Published on November 18, 2024
Reported for The Seattle Times by Jessica Fu
When Evelyn Burnett, 25, began her Seattle apartment search this past summer, she knew she’d have to budget for parking. But she was not prepared for the prices she encountered.
Across the four rental buildings that she toured, parking fees ranged from $250 to $350 per month. Eventually, she signed a lease beginning last month for a one-bedroom in the Yesler Terrace neighborhood. Rent is $2,360 per month; parking adds another $325 per month — nearly 14% of the apartment itself.
“It’s insane that the parking costs that much,” she said.
Burnett is a social worker at the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, focusing on assistive technology for people with disabilities. Her work involves commuting to offices and homes from King County to as far as Bellingham. When she was looking for an apartment, she specifically sought one with easy access to Interstate 90, parking and a dedicated charger for her electric car, narrowing her options to newer but pricier buildings.
Burnett spends more than half of her $5,000 monthly take-home pay on housing and utilities. Until this month, she was in a period of reprieve: Her apartment offered her two months free upon move-in. In that time, she budgeted diligently to account for high costs to come.
Like Burnett, many Seattle residents need a car to get around, whether they like it or not. They depend on having a car to run errands, see family and friends, and commute to work. In some cases, alternative transportation options like public transit simply aren’t available. In others, they’re not practical due to limitations related to time, geography or accessibility.
According to the latest Census Bureau data, 37% of people in Seattle drive to work alone — higher than any other means of transportation, including public transit and carpooling. King County, with a population of over 2.2 million people, had about 1.45 million registered passenger vehicles last year, according to the Washington State Department of Licensing.
Driving for work
For those who work or live in high-traffic neighborhoods, storing a car can be a significant expense.
Julee Ashmead, 49, is a lab manager who lives in Sammamish and commutes daily to Capitol Hill for work. After a $50-a-month subsidy from her employer, Ashmead pays $210 a month to park in a Seattle University lot. That’s a less costly option. Daily parking rates in the area typically go for $18 a day, or $360 a month, she said.
Ashmead estimates she has spent a total of more than $15,000 on parking for work since 2018.
“I don’t like to stop and do the math very often because it just makes me mad,” she said. To pay for parking, she reduced her contributions to her 401(k). In her mind, the money she has spent to park her car could have been money set aside and invested in her future.
For many, including Ashmead, street parking isn’t a practical long-term alternative to private garages due to higher hourly costs, safety concerns, availability, location and specific needs such as electric vehicle charging.
A few years ago, Ashmead tried to take the bus to and from work, but the commute took at least three hours a day, and much longer if she missed her transfer. Before she and her husband moved to the Eastside, they made offers on three homes in Seattle but were outbid each time. Moving to Sammamish was more practical for them from a homeownership perspective.
Ashmead considers her household to be upper middle class. At the end of the day, she feels that she’ll be fine financially. But she struggles to reconcile the cost of parking today with the availability of free street parking in the past.
Confronted by the high costs of parking, many simply have to forgo driving as much as they can. Jimmy Pizl, 24, lives on Capitol Hill and commutes downtown three to five times a week. His apartment rent includes a parking spot, but at the office, a stall would cost $385 a month. Instead of driving to work, Pizl takes public transit.
He also tries to walk or take a scooter when getting around the city to save on parking costs. Still, he can’t completely do away with the car, nor does he want to: He uses it to travel to harder-to-reach neighborhoods, visit family outside the city and go on road trips.
“I just add it to the calculation,” he said, referring to parking costs. “I try to go during off-peak times, at cheaper parking times.
“It’s not super significant in my budget.”
High land values
A big reason why parking costs as much as it does in Seattle is because it’s a scarce resource that has high demand. “Think about how much space your car takes up,” said Steven Bourassa, professor and chair of the Runstad Department of Real Estate in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. “If you’re in a high land value area, you’re going to definitely be paying more than if you’re in a lower land value area.”
Seattle and other cities in King County have experienced significant population growth over time. Between 1990 and 2020, Seattle’s population increased by more than 47%, according to King County data.
“We have dramatically more people all trying to be in the same space at once,” said Sean Flynn, president and executive director of the Rental Housing Association of Washington, which represents landlords and property management companies. “Seattle is not the city it was 30 years ago.”
The availability of parking has not increased in lockstep with the growing population. In fact, over the past two decades, the Seattle City Council has passed multiple pieces of legislation aimed at spurring the development of housing without parking. In 2012, the city relaxed minimum parking requirements for new developments in areas located close to transit options; it further loosened minimums in 2018. Each new apartment built in Seattle in 2004 had an average of 1.5 parking spots per unit. By 2017, that number had fallen to 0.6 spots per unit.
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Steven Bourassa, professor and chair of the Runstad Department of Real Estate in the College of Built Environments explains high parking costs in Seattle