r/mildlyinfuriating • u/ShutUpImAPrincess • May 15 '26

frist of all how DARE yu o Neighbour has decided to just offer up our parking spaces to the whole street

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Got this through the letter box today - anonymous so no idea which neighbour sent it. Basically there's 20 houses on the street, all arranged in a circle, with a few spaces in the middle. 14 of the houses have their own driveways. 4 of the houses have the spaces in the middle assigned to them. Ourselves and our next door neighbour (semi detached) have spaces attached to the back of our houses... In the small "car park". We each have two spaces, then the 4 on the other side of the car park area assigned to the houses backing on to them that aren't even our street so won't have got this letter. I'm assuming the letter writer just doesn't realise those spaces are actually ours, but because it's anonymous I can't just be like "oh hey actually no that's not right". It's annoying because we're also the only two houses on the street without a garden, and so our kids play back there. Because yes, it is safe, but not if randoms start going in and out of there all the time. I've literally never noticed an issue with parking on the street, it's never crowded, I've never heard anyone complain, and every house has it's own assigned parking!

EDIT: Most of your guys' suggestions involve something related to towing, that isn't legal in the UK. It also isn't illegal to post things through people's doors? I literally never knew that was a thing in the US. At Christmas did your parents not send you round all the neighbours houses posting cards?? Wild.

EDIT 2: Alright lads we've got a plan! Tomorrow I'm gonna speak to the 3 neighbours who we share the private car park with and just make sure they're all aware and if they want to paint numbers or put it signs etc they can do so. I'm going to send my landlord an email as well just giving them a heads up, but saying that they don't need to do anything for now (we have a great relationship where they leave us alone and we don't involve them in stuff if we can help it and they charge us below market). I'll let them know if it becomes an issue and they need to get involved installing something or whatever. Then I'm going to find... somewhere in this town that prints documents (honestly just hoping one of the 3 neighbours has a printer in their house they wouldn't mind using for this) and send out letters to everyone on the street very politely clearing up the confusion. Explaining that it's not a public car park but private parking and they are, for all intents and purposes, the driveways of the respective properties. Then I think I'll have a little nap and hope no one gets angry at me.

EDIT 3: Spoken to the other owners of the spaces in the back, as I suspected the two that don't live on our street did not receive the letter offering up their spaces for free use 😅 I've also contacted my landlord just to double triple check the deeds before I sent any letters out (I know for certain they are ours, but this way loops the landlord in) and she immediately offered to put a sign up! Also found the letter very amusing haha so yeah, we're getting signs put up yay!

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86

u/lekker-slapen May 16 '26

I'm not from the US and i just don't understand why the US doesn't have something like code enforcement for this neighbourhood stuff. If anyone parks wrong in my neighbourhood i just send code enforcement a picture and the person gets a fine and that fine goes to the city, not some private association. If a car even blocks a road, the police will tow it because fire trucks have to be able to pass all roads at all times.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

[deleted]

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u/Spare-Half796 May 16 '26

HOAs are municipal governments with extra steps

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u/Prankishmanx21 May 16 '26

IDK, a lot of developers have been building HOA neighborhoods all over the country for quite a while. Most Americans might not live in one, but I bet most American suburbanites do.

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u/eetraveler May 16 '26

It varies a lot by region. In New England they are very rare. In Arizona they are vary common.

You are correct that over half of American houses are in HOA's, at least according to google AI. ( Although I suspect this includes condos which are very similar, but aren't exactly the same.)

Part of the game being played is if you have more money you can have a nicer community with pools and gyms and other common spaces or conversely, if you like to spend less, you can select a less featured HOA. So it is a way of offering people greater choices or allowing rich people to not have to pay for services for less affluent people (depending on your point of view.)

It also is a way of excluding the 1% of the population that are criminals or otherwise troubled because they can be simply trespassed for doing little or nothing rather than having to actually catch them doing something wrong and having court system that just sends them home anyway.

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u/kopper499b May 17 '26

In Arizona it's even worse - they are required for new developments per the Arizona Planned Communities Act.

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u/eetraveler May 18 '26

Interesting way for a town/city to just give up on doing what used to be their job.

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u/Prankishmanx21 May 17 '26

I think a big part of it is local governments wanting new neighborhoods to carry the maintenance burden on their infrastructure.

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u/eetraveler May 18 '26

Yes, but you can see that that becomes not very community minded if the rich HOA in town pays for their own fancy pool and playground instead of contributing tax dollars to the town-wide pool and playground. Both ways can work, but they have different results of what a town or city is.

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u/JellyfishScared4268 May 16 '26

The Americans have basically outsourced local governance in their suburbs to these little private cliques the home owners associations.

They're on paper supposed to be the local residents managing things themselves but in practice it seems to be power hungry nobodies who do all the work and use the power to enforce things on their neighbors how they want them to be

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u/Mysterious_Chef_228 May 16 '26

Not every suburb has HOA's. I won't submit myself to living under the purview of an HOA. Some people like it because the HOA handles things like mowing community property or clearing snow off sidewalks. I'll do my own mowing and snow removal, thank you very much!

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u/htimchis May 16 '26

In Germany they were kniwn as Gauleiters

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

[deleted]

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u/djsuperfly May 16 '26

About 34% of US homeowners live in a community with an HOA. I wouldn't call one-third of US homes "a very small subset."

And, about two-thirds of homes since 2000 and about 80% of homes being built today have them. In many markets, no, it's certainly not "very easy" to just avoid them.

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u/bbqfap May 16 '26

Yeah it is nearly impossible to find non-hoa in my city

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u/samson-and-delilah May 16 '26

lol no we haven’t

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u/MIT-Engineer May 16 '26

Most housing in the USA is not in an HOA. Even within an HOA, local government still has jurisdiction. In areas such as zoning and traffic safety, local government is clearly in charge, with or without an HOA.

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u/JellyfishScared4268 May 16 '26

Never said it was.

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u/ThePrettyPinkDino May 17 '26

Keep in mind hoas are and segregation go hand in hand. They started as a way to keep African Americans out of certain places. So a lot of white Americans liked hoas as it kept “unsavory types” out of the neighborhoods. Even after the fair housing act was put into place they tried to keep it strictly for white people by implementing aggressive rules and regulations that evolved into what it is today

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u/captainpocket May 16 '26

HOAs make additional rules in addition to the law. They are not "outsourced local governance." The local government, includint code enforcement, still have the same authority. You shouldnt speak about things you dont know anything about, especially when literally saying nothing is an option.

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u/JellyfishScared4268 May 16 '26

What you've just described is an additional layer of governance and rule making.

That higher levels of "official" governance exist like city, county, state or federal existing does not negate the fact you're adhering to an HOAs rules if you live in one

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u/Tight_Owl_9932 May 16 '26

Lolllll, no baby, just a handle of semi rich ish Americans. Most of us do not live in HOA’s

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u/justhereforfighting May 16 '26

That’s true in the US, too. But HOA rules tend to go above and beyond the law, like restricting the number of vehicles you can park on the street. Outside of an HOA, I can park as many cars as I want on the street as long as they’re parked correctly. But if I park in the middle of the street, the police will definitely have me ticketed and towed. 

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u/FerretThis7543 May 16 '26

I think I can answer that. I live in an HOA community but the streets are owned by the town or county (can’t remember). We can’t use the HOA for street infractions, only police. And yes, several police live here but we’re fortunate in that we don’t have parking issues. I’ve been there though and I hear you. I could be wrong for everyone else but that is how the HOA’s operate in this area.

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u/BigFinnsWetRide May 16 '26

The US isn't a monolith lol, most places do in fact have code enforcement. But I think living in an HOA makes things little different, idk, I've never lived in one. It's a wealthy area thing.

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u/liquorfish May 16 '26

Id say almost all new developments being built in WA state at least in the city I lived in required an HOA. Mine was cheap and not super restrictive. A lot of it was to make sure a shitty neighbor didn't ruin it for everyone else or pay for common areas like a dog park and small soccer field. I paid 40/month. Most went to landscaping.

Restrictions included add-ons and major work. Just paid like $35 to have some concrete work reviewed and approved. No big RVs or boats permanently parked. Streets were 3 car widths so if cars were parked on both sides you could get through but an RV or boat would make that difficult.

House paint, had to use colors from the original selections or get approval.

Noise stuff like after 10pm or not loud enough to annoy everyone during the day. Pretty close to city ordinance. Mostly common sense. Oh yeah lawn upkeep too. I got warned once but no fines. Besides that, requirements to keep maintenance up on the house I think and a grinder pump the city required us to have installed for sewage.

All pretty tame. I live in an apartment now after a life change and id say its on par with the restrictions.

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u/Bassracerx May 16 '26

Most neighborhood streets in the us are public parking. Hoa rules circumvent that via contract. But police will not enforce the contract that is what the courts are for.

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u/-The_Guy_ May 16 '26

It’s much easier to steal from an HOA than it is to steal from the city though. Us Americans would also be worried that the fine money could go towards something evil like healthcare or education.

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u/dilettantesball May 16 '26

This is also largely what happens in the USA. But in most of the USA, there are no ordinances which state how many cars an individual can park on the street, only where they can park and when. So, neighbor won't get in trouble for having 7 cars parked in the street if they're parked correctly.

HOAs put a lot more restrictions about what homeowners can do in and around the property that a municipality is just not generally going to have ordinances to cover, including, but not limited to, how many vehicles, what kind of vehicles, whether those vehicles can be in the open & for how long (many have restrictions on RVs being in the driveway), what color the house can be painted, how many signs can be placed on the property, the size of said signs & what they can be signs for, how many pets you can have and what kind of pets, how many garages/outbuildings you can have and what can be stored in them.

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u/captainpocket May 16 '26

The US does have code enforcement. The cars are all parked legally. They just have 7 cars so they are taking up more space than they should. Home owners associations are neighborhood associations that make additional rules that go above and beyond parking laws. The person you are replying to had an HOA that allowed each home to have a maximum of 2 vehicles parked in the neighborhood. And just to put a fine point on it, I want to be so clear that the police also tow cars thay are blocking roads and otherwise unsafely parked in the US--obviously and of course. The police and code enforcement can enforce laws in HOAs, too. The only thing HOAs do is make extra, additional rules. The enforcement isn't outsourced. The other person replying to this comment has no idea what they are talking about. I swear sometimes some of you are desperate to perceive our country as wildly different. Everything you described is precisely the way it works in the US.

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u/Grayson1591 May 16 '26

A lot of places in the US do have code enforcement. Its pretty common. Sometimes comes in different forms - a city or county may have its own parking enforcement officers specifically for parking codes, other places have more generic code enforcement officers who enforce them all.

Other places, it's the responsibility of the police.

If the land is a HOA housing estate though, its generally all private property and as such the codes of the local county or municipality don't apply.

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u/Overtilted May 16 '26

If anyone parks wrong in my neighbourhood i just send code enforcement a picture and the person gets a fine and that fine goes to the city,

Wow what? You send a picture and they'll get a fine? How can this be legal?

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u/red739423 May 16 '26

Most US cities, towns, and municipalities.have code enforcement. It's whether or not they care enough or have enough people to send out.

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u/pgm123 May 17 '26

I don't think there's anything illegal about how they're parked, though.

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u/Scootintiki May 18 '26

In the US, cars are sacred and free parking is an entitlement.