A new Sightline report details the arcane, arbitrary, and pernicious rules blocking homes and businesses across the state.

Middle school teacher Marijean Rak moved to Mount Vernon, Washington, in 2022 to care for her 86-year-old mother. She hoped to build a modest, 1,000-square-foot, single-story home on a vacant lot she owned to securely and economically age in place in her newly adopted town. But Mount Vernon parking mandates, which require a two-car garage plus two additional off-street parking spaces, made it impossible to do so.

"This requirement is cost-prohibitive and doesn't align with the character of the neighborhood,"

she told her city council members earlier this year, pointing out that most of the existing homes in the blocks surrounding her lot have a one-car garage or no off-street parking at all.

Rak's story is one of thousands across Washington of a dream unrealized, whether it's a home in a neighborhood they like, the conversion of a vacant storefront to a new café, or the opening of a much-needed daycare facility. Parking mandates - rules establishing a predetermined number of parking spaces for all new buildings - have proven a sneaky but consequential factor in driving up the costs of homebuilding and developing businesses; sometimes, they've prevented them from existing altogether.

And these parking rules are as arbitrary as they are arcane, slapping one-size-fits-all minimums with no scientific basis across a range of establishments. From restaurants to retail stores, homes to houses of worship, libraries to "butterfly or moth breeding facilities" (yes, really), cities and towns have mandated an excess of parking, locking communities into patterns of sprawling development that makes traveling without a car impossible and promotes unsightly seas of asphalt. In short, parking mandates have silently shaped how we live and how we get around.

City planners know that parking minimums are too high. That's why they have layered on exceptions over the years whether for downtown zones or historic buildings. In addition to those exceptions and overlays making zoning more complicated for small businesses or homeowners to navigate, cities are still blindly copying each other's base codes and killing new homes in the process. Therefore, all our rankings use the standard parking mandates that apply city- or county-wide. These are the numbers that property owners and planning staff are both stuck trying to navigate around.

Below we call out some of the most onerous parking requirements for a variety of building types and community members: for entrepreneurs, restaurants, renters, daycares, and families seeking apartments. Don't see your town? Find complete listings of all jurisdictions in the full report.

Worst parking mandates for entrepreneurs

No one cares more about the success of a small business than the people pouring their life savings into it. Yet local governments think they know best when it comes to how many parking spaces a new store, law office, or coffeeshop might need.

High mandates rule out plenty of otherwise suitable properties in favor of lots large enough to accommodate the mandatory parking. As a rule of thumb, a mandate of 3 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet forces property owners to dedicate as much space to parking as the building itself. You can see how this land-hungry requirement drives new businesses to the edge of town or prevents them from opening altogether.

We added together the base requirements for 1,000 square feet of each of these common uses (office, retail, and restaurants) to see which jurisdictions create the highest barriers to opening a business. Here are the top ten by Parking spaces mandated for 3,000 sq feet of combined office, retail and restaurant space:

1. Bellevue 20.7

2. Yakima (tie) 20.3

Yakima County (tie) 20.3

3. Kent (tie) 19

Kennewick (tie) 19

Whatcom County (tie) 19

Longview (tie) 19

4. Lynnwood 18.8

5. Issaquah (tie) 18.3

Walla Walla (tie) 18.3

Worst parking...