["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published July 20, 2026] 2026
A question often arises: who, either by law or etiquette, controls the street space right in front of one's home?
Well, the law is clear: unless signage indicates otherwise, anyone can park on the street in front of your house for up to 72 hours after which the vehicle must be moved at least half a mile to avoid towing or citation.
You would think that this would largely resolve parking issues.
But you would be wrong.
As parking gets tighter and tighter in La Jolla, the etiquette part of the equation gets increasingly problematical. It's not helping that neither residential and commercial new builds are required to provide parking.
Virtually all of us who live in the "flats" in La Jolla (i.e. not up in the Muirlands or by the university) are going to be in proximity of a beach or retail, or both. There's no beach access near me, but plenty of demand for parking next to my house by employees of local businesses, dog walkers, lunchers, Amazon, the US Postal Service, my lawn and pool services, and visitors to our home. So long as the two spaces in front of my gate have been vacated by the end of the day, I'm good.
The bigger problem, however, is when people decide to store a vehicles - cars, RVs, trailers - for weeks on end in front of someone else s home despite the 72-hour rule. My assorted neighbors have increasingly had to deal with this issue. The houses on my block are close together and the parking right in front of each house is really limited - usually two spaces at best. I fortunately have a corner lot so there is usually ample room for people to park on the cross street. Which, alas, hasn't kept them from taking up long term residence right in front of my front gate.
There are people who know how to game the system. A homeowner can report a vehicle that has overstayed its welcome on Get It Done but this is not a quick process. The city has to come out and put a notice on the vehicle and mark its tire location on the street, then come back a few weeks later and tow it if it hasn't moved.
I've always preferred cordial human contact in parking resolution wherever possible. No anonymous notes for me. In the many conversations I've had over the years with RV, boat, and trailer owners, the two reasons they all cite as to why they are storing a vehicle in front of or alongside my house are these:
(1) They don't want to use up their own home or business parking.
(2) Their neighbors have complained that the vehicle is an eyesore.
Amazingly, they cite these reasons totally straight-faced. I usually just stand there for a minute hoping against hope for the "Aha!" moment. "Oh, I get it! You don t want my eyesore vehicle taking up your parking either!" In my fantasy, he (it's always a he) jumps in his RV and drives off with a jaunty wave and a "I've seen the light! It'll never happen again!"
Years back, I had a totally decrepit 30-foot-long camper take up residence in front of my house for almost a year, the owner citing both inalienable rights and also the desire not to use up his business parking. Determined to thwart the system, he moved his RV precisely every seventy-one hours and fifty-eight minutes in a circuit around my home and the nearby neighbors. (You used to only have to move it a tenth of a mile rather than the half mile now required.) Some months later, Ugly RV s clueless owner approached me and said, "Would you believe, people are vandalizing my RV!"
Since I'd long since asked him nicely to move this vehicle back to his nearby business, it was all I could do not to say "Actually, I'm just curbing my overwhelming urge to put plastique in your tailpipe. I've just been hoping that if I take the high road, you will too. And by 'high road', I m really hoping that you will take this vehicle on a road, any road, that is not in our neighborhood."
In a stroke of divine intervention, his business went under and he disappeared. God really does work in mysterious ways.
More recently, a close friend and neighbor had a high-end vehicle parked for weeks right in front of her house making parking impossible for her family members. It became obvious it was either (a) a stolen and abandoned vehicle or (b) the product of Classic Clueless Guy Syndrome. Queries to other neighbors suggested (b), that it might belong to one of four guys who were renting a house further down the block. As a long-time pro in parking resolution, I knocked on their door and in my signature shy and retiring way, inquired if any of them knew the provenance of this car. One of them acknowledged that yes it was his and yes, he was storing it there since he usually rode his motorcycle (which was parked in front).
I explained the 72-hour rule and the risk of towing which he quickly dismissed saying that the city wouldn't tow a vehicle that was "registered to this street." Since part of my parking resolution shtick is to offer solutions, I recommended that he move the vehicle down to my corner where the cross street tended to have a lot of free spots. But he'd still have to move it every 72 hours. I was totally nice about it. He, meanwhile, was just so annoyed. (Also, I think, really hungover because it was the day after July 4.)
But the idea that long-term storage of his vehicle in front of someone else's house was thoughtless obviously didn't register with him at all.
Sometimes you just need the read the room. Or in this case, the neighborhood. News flash: Would you like someone storing their vehicle in one of the two spots in front of your house? Especially if the vehicle is parked right in the middle of the two spots, as this guy was, so no one else can park there at all?
Hopefully he'll clue in the other roommates into (a) local laws and (b) basic etiquette.
But I'm not betting on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment