04/21/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/1B9auLp1C4/?mibextid=wwXIfr
More than 12 percent of American households stash their overflow in rented storage spaces. Downsizing, decluttering, divorce and death are typically driving customers to storage.
“There has never been a period with more people using self storage than today,” says Noah Starr, founder and CEO of TractIQ, a leading market data provider.
Meanwhile, the industry is developing another 164 million square feet of self-storage.
But in some local government and urban planning circles, the windowless establishments are seen as hogging land and creating dead zones where there ought be street life.
Since 2019, bans on self-storage facilities have been enacted in parts of at least 15 states, from Maine to California.
Miguel Sanchez, a city council member in Providence, R.I., which instituted a city-wide moratorium in 2023, says that storage facilities are taking up “a lot of land that should be used for other purposes.”
He wishes he could solve the underlying problem: “People buy stuff they don’t really need and then hold onto it,” he says.
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