Another handicapped parking issue

Our board will discuss this situation at tonight's meeting, but I thought it would be nice to see if others have had a similar situation and how they handled it:

We have a homeowner whose unit (we're a townhouse community) is on a fairly narrow street owned by the Association. If you park on her side of the street, it could be difficult to get through if someone's parked on the other side. The townhouse also has an attached one car garage, which is cluttered with all sorts of stuff, including a junk car owned by the homeowner's adult son. It doesn't run and I don't know how long it's been there.

Last fall, the homeowner asked if the Association could put up a handicapped sign, mostly because her husband is disabled and uses a wheelchair. The previous homeowner had installed a wheelchair ramp at the front door so it's easier for him to use that instead of going through the garage (which he couldn't do anyway because of all the crap in it!) She already has a handicapped parking sticker issued by the state, so we said send us a copy of what you gave the state to get that sticker and we'll put up the sign. She did and we put it up.

The man who lives across the street then talked to our security officer about the tight squeeze when this lady is parked in front of her house. Usually, he'd just park behind her and walk over to his house, but for some reason, the lady seems to think the entire side of the street is for her use only and will rush to park there as soon as he leaves. The real reason she does it is so her son can park behind them (although he could easily park behind the garage).

Our security officer (also a cop) noted the tight squeeze and said it might not have been a good idea to allow the parking sign - if the neighbor parked on his side and she was out there, it could make it difficult for law enforcement or an emergency vehicle to get through. He's suggested that we might want to ban parking on the lady's side altogether and allow parking across the street. The husband won't be that inconvenienced because he can still wheel himself around to the garage and get in the car that way. In fact, he might be able to get in from the garage if they would only clean it out - and fix the garage door (the woman says she can't afford to - don't know what's wrong with it or how long it's been on the fritz).

Our property manager spoke to the woman about taking down the sign and now she's upset and threatening to sue. I'm inclined to say "bring it on" because we've tried to accommodate her (when this started, I noted I didn't have a problem with the sign being there, but the Association never paid for handicapped sign installation in the past so if she wanted one, she should pay for it, but the Board said otherwise).

Am I being bitchy about all this or is there another solution we haven't considered? Having driven over there to deliver newsletters, I can see the neighbor's point and don't want the association to favor one homeowner over another, especially in light of the officer's comments about emergency vehicle access. How would this woman feel if an ambulance couldn't get through because her car and her son's car were all parked on that side of the street?

I would comment more but have to get to work. I have been through this. We had a person die because ambulance could not turn around. Although they did have a heart attack and most likely had died any ways. However, it did present an issue.

We had to go to the city to have a code written to paint our curbs red as we can NOT have signs other than for sale/rent. You own your roads and could enforce the parking as long as written in the rules of the parking one side restrictions. I liked the paint instead of signs.

As far as her lawsuit? What for? Seriously what would she sue for? You do not have to be compliant to the Fed standards for access. There is no law supporting her and no money lost. Your HOA has a better counter suit if she did sue. Don't jump to a response for a lawsuit threat. Make the decision out of practicality.

Doesn't your HOa have a rule on parking in garage anyways? Most do. It is now their responsibility and NOT everyone in the HOA. Sorry but take responsibility for the whole not the small...

Yes, I'm thinking she really doesn't have a leg to stand on either, but am hoping to come up with something rather than running to the attorney to deal with all of this (although it may come to that).

As for our garages, the CCRs don't require people to park in them, although they should. There aren't very many garages in the community anyway and for some reason one or two homeowners years ago, converted theirs into rooms (thus hurting their own property values in my opinion because people usually want garages and we don't have carports - parking lots are too small)

Shelia, if it were me, I would invite your local Fire Marshal out to give you an opinion on whether or not you should make one side of the street "No Parking" to allow for a Fire Lane. Push come to shove the sign could be moved to the other side of the street OR make her side the parking side and prohibit parking on the other side. The easiest way would be if the Fire Marshal declared (in writing) that there must be a Fire Lane. If not depending on how your CC&R's are written, (do they give the Board the power to regulate parking?) you might have to amend them to accomplish your goal.

Thanks everyone, for your comments!

Mike, based on your description, it appears our townhomes are fee simple (haven’t heard that term before) and you do have a point about reasonable accommodation. The problem is, it appears this lady doesn’t want to share – she has a garage and the space in front of it and if she chooses not to use it for whatever reason, that’s her issue. Besides, we DID give her the handicapped sign, so it’s not like we didn’t try to help her.

Glen, I really appreciate your suggestion – the fire marshal should be able to resolve the whole thing. We’ll have to look at the CCRs again regarding the fire lanes. Personally, I would hope city or state regulations requiring fire lanes would trump the CCRs (the board does have the authority to regulate parking anyway, so this would give us more ammunition)

Shelia,

I am also in a town home development. We actually chose to assign 2 parking spaces to each town home. The spaces are as close to their front door as possible. All other available parking is on a first come first serve basis.

Well, it appears the problem has resolved itself (for now anyway). At tonight's meeting, our security officer said he hasn't heard from either neighbor, and lately everyone's parking on one side, so maybe they kissed and made up.

I did tell everyone about the fire marshall idea and that will likely be the next step if someone raises hell. Thanks again!

I agree! My next door neighbor has a habit of playing "musical cars" because she and her hubby each have a car and two motorcycles. The motorcycles stay in the one car garage and there's just enough room for one of the cars, so they go back and forth over putting one car in the garage and the other in the visitor parking spaces. Lately, they got another car they're trying to sell (apparently it belongs to a relative) and now they're playing musical cars with three cars.

Like you, we're an older community and back in the early 70s, I think people were revving up the two car family idea, so when it was built, the developer didn't put in too many parking spaces (probably because he wanted to put up as many houses as possible.) Today, there are a lot of three and four car families and it's a challenge to put them in a safe location close to the house, so I've never understood why anyone with that many cars would move into a community like ours where we barely have room for people who have two cars!

Lately, I've wondered if our community might be able to beef up our quality of life (and maybe property values) if we had carports (especially after last week's Snowmaggedon!) Unfortunately, there are only two parking lots that might be able to accommodate them - if we had the time and money, and energy to work with the city because the trash sheds for the dumpsters would have to be relocated. Then everyone else would get upset because their parking lots wouldn't have carports, but what can you do if the lots simply aren't big enough?