Move to the country.
This is about particular suburban people’s idea of ‘courtesy’ in suburban (US, I assume) culture. It’s relative and subjective like any set of customs. Doesn’t mean that customs are useless, but there is a tendency to say ‘this is discourteous’ as if it’s some absolute which it’s not.
Where I live, in a city but fairly low rise area so parking on the street is generally possible, you park where there’s a space, as close to your house as you can. The idea that the space in front of my house is ‘mine’ would be ridiculous here. But again it just varies. I also bet there are places in the US which are closer to suburbs than my neighborhood where residents would think the OP’s attitude is odd. Then there are places with so much room nobody cares at all where other people park. But then again I’m not surprised if some other suburbanites in the same range of density as OP also think there’s a customary right to the space in front of your house.
I agree, I’m not intending to imply that there aren’t customs that differ around the country based on locale and development type. But I’ve lived in an area that seems similar to what is described in the OP and there were no such customs. I’m trying to understand what they are in that locale.
Most of CA has a 72 hour rule for cars parked on the public street. This will be handled by code enforcement and is likely a low priority.
Converted garages in CA need to be permitted as well, which would be code enforcement. Slightly higher priority because permits generate revenue.
But even if the garage is open, there is nothing preventing anyone from parking on the public street. HOA rules may prohibit it, but it sounds like that’s not in play here.
The city is able to control parking by making the whole street no parking if you could convince the local governing body to pass such a restriction - that’s probably unlikely.
You could park there too.
That’s about the only viable options I could see.
Depends on the city and how busy the police are for enforcement of the 72 hours. In West Hollywood (an independent city), which is about a fiercely competitive for parking as it gets, they’re pretty aggressive. Some parts of the city of LA are rural, can’t imagine LAPD puts much emphasis on the 72 hour rule in those areas.
Another option is permit parking, which applies in West Hollywood and parts of LA (and probably in other LA County cities). You can park for two hours during the day, and not at all after 7 unless you have either a resident permit or a visitor’s hang tag. But in the OP’s case, even if permit parking were instituted, the neighbor could just get permits for all the vehicles and it’s back to status quo.
Except in winter we have street sweeping every week, alternating even/odd. The longest you can keep a car in a spot is 2 weeks without getting a ticket. In the winter, without street sweeping, there’s no limit to how long you can keep a car on the street, unless you’re parked on the wrong side (even/odd every other year) and we get a snow emergency is declared. They tow during a snow emergency.
A few years back we had a snow emergency pretty much the whole month of February. There were some cars that were on the safe side of the street that didn’t move the whole month, and never got shoveled out. It was annoying, but not much you could do about it. A few people tried reserving their spaces for the whole month but their chairs and garbage cans were removed by annoyed residents who weren’t willing to park .5 miles away. We ended up renting out someone’s unused driveway.
If you can get the PD to do anything. My neighbor is always calling the police because the driveway on the side of his house gets block often. The police come out and tell him to wait that the cop is sure that they will be leaving any minute.
by the way I live in San Jose.
Not always a solution. People use to park across the driveway of the ranch where I was raised. If necessary a tractor can encourage them to move.
Reason #456 why I live in the woods. I would go insane dealing with that kinda problem. My friend has a house in the suburbs she leases out and there’s a big kerfuffle going on right now about a neighbor parking their car on the lawn between two houses. It’s just crazy. There may be a lawsuit about it. The whole neighborhood is rental property. My friend is pulling her hair at over it. Her renters are the complaining party.
Portland has some serious vulture tow companies–you call Retriever Towing about a car blocking your driveway and they’ll be there in minutes, tow the car and they’ll charge a fuckton of money to the owner to get it back. They’re mostly total assholes but sometimes an asshole is what you need to get shit done.
I took the OP to live in the opposite type of neighborhood with on-street parking. One where there was plenty of parking with customary spaces for each homeowner but his asshole neighbor has six cars that he parks on the street.
In my neighborhood, we all mostly have driveways and garages, but some people don’t and use street parking. If I am having people over and run out of parking, I will at least do my neighbors the courtesy of asking if they mind if my guests park on the street in front of their house.
This was exactly my reaction (although I didn’t look for photos!). As someone else pointed out, many communities allow towing after 72 hours or so. But I guess the cars that bother OP wouldn’t be subject to towing: they may offend continually for several days, but as long as they’re moved every 2 days or so they’re not in violation.
OP, have you discussed this with your neighbors? Perhaps there’s some passive-aggressive solution. Have a big street party with beer and loud music and don’t invite the offensive neighbors. If they show up, say “Oh, we thought you were so busy moving your cars around you wouldn’t want to party with us. It was a potluck and we needed somebody to bring the chili. Maybe next time.”
I get that there are different norms about this kind of thing but this seems really overboard for anywhere, especially since there’s not really anything you can do about it if they say no, short of sending your guests advance notice of which homes they’re not permitted to park near.
But that’s just the thing. They won’t say no, but it is a courtesy to ask.
That’s where you find the property line between the houses, and decorate your lawn with whatever is good for discouraging parking - large concrete planters, decorative rocks over a foot tall, iron rebar sticking out a foot and a half as the support for a newly planted tree…
(I did that last one when people were driving (!!) across my corner lot. Unfortunately I never got them to take the bait and run over a 2-foot tree…)
Another point - you shovel out two parking spots one after next, and park straddling the two when you need to reserve a spot for guests.
My mailbox is a few miles from my driveway. We have replaced it, oh I don’t know, a half dozen times. People have hit it, torn it down. Put trash in it. Took a dump near it ( really). Jerked it out with a winch. The postal people didn’t give a rats ass. It was our problem. Mr.Wrekker got an iron pipe used in the oil fields. 10 inch dia. He buried it 6 foot deep. He would be done it deeper but that’s as deep as his auger thingy went. He poured concrete in and around it. Put the mail box on top his super structure and waited. The first hit was a red car because we can see the paint on the pole. Mail box survived. Next time the mailbox was on the ground, the pole survived of course. Now the mail box is inside a brick canopy and brick all the way to the ground. There’s a few chips off the brick but everything is intact. We had trash in it one time. We should’ve gotten a locking box. He may do it yet.
So, don’t expect the USPS to give a crap if they can’t get to your box and deliver your mail. That’s all your problem.