Neighbors Seek End to Living in ‘Parking Lot’

Carl Robinson pointed to a row of cars lining the residential street near his home across from Cal State Dominguez Hills and shook his head.

“All of those are students’ cars,” said Robinson, president of the Stevenson Village Homeowners Assn.

Robinson and a host of his neighbors would like to put a stop to student parking in their neighborhood of single-family homes. In recent years, a difficult parking situation has gotten worse as the student population has grown (the school’s enrollment totals 9,900). In addition, as the costs of attending the university have risen, students in greater numbers have taken to parking for free in neighborhoods adjacent to the campus.

The Carson City Council last week gave its tentative approval to creating a permit-only parking area in the neighborhood. The city designation is contingent upon the endorsement of a majority of the 90 residents on the four affected streets.

The proposal has the support of the school, but not the students.

The conflict in the neighborhood reflects an increasingly common problem around universities and community colleges that are near residential areas.

“It gets so bad around here, I can’t have any friends over ‘cause they don’t have anywhere to park,” said Robinson, 57, a Dominguez Hills student himself as well as a city Parks and Recreation commissioner. “It’s gotten out of hand.”

With the council vote Tuesday, Scot Yotsuya, deputy city administrator, said, “The ball is in the residents’ hands.” If the measure is approved, residents each will pay $29 annually to cover part of the cost of enforcing the program and putting signs up on Sagebank Street, Tamcliff Avenue, Lysander Drive and Mackeson Court.

Rick Gloady, a university spokesman, said campus officials favor a residents-only designation.

“We want to be good neighbors with the residents of Carson, especially those who live in the area of the university,” Gloady said. “We don’t feel the students should be creating any kind of a traffic or parking problem for the residents.”

However, students, increasingly being pinched in the pocketbook by rising fees, complain that the cost of a permit to park on campus is too high. Dominguez Hills charges $54 a semester to park in one of its 2,946 spaces.

A portion of the fee goes toward maintenance, lighting and construction of new parking facilities.

“Along with the tuition going up . . . we’re getting jacked up,” said Lonnie Kimes, an education major, who parked his vehicle on Sagebank Street. The university “should have a free parking lot so that it’s first come, first served,” he said.

In addition to being able to park for free, Kimes said he preferred parking in the neighborhood to university lots because it is nearer classes on the north end of the campus.

Although sympathetic to the residents’ plight, Kimes said, the permit program probably won’t solve anything because he and others will just park on residential streets farther away.

Gloady, on the other hand, said the university’s parking fees are reasonable and cost the same as a year ago.

“I don’t believe the price of our parking permits are any more expensive than any other university’s in the area,” Gloady said, adding that Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton also charge $54.

Starting this fall, students at El Camino College will pay $20 a semester to park in one of the school’s 6,000 spaces, with the fee going up to $30 two years later. There are four times as many students as parking spaces at El Camino, so the school has promised to spend some of the revenue on adding parking spaces.

At Dominguez Hills, officials maintain there is sufficient parking, in part because half of the school’s students are enrolled in night classes.

“Generally, there is a lot in the back of the campus that is almost completely empty during peak hours,” Gloady said.

Gloady said some students neither want to pay the fees nor walk a little farther than they’ve become accustomed to. Consequently, Gloady said, they clog neighborhood streets.

However, most students blame the university for parking problems. Beverly, an education major who declined to give her last name, regularly parks on Sagebank Street. She said the university parking fee is “obscene.”

“It should be free,” she said, while hurrying off to class. “Why not?”