Opinion: El Paso must reform zoning to tackle housing crisis and urban sprawl

Outdated parking mandates and limits on housing options are driving up costs and holding El Paso back. We can either modernize the zoning code or watch affordability slip away.

El Paso is at a crossroads in how our city grows. We can either choose to make thoughtful changes that keep our neighborhoods strong, or we can continue sprawling outward and watch the core of our city hollow out. An immediate, important step we can take is updating our zoning code to eliminate outdated parking mandates in certain areas and to allow more flexible housing options like accessory dwelling units, more commonly known here as casitas. The City Council will consider adopting these changes in our meeting on Tuesday, August 19.

The urgency of this could not be clearer. El Paso faces a deficit of 18,000 housing units. On top of that, more than 100,000 people sit on the waitlist for the Housing Authority. These aren’t just statistics; they represent thousands of families, seniors, and young people who cannot find a place to live in their own community. The scale of the crisis makes it irresponsible to keep outdated rules on the books that drive up costs and make it harder to build housing.

The first proposed reform would eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding Downtown, contained entirely within my district. Right now, our zoning code mandates that every construction, whether it’s a new apartment building, a restaurant, or even a small shop, must provide a set number of parking spaces. These rules were written in an era when there was ample space and housing was readily available and affordable, but we now find ourselves in a very different context. Parking spaces are expensive to build, and when the law forces developers to include them even when they are not needed, those costs either get passed on to tenants and customers or make it so that entire types of developments aren’t financially feasible. Ultimately, parking mandates build pavement that often goes unused. By easing them in the urban core, we can lower housing costs and let businesses and housing grow in a way that fits neighborhood context. This change doesn’t ban off-street parking, it just leaves the decision in the hands of property owners; if they or their tenants need parking spaces, then they can build enough to meet that need. The market drives the decision, not City regulations tying people’s hands.

The other proposed reform would legalize accessory dwelling units (which you may alternatively know as casitas, granny flats, in-law suites, backyard cottages, or simply ADUs) on all residential lots across the city and make it easier to build them. Casitas offer families new options, whether it’s space for an aging parent, a returning adult child, or a renter needing housing close to school or work whose income can help the household pay the mortgage. They are a modest, practical way to add housing units without changing the character of a neighborhood. In fact, ADUs used to be common in El Paso before zoning rules made them far more difficult to build, which is evidenced by just how many of them there are in older neighborhoods. Restoring this option can help us meet today’s housing needs in a way that is relatively noninvasive and distributed instead of building giant apartment buildings that concentrate people and vehicles in one area.

The strongest argument for these reforms is this: the alternative is more sprawl, and sprawl is like a slow leak in our city’s resources and cohesiveness. It pulls residents, businesses, and ultimately tax dollars to the edges of El Paso, leaving fewer resources for streets, services, and infrastructure in neighborhoods in the core of the city. The larger the city grows geographically, the more new infrastructure we as a community will have to fund and maintain with our property tax bills, electric bills, gas bills, and water bills – and affordability will continue to erode. We have to do something to address this or we will get hollowed out.

Other Texas cities have already recognized this reality and acted. In 2023, Austin eliminated nearly all parking minimums. Earlier this year, Dallas followed with a City Council vote to reduce or eliminate mandates citywide. San Antonio and Houston have both rolled back requirements in their urban cores, giving more flexibility. Nationwide, more than 50 U.S. cities have done the same, including Berkeley, Minneapolis, Raleigh, San Jose, and Buffalo, to name a few. The imperative is clear: cities that want to remain competitive, affordable, and livable are leaving these outdated rules behind.

Of course, these reforms won’t solve our issues overnight. They are, however, a necessary step that will make it easier and cheaper to build new homes, create more choices for families, and help us grow inward instead of sprawling outward. I have heard some fear that these proposed changes will completely transform existing neighborhoods, but these kinds of policy shifts haven’t led to that kind of rapid, radical change when they have been implemented elsewhere. Instead, giving property owners more flexibility creates a smarter growth pattern for the long term, something we desperately need.

We have to get serious about addressing a housing crisis that already exists and making El Paso more affordable and resilient, rather than more expensive and stretched thin. We can either plan for the future, or we can let sprawl drain the life from the city’s core and, frankly, the hard-earned money from the pockets of El Pasoans. These reforms, both on parking mandates and ADUs, are a practical start in the right direction. If you want to share your thoughts, in support or otherwise, you can email your comments to me at District8@elpasotexas.gov and/or to CityClerk@elpasotexas.gov to be included in the official record (reference agenda items 48-50 in the subject).

Chris Canales represents District 8, encompassing the Southside, Downtown, and areas of the Westside and Central, on the El Paso City Council.