Two car attached garage. One car and three scooters go in the garage, and one car stays in the driveway.
My next door neighbors retired this year, sold one car, and started parking the other in their small garage. They’re the only people on the block who do.
My previous house we didn’t have a garage. Most of our neighbors did. Very few used them for cars.
Both streets had older housing with small garages, which may make a difference. Certainly in the more suburban areas nearby, where houses are newer and garages are bigger, it’s much more common to see garages being used to park vehicles. I don’t know exactly what the connection might be, maybe just a function of age of housing stock, but it’s also true around here that where there are sidewalks people do not tend to park in garages; where there are no sidewalks they do. —Anyway around here it’s a pretty clear urban-suburban split.
The thought never occurred to me to not park in the garage.
It’s sure a lot of fun to remove a foot of snow off your car, then scrape the ice off, then find that the locks are frozen, all on an unplowed driveway, when it’s zero degrees outside.
I have a basement for junk.
I don’t understand this concept of parking a car in your garage. How on earth can that be done? There is no room to put a car in there with everything else taking up all the space.
You do understand designations of one-car or two-car garage are referring to the number of cars you are not parking in your garage because it’s full of other stuff, right?
It varies pretty widely. In my neighborhood in Burke VA, it was a but 50-50 those who used 'em for storage to those who self-righteously insisted that only hoarders would do so. In my Dad’s neighborhood, Aiken SC, the HOA will fine you if you park a car overnight in the driveway. If you are having guests you have to register their car and license plate, but otherwise, all cars have to be in the garage after dark.
In the current neighborhood, Alexandria, VA, most folks park in their garages. But this neighborhood all the houses have basements, so storage is easy.
We have two garages. One 2 car attached to the house and a 24x30 garage in the back facing the back alley. The one in the back is used largely for storage plus my old hobby car. The attached garage has the car plus some stuff we might want to take into the house with more regularity.
There’s no way in h*ll my cars ever sit outside at least overnight.
IMHO, this is insane.
My house has an attached garage with two bays. We have three vehicles for the three drivers in our house (me, my wife, and adult son), along with a trailer (for hauling mulch, etc.). I couldn’t put all of our vehicles in the garage even if I wanted to.
So can’t you just park in the street? Even if the street isn’t public, there’s no way to know which house is responsible for the cars in the street.
I can park in my driveway. But the town forbids overnight parking on the streets. If it’s not snow-season, you can call the police and get a short-term exemption when your friend visits. But they enforce that rule fairly actively when snow is predicted, or if your neighbors complain (and you didn’t call the police, first).
So every single house in your town has a driveway? Not doubting you, just surprised. I’ve never lived in a place remotely like that. What about apartment buildings, or don’t you have any, or do they all have off-street parking lots or garages?
I’ve been a lifelong city dweller dealing with either street parking (most of the rentals I’ve lived in), paying the equivalent of half my monthly rent for a garage space (when I lived and worked Downtown), or shuffling two cars around a narrow driveway in a house that had a garage barely big enough to store a standard lawnmower in.
A couple of years ago we bought a house with a 650 square foot garage that takes up half the footprint of the basement. It’s glorious. Sometimes when it’s raining buckets I open one of the garage doors, and smile at the downpour while admiring my car’s bone-dry exterior.
We have space for two cars, the trash and recycling cans (we have a racoon problem otherwise they’d be outside), a couple of bikes, and a few shelves/racks of yard tools, paint cans, etc. There’s not enough room for a lawnmower, but I pay somebody to do that so who cares?
I agree. In that neighborhood there are houses with four-car garages. I think one of the reasons for the rule is to prevent people renting homes to multiple tenants.
You wouldn’t believe the stories I could tell about this HOA. It’s a gated community with its own private golf course and country club. I can only say that the people who live there have all selected the community on purpose, and they like it that way. I would never have guessed there could be so many insane control freaks in one place.
Here’s another one for you: On garbage pick-up days, cans can not be put out the night before, but must go out the morning of, and be put away before 5:00pm. What, you might ask, if you are at work then? There are a couple of retirees in the neighborhood who can be hired to bring your bins in for a small weekly fee. And yes, they are both on the HOA board.
It is a private, gated community. There would be someone knocking on the door within a couple of hours and before midnight the car would be towed out to the city impound lot. They don’t just charge you for the towing either, they’d charge you with trespassing.
Most houses have garages, and yes, they have driveways. Yes, the apartment buildings have off street parking, usually including garages. Many of the communities around here have overnight parking bans. It makes it a lot easier to plow.
Maybe my garage is larger than I thought. I have two cars in it… one a full size (7 passenger SUV) and still have room for my work bench, snow blower, floor jack, tools, weed wacker, shelves for camping gear etc. and hooks for three bikes on the ceiling.
Costco bulk items go in the storage area of the finished basement. A roll of paper towels isn’t that hard to bring up a flight of stairs.
I trust this is a statement of gratitude, rather than of judgement. 
How do they charge you for trespassing? That’s criminal, not civil, and there’s no prosecutor in the world that would charge a person without proof. The presence of a car is not prima facie evidence that the owner trespassed, and of course, property doesn’t trespass.
And whose doors do they knock on? Everyone’s? How do they know whose house the car is visiting?
Frankly, fuck your neighborhood.
Every one of the In the Chicago suburbs I have experience with have similar restrictions. Generally, they specify a limited time period - say 2-4 a.m. - that street parking is prohibited. You can call the cops and get an exception for guests, or if your driveway is otherwise unavailable due to construction or something.
Apartment buildings have to provide their own parking, or residents have to rent space somewhere. AFAIK, the municipal code has regulations specifying parking that must be incorporated into new construction.
My 2004 Avalon has been garage parked it’s entire life unless we are traveling or the one day or so each year when the floors are power washed. I think this is the main reason the car looks like new and has not a speck of rust on it.
That’s reason enough for me.
Does this car not have license plates? If the car belongs to one of the residents, it shouldn’t be too hard to track down which door to knock on.
(My town would just tow the car if it was in the way of the plows, I think. I don’t know anyone who has actually left cars on the street during a snow storm, because, … Why on earth would you do that if you have a better place to put it? So i guess I’m not certain what happens.)
Okay! Thanks. Guess I’m just not familiar enough with suburbia. Have never lived in a suburb and haven’t noticed no-on-street-parking in the ones where I’ve visited. Learn something new every day!