There have been more than 10,000 new apartment units built in Maricopa County over the past couple of years per year. With the rise in the housing industry, parking has become a major concern. With an average of 2.71 people per residential unit in Phoenix, that is thousands of tenants that require a place to park.

The parking requirements with regards to residential complexes vary from city to city, but eventually it is at the discretion of the developers, Jason Kelley, associate teaching professor of urban planning at Arizona State University, said.

There are different options for residential parking in cities, Kelley said. For example, apartment complexes can have their own garages or parking lots. Another option is shared garages between residential buildings and the surrounding businesses.

This second option is far more efficient for highly populated areas, like downtown Phoenix. This is because the lots can be used by customers during business hours and residents during the hours when people are frequently home, Kelley said. However, shared garages are not very common in Phoenix.

“The City of Phoenix has not been great about following efficient parking practices for residents,” Kelley said.

The issue of insufficient parking is at its worst at peak hours of visitation for residents, Kennedy said. Tenants are not complaining that they have nowhere to park at 2 in the afternoon, but rather at 6 p.m. when they come home from work and all of their neighbors are hosting dinner parties.

In terms of parking codes for each apartment complex, there is not a certain parking spot-per-unit standard, Kelley said.

At Kelley’s high rise apartment complex near Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix, there was one parking spot per bedroom in each unit.

“I knew several couples who rented a one-bedroom apartment but drove two cars, and they would get really frustrated when they came home from work and had nowhere to go,” Kelley said.

Kennedy called the parking situation at her complex “an abomination”.

Kennedy is a full-time teacher in Phoenix.

“It stresses me out every time I leave the apartment, because I spend the whole time I am gone thinking about where I can park when I get back,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy lives in a three-bedroom apartment with two roommates, but they collectively have one parking spot. Both of Kennedy’s roommates own cars and have class or work full time, and she said that the overly competitive parking situation sometimes puts a strain on their relationships.

The three of them live at Heritage Apartments and have had to park illegally just to come home after working all day.

“I am turning into a law-breaking citizen,” Kennedy said.

The management at Heritage Apartments denied any parking shortage, and instead attributed the struggle to an abundance of overnight guests.

There is no shortage of options for more efficient parking structures. They just have yet to be implemented.

Unbundled parking, in which residents can purchase their desired number of parking spots separate from the purchase of their dwelling unit, can eliminate the guesswork on behalf of the developer.

By utilizing more efficient parking practices, such as shared garages, and unbundling the allocated parking space and the dwelling units, parking can be distributed in a way that works better for residents and customers of businesses.

The issue of parking affects nearly every resident in a city, Kelley said. “Free parking” at businesses and residential buildings is never really free.