Parking

My new house which is a duplex has a garage on my side of the building. The driveway in front of the house is large enough for another car to park to the left of the garage in front of the house while still allowing access to the garage. The example artwork above is much nicer than my place, but the idea is the same.

When I park, I park on the left side of the driveway that is closest to my front door, which happens to be not in front of the garage. I do this because I use the garage for household storage because the building doesn't have a basement, and because the garage door doesn't work.

The neighboring house has a parking space next to my garage driveway on the right, and the way the cement work is done it appears that their driveway and my driveway are all one large wide driveway. This neighboring house is is divided into 3 or 4 apartments, yet it only has one non-street parking space: the one to the right of my garage driveway.

Recently a new tenant moved into the apartment in the neighboring house that gets to use the spot next to my garage. As expected they started to park their car there, and a few days later after they were completely moved in a second car started parking next to their spot, which happes to be in front of my garage door on my property.

At first, I didn't say anything except to grumble under my breath, because I thought that the new tenants had an out of town visitor. I reasoned this because the license plate on the second car was from Florida. I didn't want to come across as a "nasty neighbor" and since I don't use the garage anyway, I just grumbled and ignored the car. However, after a few weeks, the same car was still parking in front of my garage, and I decided I been a nice neighbor long enough. I walked over and knocked on the new neighbor's door, and told them I wanted to talk about the car in front of my garage. They told me that the car didn't belong to them, and they didn't know to whom belonged.

This new information did nothing but to infuriate me, not at the new neighbors, but at myself for ignorning it for as long as I did trying to be "neighborly". I felt taken advantage of by some unknown stranger, not the new neighbors.

I kept an eye out, and I was ready to pounce on the driver when I saw him or her. A few days later, I saw the person getting out of their car, and I confronted them, and still trying to be neighborly, I told them as nicely as possible that they were parking on my property and to not park there any longer. They said they were not aware that the spot in front of my garage was my property, and they wouldn't park there again.

I must stop in my narative and for a second and ask a few reasonable questions. Would you park in front of a garage that wasn't attached to the building you were living in? Isn't it common courtesy to not park in front of someone else's garage door? Personally, I think the only person that would do that is someone that doesn't care, or is someone who is hoping to get away with it. My feeling was this person was someone that didn't care, and I expected they would not respect me and continue parking there.

However, I was surprised in more ways than one. That car did indeed stop parking there, but it was quickly replaced by different car. This time by a van with Illinois plates, and the Florida car was no where in sight. I am thinking this is someone new, so I repeated the process and knocked on the neighbor's door, and they once again said they didn't know who it belonged to. I waited until I saw someone getting in or out of the van and I never saw them. So I decided to start asking anyone I saw on the street near the building, and after a few days I eventually found someone that knew who the van belonged to. I told them to not park there any longer, and they said they would let the owner know. The next day, the van is there again... and the day after that, and the day after that... After about 3 days, I got frustrated, and was tempted to call the cops and have the van towed off my property, but instead I had a brain storm (of sorts).

I thought I would find out who was parking there and send them an invoice for parking fees since the spot was my property. But I felt that I probably wouldn't get any money, and it would just be a wasted effort. Instead, on Friday afternoon as I was getting ready to go somewhere, I noticed the van was not parked in the driveway, and I decided to take action. I decided I would block the parking space so they couldn't park there any longer. I didn't have any traffic cones or anything else, so I moved my trash cans that usually I keep out of sight onto the driveway to block it. I arranged them kind of like barrier at the start of the driveway.

I honestly expected the van driver to move the cans and park there anyway, but he (or she) has so far respected my "barrier". I don't want to leave the barrier up permanently, because it looks lame, and messy, even though it's effective. My concern now is when I take the barrier down, will they think that I am giving my permission to park there again? If that happens, I guess I will have to get the authorities invovled...

Am I being petty over a driveway and garage entrance that I don't use, even though it's my property? Later Lou