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Comment by halpert | Hacker News Reader

> You can also lean on it in situations like this: you shoveled deep snow for an hour and a half in front of your house to dig your car out and create a clean parking spot. When you come back from your errand, your dickhead neighbor, or someone else, has parked there. If they stay for 3 hours, you can have them removed.

Or when a black family moves into your neighborhood, you can enforce random laws to intimidate them to leave. Sorry, but you don't own a spot just because you shoveled it out. Either people can park there, or they can't.

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> Sorry, but you don't own a spot just because you shoveled it out.

That is correct! But the city does own the spot, and it has rules about parking on it. Those rules apply equally against everyone, in principle. But they will never be enforced spontaneously. Someone has to complain, with some valid basis. It exists for these kinds of nuisance situations.

The city is very sympathetic to the concept that some uses of city property (in principle available for use to everyone and anyone) may be annoying to nearby residents.

For instance, some residential streets that are close to transportation amenities or shoppping/business areas have permit-only parking. Only people who can provide proof of residency on a specific street can get a permit to park there; anyone else is in violation, subject to ticketing and towing.

Someone who calls the police on their neighbor for parking more than 3 hours, and then parks in the same spot themselves for more than 3 hours is nothing more than a hypocrite.

The neighbor parked there because he's too lazy to shovel the snow in front of his own house, where an empty, but unusable parking spot is also available, and has no qualms just sailing into the tidily shoveled spot in front of your house, so that you have to shovel in front of his house too when you return.

The city recognizes that situation as a valid complaint and will take action, and that's the end of it. It upholds the concept of parking being associated with adjacent residences, even though it isn't owned by them.

If the city wants to recognize "parking in a free spot in front of someone's house when there is a free spot, covered in snow, in front of the car owner's house" as a legitimate problem then the city should codify it into law and enforce it. Otherwise, it's totally legal for someone in the government, say the police chief, to clear his street of cars right before his holiday party so that his guests have parking. Or for a person to harass neighbors they don't like. Why you want to have a legal system that allows for such abuse is beyond me.

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