Parking

I live on a city street that has no posted signs about parking. It has become something of a bone of contention among the neighbors. The houe next to us has several grown children, an apartment, and two couples living there, and everyone has at least one car. We have three vehicles (two we use regularly, one is a Jeep that we have retained in case of snow and use as a truck). The other three buildings around us are all rentals- a duplex, a house, and three aparments. Guess what? they all have cars. We have a driveway. The people next door have converted their yard to a 3-space parking lot, and they have two lengths of street frontage (they are the corner lot). Yet we still have troubles.

My driveway actually parks two cars, and we used to park the Jeep in the end of it, since it wasn't used much. BUt the folks next door insisted on parking a car in front of our house. Usually, there are two spaces in front of our house, but they inisisted on parking in the middle, so that my husband had no-where to park but across the street, which seemed to us to be rude, to park in front of someone else's house all night long (it was annoying us, after all...) so we learned to park the Jeep out front. Then we had the second space that was just right for my husband's car, and we weren't being complete nuisances by blocking up the street all night long. We didn't leave nasty notes and we didn't call the police, we just parked our car. After all, it is public parking.

Now, what this means is there is no place for mom to park when she comes to help watch my little guy while I drive the other one around to therapy. And there is no-where to park for my therapists who come. They cannot park in the driveway, because I also cannot be blocked in when I have to go to teach; and my mom has a lo of trouble getting in and out of o driveway, since all of these people have large SUVs they park on the street. Besides, I would block her in when I came home, or have to park on teh streetmyself. So to the street she goes. After all, it is public parking.

The folks across the street have started leaving notes on the cars of people who come to my house, implying that it is no longer acceptable" for anyone to park in front of their house. Confused, and not a litle annoyed, I called the police to check on parking regs.

Yep, you guessed it- it is PUBLIC PARKING. As long as they are not blocking driveways, too close to the corner, too close to a hydrant, and close enough to the curb, ANYONE can park ANYWHERE along the street.

Although I have advised my folks to try to park a little bit down the street from these people, sometimes there is little choice. So I put a note on their door asking them to stop harrassing my therapists and respite workers.

I expect to have to start paying for paint jobs soon.