Last week on July 1, 250 years after the Second Continental Congress first convened to debate the Declaration of Independence, Connecticut took a much smaller-but-important step: freeing itself from the bonds of an onerous planning rule called parking mandates.

Unlike our revolutionary moment in 1776, ushering in parking flexibility is a mainstream, common-sense policy that will help build more homes for our friends and family.

Parking mandates are arbitrary and have hurt housing affordability.

Over the last 80 years Connecticut’s towns and cities passed simple-sounding rules mandating immediate onsite parking on every lot for every type of land use. Parking mandates may sound wonky, but they’re easy to understand —and they have helped fuel our housing crisis while leading to excessive amounts of pavement and runoff pollution.

Take Naugatuck, which mandated three parking spaces for a small studio apartment in its business district across from its train station, or Trumbull, which mandated four parking spaces for an inlaw apartment/ADU (nevermind that your aging parent may no longer be capable of driving). These arbitrary and excessive mandates made it impossible to build those types of homes our state so desperately needs, leaving us with too few homes and too many unused parking spaces.

Emerging research is uncovering just how pernicious these rules are. For example, the Sightline Institute found that parking flexibility alone can boost home-building 40-70%, and building more types of homes where people want to live is the key to making Connecticut affordable again for our friends and family.

For those worried about renting, buying, or downsizing in Connecticut (who isn’t?), right-sizing parking really matters. So-called “missing middle” homes (think townhomes) become challenging or impossible with the spatial and financial imposition of excessive parking mandates. Perhaps you’re focused on affordable housing for our state’s most vulnerable? Good news, parking flexibility will help boost that, too, as those residents are the least likely to own a car and most likely to rely on walking, biking, and transit to get to where they need to go.

Fortunately, on July 1, Connecticut joined a growing list of states and municipalities across the country implementing parking flexibility. Enabled by the compromise housing legislation passed in November 2025, Public Act 25-1, parking flexibility is the law of the land in Connecticut. This mainstream, common-sense proposal will be a boon for our state.

What will this mean in practice?

Public Act 25-1 is about right-sizing parking and unlocking new homes for our friends, family, and neighbors. Developments under 16 homes, the type of missing middle homes so many Nutmeggers support, cannot be denied a permit based on parking considerations alone.

For larger projects, the new rules cap the maximum mandate to a much more reasonable level and encourage people to talk through the true parking needs. A parking needs assessment can be prepared which studies nearby public parking options, access to transit, and underlying resident parking demand in the blocks around a project.

Connecticut does not suffer from a lack of parking, as our research shows that our town centers are an average of 29% parking, with some reaching upwards of 40% like Fairfield and West Hartford. What we do have are many underutilized garages and parking lots across the state, and a parking needs assessment can help better leverage those resources. We are also blessed with incredible walkable downtowns in Connecticut, and these new rules allow us to make sure they stay special.

Crucially, there will still be parking in Connecticut for those who need and want it. The parking doesn’t go away when we stop mandating it —far from it! As the Minneapolis planning commission found in 2023 after their citywide reforms, developers still built 73% of the spaces they would have previously. Research found similar numbers for Seattle and Buffalo, where between 60-68% of new developments provided as much or more parking as was previously mandated.

Entrepreneurs will provide parking if they believe it is what is needed to attract residents and customers, and towns are still able to build municipal lots. Parking flexibility puts the decision-making in the hands of those who know best: the people building the homes and those that will live in them. Connecticut communities as diverse as Hartford (population 121,000) and Thompson, CT (population: 9,200) have already embraced this change to great success.

Embrace right-sizing parking.

This is an exciting time for Connecticut’s municipalities, and our advice is simple: embrace the change! As our municipalities adjust to 25-1, they should also take a hard look at their excessive commercial mandates, which harm small businesses like coffee shops and daycares, not to mention our traditional downtowns.

We don’t always need a revolution to make positive change. Under parking flexibility, our towns and cities will continue to look much like they do —only better. Our communities will have a little more housing for our loved ones to rent or downsize into, and a little less unnecessary, unused asphalt. And there will still be enough parking for those of us who need it in our every day lives. Right-sizing our parking is a slam-dunk for Connecticut and its future.

Tom Broderick is a member of the Trumbull Town Council and Co-founder, along with co-author Casey Moran, of CT Parking Reform.