Op-ed: AB 1401 is vital to affordable housing by addressing minimum parking requirements

The crippling cost of living in Westwood is a fact of life for the thousands of UCLA students who live near campus. A 2019 survey found that Westwood is the most expensive place to rent in the country outside of Manhattan. Soaring rents have left students – especially those with low incomes – with an impossible choice: shell out thousands of dollars to live in an overcrowded, run-down apartment close to campus, or live farther away and bear the commute.

Students have blamed the dysfunctionality of the Westwood housing market on a slew of factors. Predatory landlords take advantage of students, who often don’t know their rights as tenants. Proposals for new apartment buildings are met with staunch opposition from nearby homeowners. Some students, including our Undergraduate Students Association Council President Breeze Velazquez, are focused on the “impending cost-of-living crises” from the Olympics, which won’t come to Los Angeles for another seven years. There may be good reasons to focus on all of these things, but one urgent reason for growing unaffordability goes unnoticed time and time again: minimum parking requirements.

Perhaps it’s because parking isn’t the sexiest of topics, but ignoring the harm caused by minimum parking requirements is dangerous. In North Westwood Village, apartments with four “habitable rooms” or more must come with at least 3.5 parking spaces each. Providing vast amounts of parking makes building housing more expensive, which in turn raises rents. Parking also often takes the place of what could be more apartments. To make matters worse, many students prefer to hunt for free on-street parking rather than pay for a spot in their apartment building, so countless spaces remain empty year-round. Our priorities are clearly backwards; we should care more about building homes for students than for cars.

Luckily, state lawmakers have come up with a solution: get rid of these archaic requirements where other transportation options abound. Introduced by Assemblymember Laura Friedman, AB 1401 would prevent cities from imposing minimum parking requirements within a half-mile of public transit lines. This includes the UCLA campus and surrounding areas, where 20 high-capacity public transit lines serve residents and workers. Crucially, this bill wouldn’t prevent developers from supplying any parking – it would just allow them to determine how much parking is actually needed.

Critics complain that AB 1401 overrides local control over parking policy and that it’s undemocratic to hand power from local governments over to developers. But a little less local control might be exactly what Westwood needs. Our city council is particularly responsive to the desires of wealthy homeowners, who would prefer that parking requirements make dense and affordable development impossible. It’s equally if not more undemocratic to keep minimum parking requirements in their current form, as they serve to exclude low-income residents by artificially inflating rents. In Westwood, these low-income residents are mostly students. Students, not parking requirements, make Westwood what it is: a vibrant, lively college town.

Fortunately, the Assembly passed AB 1401 on June 1, but the bill still has to pass the state Senate, where Los Angeles Democrats have been notoriously reluctant to support progressive housing and transportation legislation. Local control advocates remain committed to defeating AB 1401, yet a student voice is still sorely lacking. The University of California Student Association has not issued an opinion on the bill, so student advocates at the Capitol are not currently working to pass it. If AB 1401 is to succeed, it requires a broad, multigenerational coalition of stakeholders to fight for it. Students need to claim their seat at the table.

AB 1401 is a chance for students to fight for a better Westwood, a better Los Angeles and a better state. The research makes one thing painfully clear: minimum parking requirements make Westwood unaffordable. Students are depending on their leaders to stand up for them and support this common-sense reform.

Evan Farrar is a fourth-year public affairs student and a council member on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council.