I didn’t want to hijack that thread but that reminded me of this encounter I had the other day. I live across the street from a school, and teachers, parents, and other school employees routinely park on the street in front of my house. I’m typically leaving for work around the time teachers start arriving, and the other day one of them approached me and thanked me for letting them park there.
Honestly I found that slightly baffling. While I don’t mind them parking there, I never thought I was “letting” them park there. Rather, as far as I’m concerned it’s a public street and I have no control over where people are allowed to park. As long as they’re not blocking anyone’s driveway or violating any other local parking ordinances, they’re allowed to park there.
But that made me wonder if perhaps my neighbors get upset over them parking in front of their houses. And that, in turn, made me wonder how you feel about people parking in front of your houses.
Do you mind if people park in front of your house?
We don’t have curbs, gutters, or sidewalks. The edge of the pavement is just that, an edge that drops off into packed dirt. In the winter, the dirt is not so packed, and it turns into relatively firm mud. Firm enough to walk on, but not firm enough to support a car’s weight. We don’t mind if they park with their tires on the pavement, but we really prefer that they not let their tires drop off the edge and leave us with deep tracks in the mud.
During the day, anyone is welcome to park in front of our house.
At night, we like to keep one of our cars parked there, so we figure out who is there if it’s not us. Mostly a matter of finding out who has a guest, and whether there’s a good reason for not parking by their host’s house.
There’s no legal reason someone else can’t park there. But it is not very neighborly to park in front of your neighbor’s house. And the easiest way to have good neighbors is to be a good neighbor.
I don’t mind it when someone parks in front of my house because it’s not very often that happens. If it happened all the time and I depended on having street parking nearby, it would probably bother me.
Generally I don’t care, but in the winter it can be annoying. If cars are parked near my driveway, the plow can’t get between them which means I have to remove an extra car width of snow.
There are apartments across the street from my house, so I often have their cars (They have a small lot, but I think it is one spot per apartment, so I get any extra vehicles). My neighbor to the north also parks near my driveway (I guess technically not in front of me)
I might get annoyed if someone who had no business in my neighborhood repeatedly parking in front of my house, but they have as much right as anybody, I guess. If the person lives or works across the street (as in the OP’s case) they have just as much reason for parking there as I do.
As a general rule, no. If my neighbors are having people over or something like that, it doesn’t bother me in the least if someone parks in front of my house. It bothers Mrs. Odesio for some reason. More specifically, there are rare occasions where there are so many people parked out front that it’s difficult to get out of my driveway. When there was an estate sale across the street, I had to go in, track down the owner of a vehicle, and tell them to move because half their car was blocking my driveway.
The only time I really get annoyed on less rare occasions is when my neighbor’s visitor parks directly in front of my mailbox before mail has been delivered that day. But once he picks up or delivers his marijuana he’s usually out of the way soon enough.
I think it may have something to do with where you grew up. I grew up in a section of Philly where you sometimes had to park a couple of blocks from your house. Parking space was limited. The idea that the spot in front of your house was reserved for you wouldn’t occur to anyone.
My wife grew up in a detached house in the suburbs. Plenty of parking, so why do you have to park there? It seems so silly to me. Park where you want, just don’t block my driveway.
I live in an older, inner-ring suburb of Chicago. It’s 95% detached houses, but it’s also a town which was laid out in between the World Wars, and most of the houses were built between 1920 and 1960.
Very few houses in my neighborhood have attached garages, or driveways that lead in from the street, but we have alleys which run behind the houses, and most houses have stand-alone garages which open into the alley.
Despite the garages, a lot of my neighbors park one or more of their vehicles on the street: either they have more cars than garage space, and/or they use their garages for storing recreational vehicles, boats, etc. Since 2020, when we inherited a car from my late father-in-law, we’ve had 3 vehicles, but only a 2-car garage, so one of our vehicles – my wife’s Mazda SUV – gets parked on the street in front of our house.
I don’t really care if someone I don’t know parks in front of my house, but my wife, who suffers from a bit of Gladys Kravitz-itis, does. “Whose car is that? Why are they out there?” She understands that we don’t own that space, but it still irks her. It should be noted that my wife has bad legs, and can’t easily walk very far; having to park further away than immediately in front of the house would be difficult for her.
About the only time it’s ever really an issue is if my wife leaves the house (and takes the Mazda, opening up that parking space in front of the house), and someone else winds up taking that spot while she’s gone; she gets upset when she gets home, and can’t park nearby – and, thus, has to walk much further than she’d like.
It depends. I live in a community near UCCS (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs). Up until 6ish years ago, open parking was along all the streets near campus. And considering both the high cost and low availability for on campus parking, it every open (and some not-so-open) spots on the streets within 3/4 of a mile of campus were packed with on-street parking.
This was… unpopular in the community, though I was far enough to not be affected. In part because it meant that the areas closer-in were nearly impassible during the usual hours, and that one of the churches in the neighborhood had their parking lot FILLED by students. Or the local park had no parking available for actual visitors.
First the Church advised that campus parkers would be towed. Then the city restricted the parking near the park during prime-student hours. And then finally, the city put a ban for any non-resident parking during school hours out to a mile or so (owners or renters could get a number of passes).
It wasn’t perfectly fair, but it greatly relieved the congestion in the nearby areas, and just as importantly IMHO made the road safer. This area was built up in the 60s to 80s, and the roads are narrow enough that with on-street parking on both sides that you need to be really careful even with a single lane of traffic in each direction. Add in the city busses serving the area/campus, attempts to be more bicycle friendly, and the lack of sidewalks in many of the areas, and something had to give.
Each area is going to be different though, so I don’t think this is a general answer to the question.
Specific to my house, it’s an early 80s home, with a two car garage, a wide driveway, and even a leveled area that leads to the back sufficient to park a smaller RV, so for just my wife and I with two cars, we don’t care at all about people doing on-street parking as long as they don’t get too close to the driveway.
Looking at it from the other side, my wife and I like visiting various popular hiking areas and we prefer not to pay for parking. So we have done a lot of parking in front of people’s houses (in areas where there are potentially a lot of other non-resident cars parking). Sometimes I feel a twinge of guilt, but it hasn’t stopped me yet.
I mostly feel like this, but voted “other” because every now and then I do mind. mostly if it’s someone who has a hole in their muffler or is in some other way annoying me, but once some actually blocked my driveway, WTH people.
so I kind of get why people can get territorial over space that isn’t really theirs.
I don’t mind someone temporarily parking there. People have parties or gatherings and guests need somewhere to park. It’s reasonable that they be able to park on the street if they are invited to a house in the area.
I wouldn’t like it if they left their cars in front of our house indefinitely because it’s not really typical in our neighborhood. In cities like Chicago where most people use street parking and there are cars parked up and down every residential street in many places, it would seem perfectly usual and I wouldn’t bat an eye. But in our neighborhood it would be unusual since most people park in their driveways and the streets are clear. I’d be wondering whose car this is and why it is in front of my house all the time?
We’re on a dirt road in a rural area. It would be weird, and therefore concerning.
When we lived in a housing division, it wouldn’t have bothered me much, but I know my husband would’ve had a fit.
Same, although most houses here have little offstreet parking areas instead of or in addition to a garage giving onto the alley.
This civilized residential layout means that I have offstreet parking on my own property that is not legally accessible to anyone else. So I really don’t absolutely need parking access on the street in front of the house.
(Also, I don’t own a car. But sometimes I rent or borrow one or have a guest or tenant with one, so parking’s not a total non-issue.)
That said, most people here park at least one car on the street quite often, to avoid the time and hassle of negotiating the narrow alleyway in back. And it IS convenient to be able to just pull up to the curb in front when you’re dashing in and out, or to have a guest park there. So everybody always grumbles about weekday commuters filling up all the on-street spaces. But I’ve never heard anybody griping that they think the spot(s) in front of their own house should be saved for them personally. Everybody knows that’s not how it works.
It’s never been a problem on our block. We’re in an inside the DC Beltway Maryland suburb, and there are several apartment buildings nearby that only have one parking space available for each apartment. People on each block can vote to have permit parking on their block, and the block next to us did. We’re on the corner, and we’re the only ones who didn’t vote yes for that block. We only have two driveways on our block, one of which is ours. As long as we can park the second car on our block we’re fine with other people parking here. When the new Purple Line opens in 2027 we may think differently, since there’s going to be a station a block and a half away.
I have never understood this bothering people. I grew up in the burbs and it would enrage my parents. I fled the burbs as soon as I turned 18 and never once cared who parked where on the street or what my neighbor did with their lawn.
But sometimes I rent or borrow one or have a guest or tenant with one, so parking’s not a total non-issue.)