Ban on Overnight Parking Splits Community

Greg Moore’s parking place could not be closer to his home. Each night he pulls his pickup truck onto the grassy lawn a few inches from his front door.

Neighbor April Caming’s parking spot could hardly be less convenient. She walks two blocks along a busy freeway frontage road and climbs a hill to reach her Volkswagen.

The pair are among hundreds of residents caught in an unusual parking controversy that has divided a Woodland Hills neighborhood.

At issue is an 11 p.m.-to-5 a.m. ban on parking enacted two months ago by Los Angeles transportation engineers on two residential streets near a 107-unit apartment complex.

The overnight parking restriction was sought by homeowners living along Dunman Avenue and Bigler Street, near a block-long row of apartments on Avenue San Luis next to the Ventura Freeway.

Apartment Dwellers Blamed

The homeowners contended that apartment dwellers were lining the curbs in front of their houses with old automobiles and litter. They complained that transients were sleeping in vehicles, urinating in their yards and occasionally vandalizing their homes and vehicles.

“Junked cars would be left on the street for months,” said Mary Marta, a Dunman Avenue resident. “There would be men sitting in their cars drinking beer and watching the houses. In the mornings, there would be beer cans and whiskey bottles lying in the street.”

Bigler Street resident Francis M. Perry said apartment dwellers put cars on jacks and repaired them in front of homes.

“They would dump motor oil in the gutters. There would be 30 cars parked on the street and some of them would stay for weeks and weeks. It was a dumping ground for abandoned cars,” Perry, a Neighborhood Watch leader, said.

City officials agreed to post nighttime “no parking” signs if two-thirds of the 38 families on Bigler and 23 families on Dunman endorsed the restriction. About 91% of those living on Dunman and 76% of those on Bigler signed petitions circulated earlier this year by Neighborhood Watch members.

Usually Aimed at Daytime Parking

Ken Dietz, a city traffic engineer, said the Woodland Hills restrictions are unusual because most neighborhood parking controls are aimed at daytime commercial parking or allow for residents to park with special permits.

The 11 p.m.-to-5 a.m. timing of the ban was a fluke, according to Perry.

“It was a standardized sign that the city already had in stock,” he said. “It would have taken six months to fabricate new signs for a different time. We wanted to expedite it.”

Since the signs went up in May, 39 citations have been issued to cars illegally left after 11 p.m. on Dunman, and 19 have been issued on Bigler, according to Ted Mirkov, an administrator with the city’s parking enforcement bureau.

The $28 tickets have provoked howls of outrage all around.

“We thought that, as residents, we could apply for permits and continue to park on the street,” said Jan Romary, a Dunman resident since 1961. “We can’t. Now, if I have guests over, I have to tell them to go at 11. We won’t be able to have a New Year’s Eve party. It’s extremely inconvenient.”

Neighbor Greg Moore has received two tickets for forgetting to move his truck onto his lawn before 11 p.m. He said he and his brother, Brian, park on the grass because their driveway is full of other family cars.

But the apartment dwellers targeted by the crackdown are even more angry.

They say there are not enough carport parking spaces behind the apartments for all the tenants because the complex was built 27 years ago, when only one space per unit was required by the city. Since then, officials have beefed up parking requirements, which are based on the size of housing units.

Renter April Caming said the nighttime ban has forced her to park two blocks away from her apartment because she owns two cars. One of her friends has received three tickets, prompting her to call her congressman for help, she said.

“There is no place to park, absolutely,” said another tenant, Thomas Rodriquez. “It’s terrible. My son’s car got towed away from one of the streets back there and it cost me $300 to get it out of the impound garage. The car wasn’t even worth that much.”

Outside Help Sought

David Sanchez, who manages 16 of the apartments, said he has called a civil rights group for help in getting the parking ban overturned. Nearly 70% of the Avenue San Luis apartment residents are Latino, according to one manager.

“There’s racism involved here,” Sanchez said. “They’re saying our cars aren’t up to par. But we’re taxpayers. We’re the general public, and this is a public street. I personally feel there’s been an abuse of public funds for those signs.”

Despite the claims of vandalism, Capt. John Higgins, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division, said his office’s statistics do not indicate that either the apartment complex or the adjoining neighborhood has a crime problem.

Nonetheless, the nighttime parking restriction has brought peace and quiet to their neighborhood, say homeowners who support the ban.

“We were so tired of the daily ugliness,” said Ethel Goldman, a Bigler Street resident since 1957 who supports the parking restrictions.

Said Dunman Avenue homeowner Irwin J. Mechanic: “It was getting to be more and more of an encroachment of vehicles and an accumulation of garbage on our street. Parking is a privilege, not a right.”