, week, or year (see shared parking).
  • Shift to building more public and less private parking by allowing or requiring developers to pay into a fund to be used for building public parking rather than providing parking spaces on-site (see fees-in-lieu).
  • Allow property owners with excess on-site parking to lease extra spaces or charge the public to use them during the site’s off-peak hours (see shared parking), or allow them to redevelop the excess space as building space if they pay into a fund to be used for building public parking (see fees-in-lieu).
  • Charge for on-street parking where demand exceeds supply. If there are already meters for on-street parking, raise hourly rates, or allow meter rates to vary with demand (see charging for parking). To make this more palatable, make payment easy using advanced meter technology, and/or establish a parking benefit district to reinvest some of the revenue from parking fees in maintenance or improvements for the district where it is generated.
  • Discourage shop owners and employees from parking in front of their stores (see employee parking programs).

All existing parking is full at peak periods, including public and private lots and garages as well as on-street spaces.

  • Charge for all on-street parking downtown if this is not already the case. If there are already meters for on-street parking, raise hourly rates, or allow meter rates to vary with demand (see charging for parking).
  • Increase enforcement of time limits, permit parking, meters, etc.
  • To make this more palatable, make payment easy using advanced meter technology, and/or establish a parking benefit district to reinvest part or all of the revenue from parking fees in maintenance or improvements for the district where it is generated.
  • Increase the cost of parking in municipal lots and/or garages (see charging for parking).
  • Implement or encourage downtown property owners and developers to participate in programs to reduce parking demand and traffic, such as car sharing, bicycle parking and amenities, subsidized transit passes, etc. (see parking and transportation demand management).
  • Establish shuttles to downtown from remote parking lots, such as park and ride lots, with excess capacity (see remote parking and shuttles).
  • Build additional public parking, ideally combined with retail or other commercial uses, e.g. ground-floor retail below a parking garage (see wrapping parking in retail).

If truck parking or loading and unloading are a problem:

  • Any successful downtown area will need trucks delivering goods. These trucks can park in regular spaces that customers might otherwise use. Or they can use separate loading zones, space that remains empty when not in use. For a successful and efficient business/downtown, this choice will depend on the frequency of truck deliveries over any given day.
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How much parking to require?

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Deciding on Needs

Determining the right amount of parking is always a delicate balancing act, between the need for access in an auto-oriented world and the desire to minimize traffic and the sometimes harmful impacts that autos bring. Many communities are concerned about the negative impacts of having too little parking – neighbors complain, cars are parked illegally, shop owners worry about discouraging patrons, lenders and developers worry about the desirability of their properties, drivers waste time hunting for parking spaces. Recently, though, some communities have begun to realize that too much parking can be as detrimental to the community as too little, and have taken steps to reduce parking requirements and improve the efficiency of existing parking.

There is no simple, correct answer on how much parking is needed. The answer for your community will depend on the area of interest (town and neighborhood centers will have different needs than stand alone developments), the access available to that area (less parking is needed for locations with good walk and transit access), and the type of development existing or planned (residential parking needs are greatest overnight, office during the day, and some retail uses will need the most parking on weekends). Where there is a mix of uses parking can be shared. But the answer to parking needs is also a local policy choice – to invest in auto-oriented versus transit and pedestrian transportation options, to concentrate development or to spread out, and how best to maximize local tax revenues. The best way to understand the parking needs in your community is to start with a survey of the existing parking situation. Whether your concern is parking in the town center or how much parking to require of a new development, you need to know have much of what types of parking is currently available and how is it used. In most cases, the survey should include both public and private parking, on-street as well as off-street spaces. Many simple counts can be accomplished by local volunteers, and traffic consultants are usually available for the more complicated of estimating future demand. Basic guidance on how to do a parking study and examples of some recent local studies are available in this toolkit.

Besides providing counts of existing use, surveys are also helpful in determining community priorities. Many communities have used surveys of local businesses to help determine parking needs. Convening a community parking or transportation committee is another common approach, allowing many different voices to be heard and to work together for a solution.

Parking requirements should always be tailored to the type and size of development, the location and uses surrounding the development, and the transportation options available nearby. A retail use in a walkable downtown served by transit will need far few spaces than a comparable use located on a highway.

Setting Minimum Standards

Minimum requirements are still the most common parking standards. For each different use allowed by zoning a minimum number of spaces is required, based on the size of the building, number of residential units, number of seats in a restaurant, etc. This link provides a typical example, from Somerville. A new development or use can provide more parking spaces if desired. Typically these minimum standards come from information collected and published by professional organizations such as the Institute of Transportation Engineers (Parking Generation) and the American Planning Association (Parking Standards). In other cases, communities adopt the same standards as their neighbors.

These minimum standards have the advantage of being widely used and legally defensible. They usually require sufficient parking that spillover into surrounding neighborhoods is not a problem. However, most of the parking studies on which these standards are based were done at single use, low-density suburban locations, where parking was free and unlimited and walking, biking, and transit options were limited. Parking was usually counted at times of maximum demand – peak shopping days for retail parking, for example. [1] If that reflects the type of location and parking situation that you are planning for then minimum standards may meet your community’s needs.

A parking study can also be used to establish minimum standards. Measuring the demand for parking on a average day establishes the minimum parking needed, based on local conditions.

Alternatives to Minimum Standards

Minimum standards frequently lead to an oversupply of parking, with unused spaces on all but the highest demand days. This is costly for the developer and wasteful for the community and encourages auto use. These requirements may be limiting downtown redevelopment or increasing the cost of providing affordable housing. In some situations, the best way to address this is simply to eliminate minimum parking requirements for certain land uses or certain areas, such as in the downtown, near transit stations, or for affordable housing developments. Locally, several communities including Ipswich and Gloucester have eliminated parking requirements for sites within a certain distance of a municipal parking lot in the downtown. A number of cities across the country have also eliminated required minimums throughout the Central Business District, including San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.

The key to success when eliminating minimum parking requirements is to minimize the potential for spillover effects – this is, after all, what the minimum requirements are intended to do – and ensure that there are other ways for people to access the site. Having some paid parking garages or lots nearby that are not at full capacity and access to the site via non-auto modes increase the chances of success. However, even if those pieces are in place, there will likely still be a need to control spillover effects.

One of the main concerns is generally spillover into nearby residential districts’ on-street parking. This can be addressed with a residential permit parking program. Residents may resist the transition to permit parking, but one way to win them over is through residential parking benefit districts, which charge non-residents to park in unused resident spaces, and return the revenue to the neighborhood for improvement projects. On non-residential streets, eliminating minimum parking requirements without charging for on-street parking can lead to a shortage of curb parking spaces, and the associated problems with drivers circling endlessly seeking a space, even when there are many spaces available in nearby parking garages. The solution there is to charge market prices for on-street parking. The revenue collected from on-street meters can be returned to a Parking Benefit District or Business Improvement District for improvement projects.

Another concern is that if new developments (or redevelopments) are not required to provide parking where previous developments were, the burden of providing parking may be unfairly distributed on the properties that have been there longer. If this is a concern, one alternative is to maintain required minimums but allow developers to pay a fee in lieu of each required space not provided, with the fees to be used for providing public parking. Another alternative is to allow those with an existing parking supply that exceeds their needs to rent or sell it to newcomers who can’t add parking to their sites. In some cases, developers may be constrained by requirements from lenders that they provide a certain amount of parking. For more on making the case to lenders, click here.

If your community is not ready to drop minimum parking requirements altogether, other options include establishing flexible parking requirements, allowing shared parking, setting parking maximums in addition to minimums, and allowing spaces to be held in landscaped reserves. When a local parking study is not available, the standard minimums can also be adapted for local conditions using the Parking Requirement Adjustment Factors included in the parking study section.

Sources:

1.Christopher V. Forinash, Adam Millard-Ball, Charlotte Dougherty and Jeffrey Tumlin. Smart Growth Alternatives to Minimum Parking Requirements

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Financing Public Parking

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Finding the funds when you really do need more parking

Effectively managing the existing parking supply and providing other travel options besides the single occupant auto should be the first options for providing access to any commercial area. However, sometimes additional off-street parking is necessary to support an existing business district or planned future growth. There are local options, state programs, and private responsibilities that can be used to pay for construction and operation of a public parking surface lot or garage.

Providing off-street parking can be expensive. Construction costs per space can range from roughly $1,500-2,000 per space for surface parking in suburban areas to over $20,000 for underground parking in urban areas, not counting land costs, which can be substantial, especially in urban areas. Annual operation and maintenance costs can run from $100-500 per space. All told, the annual costs per parking space can run from roughly $400 a year for suburban surface parking, over $1,200 a year for a 2-level suburban structure, to over $2,000 for an urban parking structure. [1] In addition to the direct costs of building and maintaining the spaces, parking takes up space that could otherwise be used for additional commercial space or housing; incurs environmental costs including increased stormwater runoff and pollution and heat island impacts; and costs to the transportation system from its impact on the relative appeal of driving versus alternative modes. These costs should be recognized and balanced against the benefits parking provides in driver convenience and access.

Where to build a surface parking lot or a parking garage depends both on the number of spaces needed and on the value of land where you are building. One study suggests that land must be valued at $1,000,000 per acre or more for a garage to be cost-effective.[1] A parking study can help you determine how many new spaces you need. Several hundred new spaces at a minimum should be needed before you consider a parking garage. While a garage may cost 10 times what a surface lot will cost, the extra land made available by a smaller garage footprint can bring in considerable sales and tax revenues to the community. In some communities the first floor of a garage contains retail uses which can also produce rental revenue for the community. Garages also typically have the additional environmental benefit of a smaller paved area and reduced rainwater runoff.

Using Local Funds

The most common way to pay for public parking lots is by issuing municipal bonds. These can be general obligation bonds, which are backed by a community’s general taxation revenues, or revenue bonds, which are typically paid off through revenues from parking fees. Revenue from parking enforcement might also be used for this purpose, but typically money from parking tickets is deposited directly into a community’s general fund. A double-barreled obligation bond would usually rely on both a revenue pledge plus the full faith and credit of the community (i.e. a general obligation) in case revenues are not sufficient. Under a special assessment bond, those that benefit from the public parking lot, like local businesses, can be charged a special assessment to pay off the bonds. If a tax increment finance bond is issued, some of the additional taxes expected to be generated from the increase in property values due to the new parking can be pledged to pay off the bond.

The revenue collected from on- and off-street meters can also be returned to a Parking Benefit District or Business Improvement District for local transportation improvement projects.

State Funding Sources

The following Commonwealth of Massachusetts programs can be used, sometimes, to pay for new off-street parking facilities. All of these programs are based on competitive grants, and community applications must demonstrate that the planned garage is eligible and will provide the benefits that the program is designed to promote. Check with the appropriate state agency for eligibility requirements and application procedures.

Public Works Economic Development – PWED (Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works)

  • This program assists municipalities in funding transportation infrastructure that will stimulate economic development. The PWED regulations are “designed to provide eligible municipalities with maximum flexibility and discretion as it relates to project development and implementation” (701 CMR 5.01), but vest in the Secretary of Transportation the responsibility for evaluating and selecting eligible projects that will facilitate economic growth consistent with applicable state policies. For more information follow this link to the Executive Office of Transportation and Public Work ’s PWED page.

Transit-Oriented Development – TOD (Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works)

  • This program funds capital grants on a competitive basis to public agencies for planning, design and construction of housing, parking, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure located near transit stops. In most instances, Transit Oriented Development funding leverages other project funding provided by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, Mass Housing and private developers. More information about transit-oriented development can be found here.

Community Development Action Grant Program – CDAG (Department of Housing and Community Development)

  • This program leverages both public and private investment in an effort to stimulate local economies and create jobs that would not occur by private enterprise alone. CDAG provides funding for publicly owned or managed projects that will have a significant impact on the economic condition of a city or town, including activities that will leverage significant private investment and generate or retain long term employment, as well as projects that will significantly improve the conditions of low and moderate income persons through the support of workforce housing production and/or the preservation of public housing. Any city or town in the Commonwealth is eligible to apply to DHCD for CDAG funds. CDAG can be used in a variety of ways, including installation, improvement, construction, repair, rehabilitation or reconstruction of publicly owned or managed buildings or other structures, facades, streets, roadways, thoroughfares, sidewalks, rail spurs, utility distribution systems, water and sewer lines, for site preparation and improvements, demolition of existing structures, and relocation assistance. For more information follow this link to the Department of Housing and Community Development’s CDAG web page.

Community Development Block Grant – CDBG (MA Department of Housing and Community Development, US Department of Housing and Urban Development)

  • Mass CDBG is a federally funded, competitive grant program designed to help small cities and towns meet a broad range of community development needs. Assistance is provided to qualifying cities and towns for housing, community, and economic development projects that assist low and moderate-income residents, or by revitalizing areas of slum or blight. Municipalities with a population of under 50,000 that do not receive CDBG funds directly from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are eligible for Mass CDBG funding. Eligible Mass CDBG projects include but are not limited to housing rehabilitation or development, micro-enterprise or other business assistance, infrastructure, community/public facilities, public social services, planning, removal of architectural barriers to allow access by persons with disabilities, and downtown or area revitalization. The federal program funded by HUD has the same basic program goals and eligibility requirements, for communities with populations of at least 50,000. The federal requirements can be found here.

Off-street Parking Program (Executive Office of Administration and Finance)

  • Established in 1980, this program provides matching grants to municipalities for the construction of public, off-street parking facilities in Commercial Area Revitalization Districts. A Commercial Area Revitalization District is “a commercial area for which a commercial area revitalization plan has been adopted by the governing body of the municipality and approved by the Secretary of Communities and Development and the project is consistent with the plan. The purpose of the plan shall be to prevent or arrest or reverse the decay of the area covered by the plan. The plan shall describe the area and set forth the development or redevelopment including public improvement proposed to carry out the purposes of the plan.” Communities must pay at least 30% of the project cost. Only communities with populations above 20,000 are eligible. More details can be found here.

Massachusetts Downtown Initiative (Department of Housing and Community Development)

  • DHCD’s Massachusetts Downtown Initiative (MDI) offers a range of services and assistance to communities seeking help on how to revitalize their downtowns. The primary mission of the MDI is to make downtown revitalization an integral part of community development in cities and towns across the Commonwealth. Assistance is provided for planning activities, but construction costs are not provided. Eligibility requirements vary among program components and restrictions may apply, but planning for parking is an eligible activity. The Technical Assistance Site Visit Program is restricted to non-entitlement CDBG communities. More details can be found here.

Requiring the Business Community to Contribute

As mentioned above, some of the taxes or fees from new development can be allocarted directly to a Parking Benefit District or can be used to pay off a tax increment finance bond. Parking regulations can also maintain required minimums but allow developers to pay a fee in lieu of each required space not provided, with the fees to be used for providing public parking. A concern with reduced parking requirements is that if new developments (or redevelopments) are not required to provide parking where previous developments were, the burden of providing parking may be unfairly distributed on the properties that have been there longer. Using the fees to pay for public parking available to all may reduce those concerns. Finally, if the parking required is not needed during part of the day, or on weekends, parking regulations can require or suggest that these spaces be available for public use during certain times.

Sources:

1. Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, “Parking Evaluation: Evaluating Parking Problems, Solutions, Costs, and Benefits”, Online TDM Encyclopedia.

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Background: Mortgage Foreclosure Timeline

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Day 1: 90 Day Notice of Acceleration is sent. (Formerly 30 days.) This means that the entire mortgage debt will be due in 90 days if you do not become current with your payments. (A Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing will reverse this and give you up to five years to catch up on your missed mortgage payments.)

3 Months: The foreclosing mortgage holder can begin the Land Court proceeding for a determination that you are not a military service member. You will get an “Order of Notice” which gives you 30 days to tell the Land Court if you are in military service. This step is unique to Massachusetts. It is not strictly required for a foreclosure, but it is required for insurable title. (Lenders to the next purchaser will require title insurance before making a mortgage loan.) The procedure used to take only 30 days, but the Land Court is very, very backed up these days. There is a very remote possibility that you have a Rambo foreclosing lender who wants you out of the house quickly and will get the Land Court ruling later. If so, delete this step.

4-6 Months: After the Land Court issues its judgment that you are not in the military service, the lender will run a classified advertisement at least three weeks in advance of the proposed sale. This might be delayed somewhat for the convenience of the lender or its attorney.

1 Week Later: The lender gives you two weeks’ advance notice of the proposed sale.

1 More Week Later: The lender will run a second classified advertisement one week before the proposed sale.

Final Week: The auction takes place. Your ownership rights end immediately following the auction when the successful bidder signs a memorandum of sale. It’s too late to stop the foreclosure with a bankruptcy filing. On very, very rare occasions, you might successfully argue that the advertising was unreasonable or that the foreclosing party did not have rights to the mortgage and the auction is void. Do not count on this.

Source: L. Jed Berliner, Massachusetts Bankruptcy Attorney, Bankruptcy Law Network

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Best Practices and Legal Resources for Strengthening Neighborhoods

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Best Practices for Strengthening Neighborhoods

Foreclosures negatively impact neighborhoods. As property-tax revenues decline, it is harder for municipalities to provide good schools, police protection, and other services.

Local governments have various tools to help them protect the health and welfare of residents. Some of these can be used to address the impact of foreclosures on neighborhoods, although they were often designed for other circumstances. Ordinances can be an important tool for maintaining neighborhoods, especially if enforced properly and updated as needed.

Highlight: City of Boston’s Foreclosure Response

Since 1999, Boston has been warning homeowners and homebuyers of the dangers of risky loan products through its “Don’t Borrow Trouble” campaign. That campaign has been adopted by Freddie Mac and is now in over 50 cities nationwide. The Boston Home Center has been counseling homebuyers about how to obtain a good loan since 1996, and of those homebuyers that received counseling and financial support, only 0.7% have been foreclosed on – less than one-third the rate in the overall market.

Boston has been closely tracking foreclosures since 1992, and in late 2005, the earliest signs of the predicted foreclosure boom began to appear. The City convened a group of prominent bankers to develop strategies to address the coming crisis in the spring of 2006. In May of 2006 the Boston Home Center set up an in-house foreclosure prevention team, marketed its services through bus shelter ads, and began working with homeowners to help them avert foreclosure. In the fall of 2006 the First Choice Lenders initiative was launched with most of Boston’s major banks participating. Participating lenders agreed to model business practices in originating loans, and agreed to help refinance homeowners out of bad loans. Over $3 million in refinancing loans have been issued.

At the start of 2007 the City expanded its foreclosure prevention efforts by funding four non-profit organizations to provide community based foreclosure prevention counseling. A fifth organization was added in early 2008. With support from a State grant, another two organizations were added in May 2008. Over 300 homeowners have averted foreclosure though this foreclosure prevention network. The City is currently working with two of these non-profit groups to develop an enhanced refinancing loan product that will enable homeowners to refinance out of bad loans that cannot qualify for conventional refinancing products available from FHA or MassHousing.

For more information, visit: https://www.cityofboston.gov/dnd/bhc/Preventing_Foreclosure.asp

Highlight: Receivership Activities in the City of Malden

Malden organized the Mayor’s Housing Task Force, which brings together all of the City’s Inspectional Service Departments and the police and fire departments to address dilapidated, vacant, abandoned, and foreclosed properties, utilizing the receivership power granted by MGL Ch.111. Vacant or dilapidated properties are fully inspected on the interior and exterior. If owners fail to correct cited violations within 30 days, the Task Force seeks to have the Malden Redevelopment Authority designated as the receiver to complete the repairs and a lien superior to all mortgages is placed on the property. If the owner fails to pay the lien, the receiver is allowed to foreclose and re-sell the property. Malden has done this in over 100 cases in the last five years.

Using DHCD Neighborhood Stabilization Funds, the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General will expand their Abandoned Housing Initiative with a focus on promoting receivership in the 39 NSP-Eligible Communities. The AHI provides legal assistance with respect to the receivership process, including coordinated outreach with local officials and community groups.

Land Banking is a technique used in other states to maintain neighborhoods. In Michigan, The Genesee County Land Bank has been very successful in encouraging re-use of more than 4,000 residential, commercial, and industrial properties that it acquired through the tax foreclosure process.

Through the DHCD Neighborhood Stabilization Fund, Boston, Brockton, Springfield and Worcester will be able to apply to DHCD for administration and operation assistance for land banking activities. Under this pilot program, requests must include a neighborhood revitalization strategy, activities to address neighborhood decline, and future banked-land development/ use plans.

Foreclosure Prevention Practices: A National League of Cities brief

This provides three strategies in stemming the foreclosure tide and helping individual families regain financial stability: neighborhood coalition, or partnership programs; loan counseling programs; and emergency fund programs.

Legal Resources to Strengthen Neighborhoods

State statutes can help local governments craft ordinances to strengthen neighborhoods. Potential ordinances include:

  • Abandoned possessions
  • Dangerous building
  • Fire prevention
  • Grass and noxious weeds
  • Housing
  • Inoperable vehicle
  • Litter
  • Nuisance
  • Property maintenance
  • Zoning

Please contact Amy Reilly at 617-451-2770, ext. 2059 or at [email protected] with questions or for additional information on any of these initiatives and ordinances.

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Background: Property Tax Foreclosure Timeline

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When homeowners fail to pay property taxes, a municipality may place a tax lien on the property and possibly offer the property up for sale at an auction to help generate the lost tax income.

More content is coming soon.

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Parking Requirements Preventing Redevelopment and Reuse

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What’s the Problem?

Communities trying to revitalize an existing downtown or neighborhood center or trying to encourage adaptive reuse of historic buildings may find that the combination of minimum parking requirements and constrained sites prevent these efforts from succeeding. The Cape Cod Commission offers some guidance on parking for historic and downtown sites in their model bylaws on Village Center zoning (https://www.capecodcommission.org/bylaws/village.html) and guidance on Historic Preservation (https://www.capecodcommission.org/historic/RPPHistoricPreservation.pdf). Additional strategies for removing parking as an obstacle to redevelopment and adaptive reuse are listed below.

Strategies

  • Reduce or eliminate minimum parking requirements for some or all uses downtown, and/or waive parking requirements for adaptive reuse projects.
  • Allow or require developers in constrained areas to pay into a fund to be used for building public parking rather than providing parking spaces (see fees-in-lieu).
  • Count on-street parking towards minimum parking requirements (see flexible minimum requirements).
  • Allow the new use to lease or share parking spaces with nearby properties that have excess on-site parking or have parking demand during a different time of the day, week, or year (see shared parking).
  • Establish flexible parking requirements based on:
    • alternative mode access (especially proximity of transit, but also pedestrian and bicycle facilities)
    • expected demographics of residential developments (age, income, other auto-ownership factors)
    • parking studies providing data to support requests to reduce or increase parking
    • implementation of programs to reduce the need for parking spaces, such as parking cash out, un-bundled parking, shared parking, priority parking for carpools, or car sharing (see parking and transportation demand management)
  • If there is not enough extra parking capacity in downtown to absorb the impact of the redevelopment or reuse, establish shuttles to downtown from remote parking lots, such as park and ride lots, with excess capacity (see remote parking and shuttles).
  • If the redevelopment will add to demand for on-street parking, charge for street parking where demand exceeds supply. If there are already meters for on-street parking, raise hourly rates, or allow meter rates to vary with demand (see charging for parking). To make this more palatable, make payment easy using advanced meter technology, and/or establish a parking benefit district to reinvest some of the revenue from parking fees in maintenance or improvements for the district where it is generated.
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