I suspect that there are laws (as mentioned ealier) that would force this guy to move his vehicles every 24 hours or so. They are public parking spots, not storage!
I’m sorry, but I’ve really never felt any strong territorial feelings about the space directly in front of my house. I’ve known 1 or 2 people who did and I’ve never really understood it. I’ve got REAL problems in life to worry about. I park where I can find a spot and generally don’t give it a second thought. However, I don’t support leaving a bunch of cars essentially abandoned on the block in ANY space and there are usually laws about abandonment and the problem can be pursued that way. I also don’t support someone who has way more cars than they need taking up spaces that could be used by others and, IIRC, there are usually laws about how many cars you can park on a block. I also don’t support smashing windshields and I’m POSITIVE that there are laws about that.
I have lived in neighborhoods where I didn’t care what cars were where. One of the reasons why we moved to our present home is because we liked the neighborhood, and one of the features of this neighborhood is that nobody parks in front of anybody else’s houses.
There’s a fellow in our neighborhood who owns one of those humungous motor homes (bigger than some small houses), and from time to time he parks it alongside our house (we live on the corner). He leaves it there for a month or two. Now this isn’t really an evil offense, but again, we bought a corner lot for a reason. When he parks his “house” alongside our side, we no longer live on the corner. I look out the side windows of the house and see a steel wall. This really bothered me the first few times he did it.
But, you know the cool thing about it? One day when I was cutting my grass, the fellow appeared out of nowhere and asked me if I minded that he parked it there a few months out of the year. He explained why he parked it and was very polite. That made all of the difference in the world. Ask me nicely and it changes everything.
For the OP: Another vote for looking up that 24h law in your town. We’ve got one too, but it’s not enforced regularly. I suspect that it was created specifically for these situations.
Oh, and davidm, I too have more important things to worry about in life. Sadly, I can’t seem to focus only on the really important stuff. I truly wish that I could. That would make my drive to work more pleasant, among other things.
If you have a lot of spare time and money, you can always try talking to a lawyer about suing the guy. (Claim he’s reducing the value of your house, or something.) Of course IANAL and I don’t have the slightest clue what the laws are or what the strategy would be. But a nice little lawsuit will force HIM to lawyer up as well, and the cost might be enough for him to choose to get rid of the cars instead of hassling with the expense.
Hee hee,
This reminds me of one of my mother’s neighbours, except this story has a bit of a twist.
This guy has a three-car garage, which have cars in them, and five other cars that he parks in front of his house (and the house next door). That’s a total of EIGHT cars.
His neighbours were irritated that he basically commandeered all this space for his cars, meaning they never had any room for their own guests to park on the street.
Anyway, he got annoyed that other people dared to park their cars in front of his house, which prevented him from parking his useless hunks of junk there.
So he called the council and told them all about it.
The council responded by putting up signs that restrict parking to 2 hours. Now, people don’t park there so much (achieving his goal). Instead, the council tickets all his cars every day because he leaves them there for more than two hours. His daily parking bill is around $30 per car.
That’s poetic justice.
Max 
Do not ever advocate the carrying out of illegal activities on this message board again.
First: realize that my father has nothing to do with breaking windshields. He’s in his 70s and not into vandalism. Was he deeply saddened by the incident? No, but he didn’t do it.
Second: Understand that this guy NEVER moves his cars. You can’t “beat him” to a spot b/c you never have the chance.
Third: When asked to move his cars, his answer is, “This is a public street. I can park wherever I want.” This may or may not be totally true, though.
I will tell my dad to call the police and report abandoned vehicles. Maybe if everyone on the block who has a car in front for more than week does it, the guy will get the message.
I would recommend not pissing off the police, however. They may get a little miffed at getting called every day about what is (to them) an extremely minor complaint. If you do call the police, ask them (politely) for advice.
Call the zoning code enforcement office. Ask them what the code is about inoperable vehicles being parked on city streets, and how long a car can set without being moved before it’s classified inoperable. Report the cars to the zoning office.
In some places it’s faster for code enforcement to declare a problem and recommend the police tow the cars than to convince the police to do it in the first place.
I actually once had someone leave a note on the windshield of my car with a pissy message on it, saying that it’s not a parking lot in front of their house. It was a public street, parking was not restricted during the day (I checked carefully for signs), and I parked there once; I didn’t make a habit of going out of my way to annoy this guy or anything. The train station a few blocks away had all of their available parking full that day so I literally had nowhere else to park.
Along with the abandoned vehicles thing, check to see if all the cars’ registrations are up to date. That’s another thing you can mention.
A friend of mine lived across the street from a church (residential area). The pastor there actually had a fire hydrant he got from somewhere, and if people kept parking too close (his opinion) to the front of his church, he got the hydrant from the basement, placed it next to the car, and called the cops. I don’t think he was ever called on it, and I guess the cops didn’t want to call a minister a liar or notice the hydrant moved…
No, my friend never got a ticket. This happened when he was a kid, and his dad parked car in their driveway.
It’s also suprising how many hydrants have been deactivated but remain on NYC streets. A few hundred, reducing parking even more. It’s still illegal to block the dry ones.