Edhat Staff
January 5, 2018, 8:08 am
58.9k Views
13 Comments
By an edhat reader
Is it legal for me to park my car blocking my own driveway? Thanks to a neighbor who has 6 vehicles he only parks on the street, we’re short on neighborhood parking. During street sweeping times, I wonder if I’ll get ticketed for parking in front of my own driveway.
Thanks for any info!
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“If renting is your strategy I would say be ready to be priced out. Or we can just keep crowding it and make it not worth the good money we all pay to live here.”
In other words everyone should leave so you can enjoy “your” community. Doesn’t work that way pal.
Keep telling yourself that. Keep telling yourself that.
How would parking enforcement know it’s the homeowners car? They aren’t going to read a note. You’ll get a ticket.
I really feel for you. You neighbor is a jerk and you should report that to the city. Owning 6 vehicles and having no place for them is not permitted. 2 wrongs don’t make a right. I would reach out the the parking enforcement and present your dilemma. Since you have a driveway to my knowledge you are supposed to have at least one covered parking space i.e. a garage and one non covered. So why you have two or more cars and need to park one illegally is probably going to be the crux of that discussion. Everyone seems to think the space in front of their home is theirs. I wish it was but the reality is in most places the city owns the first couple feet into your property with an easement. Consider the parking infront of your home a bike lane waiting to be be painted would also help set expectations. Then your rude neighbor is really gonna be screwed.
It is in our city code for a reason that you must register your vehicles that are used for business. If you have 6 personal vehicles in one home then that property is not providing the adequate parking. Its also stated that if you have a driveway you should also have a covered parking space. Will the city do something about it. Probably not because they would be going after the “affordable housing” crowd. They would rather you convert your garage to an ADU and ride a bike and get the additional tax revenue. But there are absolutely regulations for owing property and how you store your vehicles and if you decide to rent your property to multiple people then you are responsible for the parking impacts of your tenants. But I am making assumptions I bet this is a guys classic car collection that he is shuffling around street sweeping. The assumption these vehicles are from renters or people who are not properly registering their work vehicles is way less logical. In a city where everyone basically does whatever they can get away with even this could be enforced. I can tell you this much if it were my neighbor I would be sure to make this not worth their time after a cordial discussion. the city will deal with it for you as well. You just have to make it not worth their time to keep ignoring you. Very sad.
A simple registration check.
If you park in the driveway, be sure you don’t block the sidewalk, as that is definitely a citable offense (and really annoying to disabled pedestrians). As far as blocking your own driveway while parked on the street, I wonder if they only ticket if someone complains? Haven’t tried it. My neighbor has a driveway, but the “garage” is a housing unit now, so no cars go there, and the drive itself is too short for a car. Seems like we should be able to park in front of this useless driveway, but we have enough space, so have not investigated.
Where is a driveway too short to park a car? Setback and zoning dictate that if there is a driveway it would need to be at least 15 feet long in almost every case. If not there is a zoning violation to be made… Another conversation. Also if your driveway is too short for a car over say 12 feet… how can you park that in front of your driveway opening and not be overlapping with city parking (your driveway is not two cars wide I am assuming)? You can’t even park a silly smart car inside a driveway entrance. I don’t want to live in a town where it becomes acceptable to park in front of a drive way. I will admit I have done it while doing construction but it was to make sure the added parking of my workers were not troubling my neighbors. I was kinda irked yesterday when a frontier guy pulled up and parked in front of our driveway for over an hour and made my wife park across the street instead of our driveway… Thus sending ripples of parking unrest to the rest of the block. I think the author may have some reflection to do for sure but so does everyone else that does not have a place for their toys or tools.
Nope. 22507.2 of the CVC allows a local authority to, by ordinance, authorize parking in front of your own driveway with a special permit, but City of Santa Barbara does not have such an ordinance, nor will make an ordinance. You can thank higher rents for the parking impacts. ( it takes nearly double the number of people to afford rental houses than it did 10 years ago; think of how many more cars that is)
You can also thank people who think rents should be lower so the streets can have more parking issues. The rentals are drying up because the real estate market is so good its not worth dealing with tenants. Some of these units are getting converted to ADU projects that create the additional parking impacts. If people lived in homes they owned and people rented from apartments that were permitted and had adequate parking this would not be an issue. The fact is thats not the case. Its gonna keep getting more expensive to live in a nice place. If renting is your strategy I would say be ready to be priced out. Or we can just keep crowding it and make it not worth the good money we all pay to live here.
There is a house on the Westside that was built in about 1920 that has a super short driveway. A few older houses have no driveway or garage at all, never did, or were altered seventy years ago. These are not zoning violations, because they predate current zoning.
There is a house on the Westside that was built in about 1920 that has a super short driveway. A few older houses have no driveway or garage at all, never did, or were altered seventy years ago. These are not zoning violations, because they predate current zoning.
Your last sentence pretty much sums it up. The same ones complaining about Target coming after complaining for years that we don’t have one and complaining about the crime even though we are near the lowest in the sate. Did I mention how unsafe Hwy 154 is….oh wait, it’s the drivers, not the road.