Street parking spaces etiquette

[Anonymous]

Yo check this out. During the last big snow event, my neighbor shovelled the spot BEHIND his car to accomodate the daily visitors to his place (they teach out of their house).

Guess what? Some renter up the road parks in the freshly shovelled spot!!! And leaves it there for the entire time it took for the snow to melt!! LOL. Jackass!

[Anonymous]

OP, I live in N. Arl too and get where you are coming from... but if you haven't been parking in that spot, you neighbor might think you just don't care who uses the space. Our house is on a corner lot and can probably fit about 5 cars around the property line. We park one car in the driveway and one in the front of the house. Our other neighbors tend to park along the side of our yard a lot (including one with a beat-up junky looking pick-up truck) but it is a public street so there isn't much we can do. We had a party once though, and one of our guests parked on the last side spot where our neighbor usually parks their 2nd car. (They don't park anything in their own driveway because the kids play there-- so they park one car in front of their house and one along our side yard.) The husband came out and asked our guest not to park in the spot because his wife was on her way home and that is where she usually parks. I thought that was kind of crazy since the spot was not only on a public road but it was also adjacent to our property and not our neighbor's. But, for whatever reason, they have come to see it as their spot now. I thought about talking to them but it didn't seem worth the trouble since our guests found another spot without any difficulty and 99.9% of the time we don't need the space.

[Anonymous]

Waiting for an update OP....
What have you done?

[Anonymous]

We also live in Arlington, park one car on our driveway and one on the street in front. I don't like it when our neighbors, who rent out their basement and have multiple cars for their own family, so probably 5-6 cars for their house, park in front of my house. But I deal because what else can I do? Sometimes if they are in front of my house I take the big open space in front of theirs. But what really infuriated me was that not once but THREE TIMES this winter we dug out our car on the street, dug the snow to make a decent sized parking spot for the vehicle on the street, then after going to work or running the errand or whatever we had to do, we got back and found that one of their cars had taken the spot. And it wasn't even a family car, but a significant other of one of their renters. Seriously? Now what am I supposed to do with my car? Just leave it in the middle of the street while I shovel out ANOTHER spot?

[Anonymous]

"Step back and chill" OP? For real?

Here's the thing: if it was your curb, you would feel differently. How do we know this? Because you are so very defensive about making sure you try to deflect the situation on the one that spoke up.

Some people simply don't like you parking in front of their house. Same reason you don't park in front of your own. Show some human decency and stop trying to provoke your neighbors. Get over it.

OP, do you have curbs or are they digging up the lawn? I know someone who did this to the nicer houses in the neighborhood, out of sheer jealousy. Of course, the perps tried to feign ignorance, yet they would refuse to park in front of their own house. Laughable. It was also predictable and transparent, and everyone knew/knows who the nasty entitled ones were/are.

Nothing a few roofing nails can't take care of....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Step back and chill" OP? For real?

Here's the thing: if it was your curb, you would feel differently. How do we know this? Because you are so very defensive about making sure you try to deflect the situation on the one that spoke up.

Some people simply don't like you parking in front of their house. Same reason you don't park in front of your own. Show some human decency and stop trying to provoke your neighbors. Get over it.

OP, do you have curbs or are they digging up the lawn? I know someone who did this to the nicer houses in the neighborhood, out of sheer jealousy. Of course, the perps tried to feign ignorance, yet they would refuse to park in front of their own house. Laughable. It was also predictable and transparent, and everyone knew/knows who the nasty entitled ones were/are.

Nothing a few roofing nails can't take care of....

Phew, misdemeanor vandalism. Good solution! What a great neighbor!

[Anonymous]

Sorry to hear OP, one of THOSE neighbors.

I would say to pay your un named "buddies" handsomely and see what they would do about it

[Anonymous]

This is all crazy. The street is public space!

[Anonymous]

Wait, maybe geometry fails me. They live across street from you. They park in front of your driveway. How is this not their side of the street??

It is their side of the street, but the location across from a driveway makes it hard to reverse out of the driveway. I'm not the PP, but I like to be careful where I park to protect my car, so I wouldn't park directly across from a driveway on a narrow street.

We have people who do this in our neighborhood. There is plenty of room to either side along the curb, but they park right in front of the neighbor's driveway. The neighbors have to be very careful pulling out of the driveway because the street is not wide and, of course, they don't want to hit the car parked there. One time the neighbors had guests who parked in their driveway while they visited. When they left, the guests didn't realize how close that car was and they hit it. Just a fender bender, but a nuisance, nonetheless. I thought the people would stop parking the car there after that, but I still see it there sometimes!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Wait, maybe geometry fails me. They live across street from you. They park in front of your driveway. How is this not their side of the street??

It is their side of the street, but the location across from a driveway makes it hard to reverse out of the driveway. I'm not the PP, but I like to be careful where I park to protect my car, so I wouldn't park directly across from a driveway on a narrow street.

We have people who do this in our neighborhood. There is plenty of room to either side along the curb, but they park right in front of the neighbor's driveway. The neighbors have to be very careful pulling out of the driveway because the street is not wide and, of course, they don't want to hit the car parked there. One time the neighbors had guests who parked in their driveway while they visited. When they left, the guests didn't realize how close that car was and they hit it. Just a fender bender, but a nuisance, nonetheless. I thought the people would stop parking the car there after that, but I still see it there sometimes!

I am the PP who has this issue and THANK YOU! I'm glad you got my point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just park in that spot for a couple days. They'll get the message.

+ 1

Make sure you do it on garbage night so you can move your own car out of the way before pickup.

We get that too where it seems guest for our neighbors park in front of our house ...and park midway between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway so you can't fit another car in front. I wonder if it is because we have a tree there and other neighbors near us have removed trees. Anyway, it is perplexing. Normally we don't say anything, it's annoying but not a major burden for us, usually the guest moves in a few hours. One exception is when it had been days and our family was coming to visit we asked if they could move the car up so our family could get a car in front also.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why anyone cares.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why anyone cares.

I don't either. The street is common space, treat it that way & worry about more important things, like people not picking up dog poop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not worth talking about. It's a public street.

+1 I am in Arlington, too on a quiet side street of SFHs with driveways. My next door neighbor parks in front of my house every singe day and has for 8 years. They, too, have a driveway and completely open front space in front of their house. Why she does this, I haven't a clue. We have never spoken to her about it directly, nor will we ever because we know she won't change and it would become an "issue". It drives me crazy and I think its incredibly rude.

I feel your pain, OP.

What precisely is rude about it, Emily Post?

[Anonymous]

Lol. I live in DC and neighbors parking in front of our house happens all the time. It's worse for us because we don't even have a driveway, so we might have to park a few streets over. You just learn to deal or move to a six car driveway neighborhood.