Cary’s classic column from FRIDAY, FEB 29, 2008
I have two spaces and only one car — but that doesn’t mean you can just use my spot!
Dear Cary,
I’ve lived in the same condominium complex off and on since the mid-’80s. I live in my family home, which I bought from my mother when she recently remarried. For 20-odd years, my townhouse has been full of family members, but since I bought it a year ago, I live alone.
Here’s where the issue comes in. Parking is a scarce commodity in my complex. Each unit is allotted two spaces. My township frowns on overnight parking on all city streets, so that’s a limited option for residents and their guests if there are more than two cars in a household. Because I live alone, I have one spot that is usually unoccupied. I don’t often have guests over. Needless to say, my neighbors have noticed this. I have tried to dissuade people from parking in my spot by leaving notes on their cars if I catch them in my spot. I am reluctant to have anyone towed if I can avoid it, so I usually stick with the notes as a deterrent.
There is one group of neighbors in particular who have an interest in my spot — a townhouse owned by a single woman who has a roommate, a boyfriend and many guests. She has asked before to use the spot, and I’ve let her. Lately, though, she’s been using my spot without asking first. It has been a problem because those were the rare cases when I actually needed my extra spot, so I had to walk over to her house to ask her to move. (That really irked me. I shouldn’t have to involve my neighbors in my plans to use my own spot.) The neighbor has also broached the subject of renting my spot in a few months, because she plans to have her boyfriend move in.
Here’s where I stand. I don’t want to rent my second parking spot. I don’t want to have my spot be the neighborhood guest spot. Not because I’m a greedy, horrible spot-hoarder (I hope!). It’s because what I value most about my living situation — living alone, owning instead of renting — is a sense of autonomy. I love that I don’t have to consult anyone else about my plans relating to my living situation (as long as my plans don’t cause a public nuisance, of course).
So I resent that my neighbor’s plans to have her boyfriend move in now make the boyfriend’s parking issues my problem. I resent that I am being put in the position to either have to say yes to be a nice, good neighbor, or say no and be a big old bitch.
I like not having parking issues — that’s the one perk of having to shoulder all of the responsibilities of homeownership alone. If I have a friend over, or a service person comes to call, there’s a spot available. But if my spot is shared with the whole neighborhood, that means that I have to involve them in my plans when my spot is needed. I don’t want that. I also don’t want to rent the spot, because if my situation changes — say I have more regular guests or acquire a roommate — my neighbors’ parking issues become my problem. I’ll have to feel guilty about the fact that X won’t have anywhere to park when I rescind the spot.
I just don’t want to be involved. I’d prefer it if the extent of my involvement with my neighbors was to say “hi” in the parking lot. No more, no less. Beyond that, I don’t want to be affected by developments in their household. I have no control over their choices, so why should I have some responsibility toward them?
So, my questions — Am I a big old spot-hoarding bitch? Am I being a bad neighbor? Am I obligated because the request was made and I do have a free spot? I feel like I am, and that there’s an expectation that I’ll agree to their requests. And I resent that, because if someone makes a request with the expectation that I’ll say yes — well, that’s not a request, it’s a veiled demand.
(I’ve noticed that I’ve written the word “resent” a lot. That’s the crux of this. I resent that I have to think about this. I resent that I have the choice of being either a bitch or limiting my own options by giving up my spot.)
Parking Spot Hoarder
Dear Parking Spot Hoarder,
Put a plant there.
Call it “The Greening of the Parking Space.”
Who can argue with a plant? Who is going to drive over a plant? Who among your (I am guessing) politically correct neighbors is going to argue that a car is more important than a plant?
If you put a plant in the space, you are doing something amusing with the space. If you want to let someone park there, just tell them in advance, “Move the plant.” Moving the plant requires a little more psychological involvement than just pulling into the spot. It requires touching somebody’s plant. A stranger is not likely to feel comfortable doing that. It’s almost like they’re touching you, moving you. The plant is an intimate stand-in.
Believe me, I thought this whole thing through and wrote a ton of analysis before arriving at this. Then, because it’s journalism, I put the nugget right up front. So if you’re in a hurry, you could just take the nugget and go. Put a plant there. QED. Yep, I told you Cary Tennis was crazy.
But if you’ve got some time, or are curious about the various things that go on in my head, read on.
An analogy: If you had a detached house with a driveway with room for an extra car, would you let your neighbor park his car in your driveway? Probably not. He probably wouldn’t even ask. It’s obviously your property. The space is visually connected to your house. So one regards it as your domain.
So I’m guessing this condo parking spot is visually separate from your condo. Like, you probably can’t see it from your kitchen window. So to an onlooker it feels like just one anonymous parking space in a sea of parking spaces.
Another analogy: As to the argument that you’re not using it so why shouldn’t she: Well, if you have money in the bank and you’re not using it, does that mean somebody else can just come in and borrow it until you call them and tell them to please put it back because you need to use it? No. Owning it means it stays there untouched until you come to use it.
But you sort of can’t blame people, right? They look at an empty parking space and they think, “You’re not using it.”
But you are using it. Your use of it does not consist of always placing a car in it. Your use of it consists of having it always available to you. I get that.
But it’s hard for some people to get that. There’s this cognitive leap that must be made. Admittedly, it is a small cognitive leap. It has to do with property rights and condo laws and stuff. In fact, that is what really interests me — how your problem illustrates cultural attitudes toward property rights.
We Americans are half-rancher and half-villager.
Being half-villager and half-rancher, we have conflicting desires. We want to be part of community but we want to use our God-given property rights to set ourselves apart from it when our convenience requires or our legal prerogatives allow. It throws into relief just how deeply emotional and contradictory is the right of property itself. Yes, you can own that spot. Yes, it can remain empty. And yes, its remaining empty seems absurd when there are people who need to park.
It hints at the underlying uneasiness we have about property rights. How absurd that one can own a field and let it lie fallow when the poor could grow crops there! That one can own a building and keep it vacant when the poor could live there! That one can own an old house and tear it down when those who lived there before have stored precious memories there, when the community itself has rested its memories in that building; that one might own a marshland where beautiful birds nest and in one summer dig canals into it and place timeshares there when the birds have been there for millions of years; these are all the things that our property laws allow. And they offend our sense of justice. And this parking matter is a microcosm of that: Private property rights are in conflict with emotion and what seems to be common sense.
And, you know, this whole municipal business about no overnight parking on the streets, that’s just to ensure that households do not grow in number, to enforce a kind of economic discrimination, you know, making sure that only people who can afford their housing on one or two salaries can live there, and giving the area a kind of English village look, and making sure that no red-blooded males move in and start working on their cars in the yard. In the reputable social classes, everybody takes their cars to a reputable mechanic, right? Nobody works on their own cars in this neighborhood!
And what about the somewhat misguided municipal policies that make owning cars inconvenient in the belief that such policies will bolster use of public transit? I think public transit use increases with the convenience, affordability and safety of public transit; if transit is no good, you’re just going to piss people off by making car storage inconvenient, right? People have to put their cars someplace.
OK, enough about Menlo Park. (I don’t know where you live, actually. I suppose many municipalities have similar laws.)
So I think we ought to face up to what we are, and what we believe. We do believe in the sanctity of private property. And urbanism implies anonymity and isolation from neighbors, and ownership of private property allows for that. We are not one big community. So get it clear with your neighbors: That parking spot is yours, and if you want to keep it empty all the time that is your legal prerogative. And if you want to put a plant there … well, good luck with the condo committee and its bylaws!
Anyway, it was my meditation on fallow cropland that gave rise to the idea of putting a plant there. There must be certain plants that thrive in parking spaces! What about a Lotus? Or a Caryota? That sounds like a car that I would drive!
Like I say, who can argue with a plant?
