Can parking garages alleviate the housing and homelessness crisis?

Turn on the TV news, check social media or go old school and pick up a newspaper, and you’re likely to find a story about the housing crisis in America. Increasingly, young people are giving up on the dream of home ownership, as median prices for housing in the U.S. rise to six times the median income—up from four times the median income just two decades ago.  

The lack of affordable housing has not only made the dream of home ownership difficult for many American families, but it has also played a crucial role in the rising level of homelessness throughout the country. More than 250,000 Americans were living in temporary shelters or on the streets in 2023, according to estimates by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And while the causes of homelessness are complex, most experts agree that a housing supply shortage is a key factor.     

While numerous solutions have been proposed to counter the problem—from expanding tax credits for lower-income housing to embracing higher density through increased apartment development—there is one option that deserves serious consideration: converting unused or underused parking garages and lots into housing units.

Ever since the pandemic changed the way in which companies do business, with many shifting to remote or hybrid work schedules, once-full parking garages and lots in metropolitan areas across the U.S. have experienced a significant decline in daily use. Similarly, the once-crowded parking lots surrounding shopping centers and suburban office parks now have lots of available space, again thanks to flexible work schedules, as well as the popularity of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and the rise in online shopping.

The trend has devastated many parking garage operators. To counter it, while also providing a possible solution to the affordable housing crisis, public officials in several metropolitan areas have begun to examine the feasibility for transforming unused or underused garages and parking lots into affordable housing units.   

Several examples of this potentially game-changing strategy already exist or are in development.

In Los Angeles, for instance, an underused parking lot owned by the city has been converted into apartments for low-income or homeless seniors. L.A. has also worked with architectural firm Gensler to retrofit several old garages with pods—inexpensive, prefabricated, modular living units, typically consisting of one to three sustainable, low-square footage rooms. While hardly lavish, these pods can be plugged into existing parking garages and represent a viable alternative to living on the street for L.A.’s homeless population.

Architectural firm KTGY provides another example. Its research and development studio reimagined an existing, donut-shaped parking garage in San Diego by inserting factory-built steel living modules into the standalone structure. The proposed Park House design would enable the garage’s 1,091 parking spaces to be converted into 119 one- and two-bedroom units to house the city’s homeless. 

The standard structure of most garages, combined with their near universal dimensions based on the unitized size of a parking space, allows for prefabricated housing pods such as those used in L.A. to be easily placed within the facility’s concrete shell. These pods can also make use of the garage’s existing vertical circulation and utility connections.

In those instances where existing garages won’t work for a retrofit or unused surface lots exist, new construction designed specifically to provide affordable housing opportunities is typically preferable. Examples of such affordable housing options seem to be popping up everywhere, from a 30-story, affordable housing high-rise in Boston to a 16-story studio apartment complex which stands on the former site of an underutilized parking lot in Honolulu.

As with any new development, redeveloping unused or underused garages and parking lots is not without its drawbacks. Purely from a structural standpoint, existing garages typically present several challenges, including the presence of low ceilings, sloped floors, and an inability to handle the same loads.

While the simple solution in such cases would be to tear down structurally incompatible garages and replace them with new affordable housing, such as the high-rises in Boston and Honolulu, that approach can present challenges as well. Some zoning requirements, for example, prohibit the conversion of a commercial property, such as a parking garage, into a residential property. Parking minimums built into zoning codes may also require inclusion of a certain number of parking spaces for each new residential unit built, making conversion impractical.

Community input can also make or break a garage retrofit. Unfortunately, in the rush to strike an agreement between garage operators and developers, government officials sometimes neglect to gauge community interest in the project. It is essential for community members not to be blindsided by the prospect of new affordable housing in their neighborhood. It is also important for the jurisdiction to convey the multiple benefits to be realized from turning unused parking facilities into affordable housing units.  

As state and local governments continue to confront the problems of affordable housing and homelessness, and garage operators struggle to keep their heads above water, an opportunity clearly exists to address all of these issues at once. Given the availability of numerous examples of successful garage-to-housing conversions, the onus now lies on all of the parties involved to explore how this option can be incorporated to meet both changing market needs and the rapidly rising demand for affordable housing.  

Wes Guckert, PTP, is president & CEO of The Traffic Group, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB), Maryland-based traffic engineering and transportation planning firm. For more information: www.trafficgroup.com or follow them on LinkedIn.