SF couple fined $1,500 and banned from parking their car on own property | Hacker News Reader

SF couple fined $1,500 and banned from parking their car on own property

cbsnews.com

41 pointsfrumper73 comments

A few thoughts...

Video here shows the parking pad... https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/sf-couple-fined-1500-parking...

1- City asked for photo proof to grand-father them in. They provided it and were denied. To me, that's (almost) worse than the initial ban.

2- Their entire front "yard" is concrete parking pad/walkway. I'm surprised this is allowed. But, it appears common on the street.

3- I'm amazed that parking in a driveway/parking pad is illegal. The rule should be something like "a home may have a 10' wide drive/parking pad made of concrete; this pad may be used for the storage a single (1) vehicle. The vehicle must remain licensed/registered and operable."

It's super weird that the city said they can put up an awning and then park - that seems like a bigger eye-sore than just the car.

They need to comply with the law, and the law needs to be enforced. Otherwise it’s chaos. You can’t just have someone unaccountably granting exceptions to compliance. It’s next to impossible to track and ripe for corruption.

I agree the law sounds pretty stupid and it should be changed though.

There needs to be sunset provisions in laws by default that force them to be re-examined on a regular (3 year? 5 year?) basis showing the impact. The onus should be on the government to show that their laws operated as intended or they should be removed by default.

It’s not “their” laws. It’s “our” laws if you live here and have a vote.

The government doesn’t own us. We elect representatives and leaders who make laws (or appoint appointees who make regulations) following a prescribed process.

As much as I desperately want to agree with you, how often do you feel those who are elected share this sentiment? It certainly feels like an “us” versus “them” situation protected by boatloads of money ensuring “they” get to keep acting this way.

Well... it's "theirs" if the laws were made 50 years ago when you didn't exist.

There's a lot of crazy laws on the books.

Just because it's the law doesn't mean it's right. Where the law is wrong, we have a duty to fight it.

This is some bullshit that reeks of government bureaucrats with an axe to grind.

Then change the law. If the law only counts when whoever is enforcing it happens to like it then we are all going to have a very bad time.

This kind of bullshit law or regulation doesn’t affect enough people to cause anyone to fight it, and I would venture to say that the vast majority of laws on the books fall into this category. Inch by inch we are divided and disempowered.

I mostly agree, however, 4 decades of non-enforcement, then a sudden change to enforcement is just as chaotic and just as prone to selective enforcement and corruption. The house was sold with a parking pad and that pad was in use for 4 decades - this isn't a case of a new-comer trying to subvert the rule of law. And why would the city mention an exception if said exemption is never granted?

This appears to be a poorly worded regulation that needs to be amended to something reasonable.

Further there's a bunch of old laws still on the books, but rarely enforced.

These are the ones in my state of Idaho.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/jan/21/did-you-know-t...

The law wasn't enforced until somebody complained. That's selective enforcement.

When you move into a city you have to assume you are voluntarily giving up your rights to behave as you wish with your self and your property. You lose the right to do what you want on your property in order to significantly reduce friction (or potential damage) with all the other close people. For example, almost all cities make it illegal to fire firearms within the city limits. Whereas if you lived in the country there'd be no such law and more importantly in terms of causation, no people likely to be impacted by it.

Cities are tradeoffs. This particular municipal code may be a bit honerous but it's not exceptional in it's reasoning.

The reasoning is to prevent "amassing cars", not to prevent "having a car".

Moving to a city involves some tradeoffs and concessions to public safety & general decorum, but generally giving up arbitrary rights shouldn't be one of those.

Having one car in what is effectively a driveway should not be an offense. In this case, it looks like you wouldn't be able to park on the street there anyway, so if you prevent them from keeping their car there, then there isn't really a better place to keep it. I am a big advocate of mass transit and cycling, but randomly taking people's cars away isn't a good idea.

Besides, even "amassing cars" probably isn't that bad as long as they aren't derelict and you're not setting up a commercial parking lot. One person in my neighborhood has at least 4 interesting ("classic"?) cars in their driveway that they keep covered and/or sparkling clean. I think it's silly to own so many cars, but it's hardly an eyesore or damaging to the local character.

Also don't forget to blame whatever jerk reported the family for this violation. Did they piss off a neighbor?

> When you move into a city you have to assume you are voluntarily giving up your rights

This would be a valid argument if all people were born outside of the city and have plenty of economic and social opportunities outside of cities.

The city said they would grandfather it if they could prove they'd been doing it for decades. Rightfully so. They provided such proof, and the city went back on their word and said that wasn't good enough. This damns the city's position on the matter, the couple are in the right and the city plainly in the wrong.

The problem to me is that cities in the Bay don't actually go around enforcing this unless someone reports it, which turns it into a form of proxy war.

There's a woman in my neighborhood that caused quite a commotion over the state of my yard. A yard that my landlord is responsible for maintaining. The same woman went on a war path about cars parked on the street for more than two days time. She only enforces this on half the street though, people fortunate enough to live more than six houses down from her don't have to deal with her presence.

There's this attitude here that because rent is so high people are entitled to input on their surroundings and each other. Ironically, maybe sadly, when she tried to throw her rent in my face I found out that I pay nearly double that. Of course, a good example of this attitude is in the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31990882

Yep. I think that certain kinds of code enforcement should be null for people who prove they have been violating it for some number of years. This isn't violent, it isn't environmentally unsavory, it isn't inconvenient. It is merely "nuisance".

Damned neighbor.

Before the outrage machine spins up, read to the end of the article:

> San Francisco ended up waiving the fines after the couple agreed to stop parking on the pavement. If the Craines build a cover for the paved property or a garage, officials said they can resume parking on it — in compliance with city code.

Edit: And just FYI, the kind of cover that sits in the driveway to make it compliant with code costs about $200 retail from a big box store.

I would still be outraged, and I'm not even in SF

Most HOAs have rules about parking cars on your property if they are visible from the street.

They're being fined by the city, not a HOA.

A City is a big HOA.

No, not even in an analogous way.

One is a monopoly corporation with State power and the other is an entity whose existence is owed to a private contract between neighbors.

City can have rules very similar to an HOA. I assume for the same reason around property values.

The point is that you shouldn't have to do that to park a drivable car on your own property.

Their car was not entirely on their own property, it was blocking the public right of way.

What right of way are you referring to? In this video, the car is clearly not blocking the sidewalk.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/sf-couple-fined-1500-parking...

It's a setback from the sidewalk they are violating and have been doing for close to 40 years.

> it was blocking the public right of way.

I don't know where their property line is precisely, but it simply isn't true that they're blocking the sidewalk. The back of their car is well clear of the sidewalk. It's not even close.

https://i.imgur.com/87lHdux.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/4Ls9Upx.jpg

Furthermore, the city is waiving the fine if they build a roof over it. Would that make any sense if they were parking on the sidewalk? Building a roof over the sidewalk so they can continue to park on it? Obviously they're not on the sidewalk.

Seems the law was intended to stop people from parking several cars in their yard, like the ones who buy and refit cars for private resale. Maybe the law should be limited to one car per yard? Two? There's always the street.

Long term I would much rather see cars parked on property rather than on-street to the extent that it is reasonable and feasible. We don’t need laws that incentivize the opposite.

Me too. Unfortunately, most HOA's disallow this.

> decades-old city code to preserve neighborhood aesthetics

San Francisco disagrees with your criteria for what you "should have to do."

The rules literally predate the complainant's existence, why do you think they should be able to voluntarily move there and simply violate those rules?

I don't think it's the "outrage machine" when to continue doing something you have done for thirty-some years you are suddenly required to spend thousands of dollars during a time when construction is at the height of inflated prices. That sounds pretty reasonable. The smallest amount of empathy would go a long way here.

(moved from the other now closed thread)

I had a similar interaction with my local government around fence height. I had a small section of fence connected to a driveway gate and the city told me I had to remove both as they were too tall.

I investigated and sure enough the code as written limited fence height to 3' in a large number of cases, however it did not specifically mention gates. I hired a lawyer and $15,000 later I still had to lower the fence. ;). I did manage to get the gate itself allowed due to the poor wording on the regulation, but the fence, which had been there for >15 years had to go. It looks worse now, but looking good was never the intention of the regulation, oddly enough.

During the conversation I actually talked to the enforcement board and brought with me over 150 pictures of other fences on the same road I am on that also clearly violate this. I would estimate there are >10s of thousands of houses in the Portland area that violate this. They indicated they understood that there were probably lots of other violations but did not care. I asked why these other clear violations were not being investigate, and they said they are only required to investigate when there was a complaint.

I'll admit I did consider writing an automated job to file a complaint against every home in Portland that has a fence to make a point, but I suspect that point would be lost.

One of the problems with complaint based enforcement is the ability to use to to harass people. If for some reason you don't like a neighbor because of their race, political views, favorite sports team, or whatever else passes your mind you can start filing complaints that are clearly not enforced across the population.

A few notable comments -

  rasz 5 hours ago | parent | next [–]
  >I'll admit I did consider writing an automated job to file a complaint against 
  every home in Portland that has a fence to make a point, but I suspect that 
  point would be lost.

  Not if you specifically filtered for all the people employed by the 
  county/city.

Indeed, that would be an option. Of course I would prefer to target the people actually writing the regulations, but a wider swath would be more effective.

jsight 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

> I'll admit I did consider writing an automated job to file a complaint against every home in Portland that has a fence to make a point, but I suspect that point would be lost. While that would annoy everyone, it might also cause some to join your fight and help. It may not be a bad idea.

You are correct - in fact I was driven on the issue only because it was being enforced on me. Wide spread enforcement would be a catalyst for change. Imagine if the police decided that they were going to setup photo radar equipment and ticket every car going 1mph over. Do a few million on those and all of a sudden the speed limits and how they are set would be at question.

This kind of thing is what jury nullification is for.

> This kind of thing is what jury nullification is for.

It's not a crime so jury nullification doesn't apply.

I want the story from the neighbor who reported them to code enforcement

Given the number of people I see that park their car on their property, without a roof or anything, I wonder if that neighbor has some pull in sf government...

So they didn't have to pay the fine, and building the simplest garage would prevent them from being fined again. Seems like a good compromise.

"You can pay the fine, or spend tens of thousands of dollars to do something no one has had any issue with for decades."

Seem reasonable?

They could also use the street in front of their house and pay nothing, it's like 3 meters away. I agree that it's a weird law to throw at them, maybe they obstructed the sidewalk sometimes? It doesn't make sense, but the video someone posted above shows the pavement strip is barely enough for the car.

Street parking in most of SF requires a parking permit (which isn't free), you typically have to move the car weekly for street cleaning and in many areas of SF it's hard to find street parking.

A couple hundred dollars. Not tens-of-thousands of dollars.

"You're blocking the sidewalk [you aren't] but it will be okay if you also build a garage on top of the sidewalk"

A good compromise? More like insanity.

Wow. I live adjacent to Beverly Hills and this kind of parking is extremely common there; I think they’re otherwise pretty uptight about neighborhood aesthetics so I really don’t understand the issue.

I always figured the weather in California is always so nice that you don’t really need covered parking.

In summary "San Francisco ended up waiving the fines after the couple agreed to stop parking on the pavement. If the Craines build a cover for the paved property or a garage, officials said they can resume parking on it — in compliance with city code."

By this rule there’s hundreds of cars that are actually illegally parked in the Richmond district and it would be literally impossible for that additional number to find street parking

Every few years the City does make the rounds there just to paper cars, though not usually to the tune of $1,500.

I don't see at all how a local code compliance violation rises to the level of a news story.

To people who are worried about giving up your rights to the city, remember: it is also not allowed to be naked on your own property without a proper fence.

Actually until relatively recently it was perfectly legal to be fully nude in public in San Francisco. They only passed a law when a few aggressive flashers became a problem and public nudity is still mostly tolerated.

Ridiculous. Pay property taxes and still told what to do with YOUR property? The code also says "to prevent amassing vehicles" but this is just ONE vehicle. I'm also pretty sure that there is a much bigger and more productive way to preserve neighborhood aesthetics like you know... those tents, fecal matter and needles on the streets of San Francisco?

Property taxes are some of the most aggressive/regressive wars on the poor.

How so? Don't rich people usually own more property than poor people?

How much is $1500 for a millionaire?

precisely. $1500 is a year's worth of food for someone at the poverty line. For a bajillonaire, it's a rounding error.

But property tax isn't a flat $1500. The more valuable the property you own, the higher the tax is, and richer people tend to own more valuable property.

uhhh, hate to break it to you bub but a $1M home in the bay area which does not buy you much is going to cost close to $15k a year in property taxes (source: owner of said property in the bay area)

No, that's sales tax.

Says they needed to provide a photo from 1938 to attempt to get grandfathered in from when the law was passed, so it's quite a bit older law than whenever tents, public crapping, and drug use became widespread problems. This seems to have been passed before it was common for people to even have cars.

This sounds like something that needs to just be repealed, but nobody bothered before because nobody even knew about it until some dickhead neighbor decided to comb through all the city codes to find something they could pin on a person they don't like.

Tents, public defecation and drug use were just as much of a problem in the 30s. They called tent cities "Hoovervilles" at the time [0].

The prevalence of poverty in the 1930s was the impetus for "aesthetics" laws like these. Like today, homeowners wanted to preserve property values and living standards in their immediate surroundings.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville

> Pay property taxes and still told what to do with YOUR property?

Yes, of course. There are plenty of things I'm not allowed to do on my property; that's part of living in an orderly society.

Where I live, for example: it's fine for me to build a shed in my back yard, but I'd need special permission (and probably couldn't get it) to build one in the front. And that's fine, in my opinion.

So while the SF case here does seem unreasonable, so does your apparent expectation that "your property" should mean a complete absence of rules.

Most places don’t let you park cars on your lawn. But more to the point, why should paying property taxes make you exempt from all laws?

Hard to call this a lawn: https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/sf-couple-fined-1500-parking...

In this case it’s not a lawn but is still against city code. I was responding to parent’s comment by pointing out that it is standard to prohibit parking on one’s own property in many cases

> Most places don’t let you park cars on your lawn.

Which cities don't? The only regulations I've seen about this come from HOA's, not cities.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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