By Vanguard Staff
The idea that climate policy might be written not just in carbon targets or energy mandates, but in zoning codes and parking rules, has begun to take hold in statehouses across the country.
A recent report from Climate Cabinet Education argues that the housing crisis, the affordability crisis and the climate crisis are not separate policy arenas but overlapping systems that can be addressed through a single set of reforms.
“Americans are facing three overlapping threats: the climate crisis, an affordability crisis, and a housing crisis,” the report states.
The report links housing and transportation, noting that where housing is built affects how much people drive and, in turn, emissions.
“Housing and transportation together compose nearly 35 percent of all United States greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.
The report suggests climate policy does not begin with vehicles or fuels, but with geography.
“Increasing housing availability in existing communities cuts transportation pollution by reducing time people are stuck in car traffic and increasing availability of other modes of transportation,” the report states.
That premise leads to a reframing: building more housing in the right places is not simply an affordability strategy, but a long-term emissions strategy.
The report describes these choices as unusually durable, noting that “building compact communities creates impacts that last for generations.”
The report identifies three categories for its recommendations: climate impact, political feasibility and speed of implementation..
The report identifies transit-oriented development, or TOD, as the policy with the highest climate impact.
TOD policies, which allow or require higher-density housing near transit corridors, receive the highest possible score for pollution impact—10 out of 10.
The report calls it “the biggest bang for the buck in terms of climate benefits from all housing supply policies,” citing its focus on development near transit.
An analysis of Washington state’s 2025 TOD legislation, cited in the report, estimates that the policy could add “about 1.6 billion square feet of multifamily residential development capacity,” which “could approach a million new units over time.”
Those units would be located “in close proximity to the highest levels of transit service,” a detail that underscores the policy’s climate rationale.
A Massachusetts program based on incentives produced about 15,000 units over 14 years, according to the report, which states that “incentives alone will not produce the number of homes necessary to meet demand.”
If TOD represents the most powerful lever, it is not necessarily the most politically accessible one.
For that distinction, the report turns to a different reform: eliminating parking minimums.
Parking requirements, which mandate a set number of spaces per housing unit, are often invisible to the public but central to the economics of development. They require land, excavation, concrete and design constraints—costs that are passed on to tenants and buyers.
The report describes them as a structural distortion, noting that they “often require overbuilding space for cars and add cost to housing units, particularly in the most climate-friendly places for new housing.”
The report states that eliminating parking minimums shifts decisions about parking to developers and can increase housing production.
Research cited in the report indicates that eliminating parking minimums “alone could boost new home construction by 40–70%.”
Unlike transit expansion or large-scale zoning changes, parking reform has passed in multiple states with bipartisan support.
The report describes it as “an important opportunity for meaningful action in places where a clear climate majority doesn’t yet exist,” a rare category of policy that advances climate goals without being framed primarily as climate legislation.
Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, move from legislation to construction more quickly than other housing reforms.
ADUs are small secondary homes built on existing residential lots: backyard cottages, garage conversions, in-law units. They do not require new subdivisions or large-scale rezoning. They fit, often quietly, into existing neighborhoods.
ADUs are described as “relatively quick to deploy, easy to permit, and fit within existing neighborhoods.”
While their total contribution to housing supply is smaller than that of broader zoning reforms, their timeline is shorter.
They move from legislation to construction more quickly than most housing types.
Their adoption reflects that practicality.
“Fourteen states now preempt local limits on ADUs in some capacity,” the report notes, marking them as one of the most widely implemented housing reforms in recent years.
The report describes ADUs as “a bipartisan solution,” in part because they offer benefits directly to homeowners while expanding housing incrementally rather than disruptively.
Transit-oriented development, parking reform and accessory dwelling units are identified as key approaches, each with different timelines and levels of political support.
The report does not suggest that housing alone can resolve the climate crisis, noting that it “cannot solve the climate crisis” on its own.
But it insists that housing decisions are foundational, not peripheral.
“Locating dense housing in the right places in communities has a meaningful role,” the report states, framing land use as an essential, if often overlooked, component of emissions reduction.
In that sense, the report’s argument is less about a single policy than about a shift in perspective.
Climate policy, it suggests, is not only about what we drive or how we power our homes. It is also about where those homes are built—and whether the systems around them make driving a necessity or an option.
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The unstated assumption is that the state and country will keep growing indefinitely. Also, as density increases, it’s likely that the birthrate will continue to drop.
They’re not going to be tearing down the sprawl that already exists (and are continuing to build more of it). This is perhaps the biggest “oversight” of these type of reports. They are not advocating for density “instead of” sprawl – they’re advocating for it “in addition to” sprawl. In a country that isn’t growing in the first place.
Another assumption is that people are going to start abandoning their vehicles (rather than parking them in front of the neighbors’ houses) as parking minimums are eliminated. Despite the undisputed fact that existing transit systems have been experiencing declining ridership and revenues, and some major transit systems are in an existential crisis as a result. (With MUNI, for example, seeking approval of a parcel tax – which is actually a cost of housing itself.)
Devoid. The old ‘housing drives transportation’ argument that will never solve anything, tied into ‘climate change’ no less, and even a solution of ADUs which are extremely limited and the cap of minimizing parking will change behavior with no reality check of 100’s of billion investments in alternatives FIRST. This is a generalized vacuous void of empty tired logic and arguments. Yawn? Hardly, more like throw in a pile and set on fire.
This article is ironic given this other Vanguard article stating that we need to approve ANY development that comes before us no matter how environmentally damaging it might be by perpetuating the single family suburban sprawl model. https://davisvanguard.org/2026/03/davis-housing-crisis-village-farms/
The right answer is to require the developer to comply with the City’s environmental objectives as stated in the Climate Action & Adaptation Plan (CAAP) and build a scaled down version of Alternative 4 in the DEIR which would significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and VMT. That also would deliver much more market rate affordable housing for the workers who currently commute into Davis but can’t buy a house here.