According to the 2011 National American Housing Survey data of the US census, about 16% of a housing unit’s monthly rental cost is attributable to the expense of building an urban parking spot. For the average renter that amounts to to $1,700 per year, or $142 per month.

Parking mandates increase housing prices by displacing area that could have gone to housing (thus shrinking supply), and makes each new unit more expensive to pay for more garage parking. A separate study in Los Angeles found the city’s parking minimums raised apartment prices by about $200 per month and price of a condo by about $43,000. Renters without cars end up subsidizing this arrangement to the tune of about $440 million annually in the US. While only 7% of US rental households lack cars, according to Census data, this burden falls most heavily on the urban poor since lower-income households can least afford to subsidize garage parking spaces.

Researchers find that it might be less wasteful to price and sell private vehicle parking spaces separately from housing, and urban planners are starting to advocate for new uses of city-owned street parking (such as parklets).