Bellingham has officially and permanently eliminated minimum parking requirements for new development, the Bellingham City Council voting 5-1 Monday night, August 10, to make permanent what had been an interim policy since January 2025. The move makes Bellingham one of a growing number of Pacific Northwest cities to remove parking mandates, a policy that supporters say will lower housing costs and critics say risks under-serving residents who depend on cars.
What the Ordinance Actually Does
Under the old code, developers were required to include a set number of parking spaces based on the type and size of a building. Residential projects had to provide a minimum number of spaces per unit; commercial and mixed-use projects calculated requirements by square footage. The interim ordinance approved in January 2025 suspended those requirements, letting developers decide how much parking to include based on their own assessment of demand. Monday's ordinance makes that flexibility permanent.
The new code also introduces minimum parking requirements for bicycles, with amounts that vary based on location and project type. That change reflects the city's broader interest in supporting transportation alternatives, particularly near transit corridors and in neighborhoods where cycling infrastructure has been expanding.
The City of Bellingham frames the ordinance as part of Mayor Kim Lund's executive order aimed at expediting affordable housing production. City staff noted that a single parking space generally costs more than $20,000 to build in Bellingham, factoring in excavation, materials, and engineering. For smaller apartment projects, that cost can make a project financially unviable. Removing the mandate lets developers skip parking construction when market demand does not justify the expense, potentially making more projects pencil out.
The Case for Removing the Mandate
Mayor Lund made the equity argument directly at a July 27 council meeting. "Underbuilding housing affects all of us," she said. "Our teachers, our childcare workers, our maintenance technicians, the people who make Bellingham work are struggling to find homes and afford rents in the community that they serve."
City staff pointed to Old Town as a concrete example. After parking requirements were lifted in that neighborhood as a pilot, development interest in the area increased, and plans are now in place for at least 500 new residential units in the coming years. That kind of development response is what the permanent citywide change is intended to replicate across Bellingham's neighborhoods.
Research on parking reform in comparable cities has found that removing minimums, particularly near transit and in urban cores, tends to increase housing supply without causing the parking crises that critics predict. Developers tend to include market-appropriate amounts of parking even without mandates, because buyers and renters still value it. Studies cited by national housing policy organizations suggest that the elimination of parking mandates correlates with meaningful growth in housing availability in cities of Bellingham's size and density profile.
The Concerns Raised
Not everyone supported the change. Critics on the council and in public testimony argued that the ordinance tilted too heavily toward larger apartment projects and did not adequately address the need for dedicated parking at single-family and smaller residential buildings. Neighborhoods on Bellingham's edges, where transit is less frequent and many residents depend entirely on personal vehicles, are where concerns about insufficient parking are most acute.
Opponents also raised questions about the cumulative effect of many new buildings without parking on street parking availability in established neighborhoods. In areas like Happy Valley, Lettered Streets, and Birchwood, where streets are already under pressure from existing density, the addition of new residents without parking can create real conflicts. The city's response has been that the market will self-regulate, but that argument carries less weight in neighborhoods where transit service is infrequent.
What Comes Next for Bellingham Development
The ordinance is in effect immediately. Developers submitting new project applications in Bellingham no longer need to meet a parking minimum of any kind, beyond the new bicycle parking requirements. Projects in the pipeline that were designed around the interim policy will not be affected by any change in direction.
The city will monitor the effects of the permanent ordinance on housing production and parking availability over the coming years. Bellingham's planning department has been tracking development applications and neighborhood feedback throughout the interim period, and that data will inform any future adjustments. More information on Bellingham's housing policy direction is available at the city's planning and community development pages.
For full context on how this ordinance fits into Bellingham's broader housing agenda, including the renter protections the council also advanced Monday night, read more on the city's latest housing policy moves. Together, the parking change and the renter protections represent the most significant package of housing-related actions the council has taken in a single session in years.
