There are two words many Baltimoreans shudder to see next to each other: “eliminate” and “parking.” It’s hard enough finding parking after work in neighborhoods like Canton, Locust Point or Upton.

But tack on a third — “minimums” — and expressions might perk up.

No, Baltimore, the city of pricey garages and cars with expired, temporary Virginia license plates taking up space on your block, is not reducing parking.

But a new bill before the City Council would eliminate the requirement to provide a minimum amount of off-street parking for new development, meaning builders wouldn’t have to set aside the first floors of an apartment complex for a garage or ensure there’s a surface lot next to a new business.

It’s part of a larger package of five proposals before the City Council focused on tearing down barriers to building or redeveloping housing. Advocates say the proposed changes are critical for making housing more affordable and tackling the blight from thousands of vacant structures.

“You can’t accomplish that without getting rid of these mid-20th century ideas around car-oriented cities,” said freshman Councilman Zac Blanchard, who introduced the bill, in an interview.

If passed, Baltimore would join dozens of places around the country that already have eliminated minimum parking requirements. Experts say that’s helped to streamline new construction in large cities and small towns alike by making it less expensive to build, and encouraged walkable neighborhoods by stimulating the development of nearby destinations like shops and grocery stores.

But others say Baltimore is still too car-oriented — and its mass transit system too dysfunctional — for the proposal to work.

“Unless we’re willing to use money and creativity in creating a really good transit system, everything that we do to make it hard to drive just makes it hard for people to live in Baltimore City,” said Charles Duff, an urban planner and former president of Jubilee Baltimore, which does planning and development for affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization.

The debate about whether all that parking is necessary may never end.

“What we’ve learned is there’s a lot of places where the law requires more parking than is actually necessary,” said Henry Grabar, author of the 2023 book “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.”

Urbanists and YIMBYs — yes, in my backyard! that is — across the country echo the sentiment, pushing for zoning and land use changes that create more space for people and places rather than cars.

Eliminating parking minimums even is endorsed strongly by the National Parking Association.

The assumption that developments need more parking spaces not only drives up building costs, but also reduces density, as space that otherwise could be used for more housing units or retail is set aside for parking, Grabar said.

Such requirements are most detrimental to “missing middle” housing, referring to townhomes, duplexes and others that bridge the gap between denser apartment complexes and single-family homes, Grabar said.

In most Baltimore neighborhoods, a single off-street parking spot adds roughly $25,000 in building costs per housing unit, Blanchard said.

That’s lower than in other parts of the country, but underscores a simple truth — parking garages are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and developers pass those costs on to customers, Grabar said.

“We all feel that. It results in higher prices, in higher rents; it also can preclude developers from even trying to build something,” said Mike Scepaniak, president of Baltimoreans for People Oriented Places, a group supporting the bill.

It’s not the first time the City Council has taken up legislation like it — Councilman Ryan Dorsey proposed a similar bill about five years ago. The city’s transportation landscape has changed little in that time, and some, like Duff, think that would prevent the bill from leading to the desired outcome.

It’s commendable to want people to drive less, Duff said, but they need to be able to get around easily and efficiently somehow.

Baltimore’s current bus system? Not frequent or reliable enough for how many people live here. The Metro or light rail? Single lines with limited destinations and not much connectivity. Bikes and bike lanes? Imperfect, because they don’t work for everyone, he said.

“It’s not enough to say ‘we want more people here’ but then not have enough infrastructure for them,” said Keondra Prier, president of the Reservoir Hill Association, referring to what she said is a need for more and more frequent public transit and better-connected bike lanes.

Prier’s neighborhood is in the midst of rapid redevelopment, and some residents already are concerned about how it will impact parking in the absence of other mobility solutions, she said.

Both Duff and Prier worry about other unintended consequences of eliminating parking minimums. It could be a boon for developers or house-flippers more interested in building small apartments than housing suitable for families building a life. That could drive more families to the surrounding counties, Duff said.

One city in Maryland already tried it.

Jacob Day, Maryland’s secretary for housing and community development, was the mayor of Salisbury when that city eliminated parking minimums.

“It has not led to any of the chaos and doom that some people prognosticated,” Day said.

In fact, the Eastern Shore city implemented parking “maximums,” meaning developers are prohibited from building more than a set number of off-street parking spaces — a step further than Baltimore’s proposal. He said the minimums were a regulatory burden that required parking the market didn’t demand. After the bill passed, certain projects that hadn’t been able to begin suddenly moved forward.

“The further apart we push the built environment, the less dollars per acre we are earning back in tax revenue” and the higher the costs cities incur with the longer roads, sidewalks and more associated with sprawl, Day said. “The more you stretch things out, the more you subject yourself to this development Ponzi scheme.”

Blanchard was quick to highlight that his legislation only eliminates a mandate. Developers are free to plan and build the amount of parking necessary for their project, allowing them to rightsize based on context. It also simplifies what he called a confusing system of carve-outs in city code that already exempts many developments from parking requirements.

Scepaniak said parking minimums holds the city back.

“When you cater your community, your city to automobile-centric transportation and land use, you put a cap on the potential of that place,” Scepaniak said. “We don’t want to limit Baltimore’s potential. Baltimore needs the highest ceiling possible.”

Baltimore Banner reporter Hallie Miller contributed to this article.