To make a long story short, our upstairs neighbor is an asshole. One of the ways his assholishness manifests itself is that he likes to park his huge SUV in such a way that it blocks most of the back stairwell of the building, which we all need to use. (It’s a condo building with assigned parking spaces, and his happens to be next to the stairs. Actually technically it’s not his, it’s his wife’s; he doesn’t own the unit because she bought it years before they got married.)
How can I make him knock it the fuck off? I shouldn’t have to squeeze between the post holding up the back deck and his car in order to use my own fucking back door because he apparently never learned that if you live in a dense area in a major city, and you have two cars and one parking space, you may actually have to park one car somewhere other than immediately outside your door. Oh and whatever I do, I want it to be totally legal. Can I report him for still not having registered the huge SUV in Illinois yet after several months? It still has Canadian plates on it.
You could call the fire department business # and see if that is a fire safety issue . Both stairways way needs to clear so if there was a fire the fire department can get into the building fast enough .
Every Sunday the Trib runs a column of questions about condo disputes. Sounds like something that might be handled by the condo board, or covered by the condo laws. Is he parking in a manner that infringes upon a common element - the access to the rear door/stairs. Might also be something covering use of a parking space - how many vehicles, etc.
Reading that column is enough to convince me that I will never live in a condo or association neighborhood. Good luck.
I assume this is part of the long story, but what’s happened when you’ve dealt with him directly, if anything?
You can report him for the tags, but I assume he’ll just pay the fine (if any), get it fixed, and continue doing the same shit with the parking. I do like purplehearingaid’s suggestion. And even if it’s not a legal fire issue, it should still be brought to the board’s attention. I’m guessing that you’re not really looking to salvage any sort of friendly relationship with him, so you may as well go all out.
It’s a 4-unit building, so we are all the association and we don’t exactly have a staff attorney. Luckily I am married to the president, and I have a real estate attorney 10 feet down the hall from me at work who will happily coach me through writing a nastygram myself. The condo bylaws are at home, unfortunately, and I am out of state with my iPad.
Oh, and I will never again buy a condo if I can help it, but at the time it was what we could afford that met our other parameters for location, size, etc. And we have a nice, cheap mortgage and are paying it down as fast as humanly possible so we have more choices the next time. I just wish the asshole would mean e first, but it doesn’t seem likely. His wife (the one who actually owns the unit; she bought it before she married him) is actually normal; I don’t know what she sees in him. But I do have half a mind to tell him that he is not an owner and therefore not welcome at meetings, which we usually hold at our dining room table because nobody else ever voluteers anything.
And btw he’s been an asshole since we were in the process of putting an offer on the place.
Nope, that’s just what he wants. He actually suggested that after a rat crawled under the hood of his car and ate the lining under the hood. (his spot is next to the trash cans.) He thought I should be next to the trash cans, or alternately that we should move the trash cans to the back of our spot, which meant that we wouldn’t be able to get in and out. (All the spots are on the alley, but his is next to the garden next door. All the trash cans for 3 buildings are there so that they don’t block anyone’s parking or sidewalk access. There really isn’t anywhere else that they fit.) We bought deeded parking, and I fully intend to use the property that I own.
When he brought up in our last meeting that he thought I should let him use our spot and I said no, he accused me of not considering his ideas. I told him I’d considered it and rejected it.
lord I can’t stand that man. He thinks he’s an expert about everything. Especially construction. Last winter he decided our perfectly functional downspot was funneling too much water into the sewer pipe, and so he cut it off to re-route it into the garden next door. Except he failed to consider the law of gravity and joined together two pieces of pipe in such a way that they leaked water all over and created a huge lake of ice right in front of the back stairs all last winter.
He’s an asshole for parking his vehicle in the spot he’s (they’ve) been assigned? I know nothing about condos, but that seems strange. You can’t swap spots with him?
You addressed the swap while I was writing, but where do you want him to park?
See above - the spots are assigned in the bylaws. Also, it’s fine for him to park in that spot, but not to park 2 cars in a spot that’s meant for one car. He literally parks so close to the stairs that he is touching the support beams. It blocks about 90% of the stair access. As soon as we hit business hours, I’m going to call the City and see what they can do because it’s a safety hazard to block a building exit.
Eta: I want him to park one of the two cars on the street. It shouldn’t be my problem that they have more cars than spaces.
The reply to the email I sent him last night was something like “I’ll park backwards, forwards, sideways, any way I want. I am done defending the way I park. DONE.” I’m not the first or only person to bring it up.
Sorry, didn’t realize they were parking TWO cars in one spot. Can’t you call a tow truck or anything? Or pass a new bylaw that says “only one car per spot” or something?
Do it until he learns that he does not have the right to put two cars in one assigned space plus as much extra public non-parking grounds as it happens to take to fit his vehicles.
All this is standard condo procedure. You cannot permit a member to arrogate joint property to themselves. A little give and take is normal in healthy condo relationships. This situation seems to have gotten well past that.
I know people often say “talk to the neighbor first.” But you have talked with him, with no success. And parking, ingress, and common areas are matters properly addressed by the condo board.
It would seem as tho some minimal area allowing access to the stairs would be considered common areas. Would this result in his (wife’s) pkng space being shorter than everyone else’s? Does the board president have access to all of the deeds?
It will be interesting to see what - if anything - the by-laws say about how the deeded parking space can be used. I’d imagine official action through the condo board is appropriate - but I have no idea what that entails. Can the president simply write a letter/assess fines? Or does this have to be noticed up and voted on at a meeting?
Rats, parking disputes - you make Chicago living sound SO appealing!
(I tend to be quite a doormat and conflict-avoidant. I am not clear exactly how the parking/stairs are configured, but I imagine if possible I would allow myself to be inconvenienced and would walk around the cars to get to the stairs.)
I live in the burbs. Our version of this is folk who park several cars in their driveways so that they block the sidewalks. (We have a dog, and walk the neighborhood daily.) Yet the police seem loathe to enforce this obvious violation of the ordinances.
You work in the legal field. This is a legal issue, not personalities. Either he is allowed to do what he is doing, or he is not. Of course, you well understand that enforcement is an entirely separate matter.
Are his cars parked completely within the lines of the parking space? I’m not understanding how two cars fit in one parking space. Generally, spaces are barely big enough for one car, much less a car and an SUV. If his cars are crossing over the lines, I would think you could have him towed. You might have to put up a sign first for a while saying that improperly parked cars will be towed.
There are no lines, it’s just a concrete paved area with enough space sideways for 3 cars. I suppose one might fit 2 cars lengthwise in one space if they were Honda Fits rather than a huge SUV and a Maxima.
If you can visualise, it’s a 3- flat building with a staircase in the back that takes up about 1/3 of the space ( the right 1/3, where the space for the 3rd floor unit is), and the remaining 2/3 of the rear of the building are decks for each unit. The parking spaces are not otherwise marked. I’ve actually read our bylaws, because that’s the kind of person I am, and also because Schmuckface decided during a previous incident involving frozen pipes ( which were the responsibility of the association because they were between our unit and the basement, rather than entirely within our unit) that he thought we should pay to fix them to “protect our investment,” not the association. Luckily the insurance company disagreed. He has also previously srared the opinion that the owners of the garden unit should pay for major work needed for the sewer line, whcih also serves the whole building. Next time he brings up something like that, i’m going to tell him he should reimburse the rest of us the total $9k from the special assessment to fix the roof a few years ago, because that should have been to protect his investment ( actually his wife’s).
This sounds like a perfect time to get stripes painted and parking spots assigned. With no stripes, it gives jerks like this excuses to take up more space and park poorly. Of course, any reasonable person would just understand that if you’re assigned one spot, you can’t park two cars there regardless of the stripes. It’s absurd that this is even up for discussion. So paint lines and give permission for a towing company to tow cars as necessary. I often see signs in parking lots that say assigned parking only and that improperly parked cars will be towed by XYZ towing company. I assume you could do the same thing.
If you want to be nice, make one space a bit bigger than the other two. Make the big space far from the stairwell and give that one to the guy. That way he gets a little something extra and the spots by the stairwell will be used by normal sized cars.
Jusr spoke to the Fire Department, Fire Prevention Department, and the local police station. They all assure me that what he is doing is illegal, but nobody can point me to what law or ordinance he is violating, except that he is blocking egress from the building. Fire Prevention suggested that I call 311 and report every time he does it, and that those complaints are logged, and that he can be ticketed and fined.
I’d like to research exactly what he is violating, though, but I am out of town on my iPad. Anyone feel like poking around? Dinsdale? The cops and firemen are not lawyers, and I think they just know when people are breaking the rules, not the chapter and verse of what the rules are.
Oh, and the location of each assigned spot is spelled out in the bylaws, but not the dimensions. And no, I don’t feel like being nice to him.
What you have now as a condo organization and as bylaw is nowhere near enough to withstand jerk owners, owner’s-spouses, or tenants. You’re going to have to formalize things a lot more than they are. Parking lot stripes are one simple step you can and must take.
There is an element of sharing in all group living, and it just doesn’t work when some people’s motto is “from each according to what I can take, and to each according to what I deign to leave for them.”
