Lawn Parking Offenders May Face Crackdown : Neighborhoods: Councilman Holden urges stricter enforcement against the illegal practice. But some residents say minorities will be hurt.

It is a battle between convenience and aesthetics, between personal preference and neighborhood consensus, between the will of the majority and the private property claims of the minority.

It is an issue as close to the heart of many Angelenos as, well, their front yards.

Lawn parking.

In neighborhoods as diverse as Venice, Sherman Oaks and San Pedro, many natives disdain garages and the street and park the family sedan in the front yard. But with the Los Angeles City Council considering a crackdown on the practice, that may soon end.

Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden is pushing a proposal designed to stop the illegal but longstanding custom by empowering parking enforcement officers to issue citations. Now, only Department of Building and Safety inspectors may issue such citations, but they have been unable to rigorously enforce the law.

A council vote on the measure is expected within the next month.

“My constituents consider this to be one of the major issues,” said Holden, whose district stretches along the Santa Monica Freeway west of downtown. “They compare it to having too many auto body shops and mini-malls in their neighborhoods and (wanting more) street sweeping. All those things appear to be little in the minds of some people, but they are very important to them.”

Opponents say that a lawn parking crackdown would be felt disproportionately in the city’s poorer, minority communities. In those neighborhoods, there tend to be more residents, more cars and fewer garages and driveways, said Eastside Councilman Mike Hernandez.

“We don’t have the necessary parking in many of these communities,” said Hernandez. “You just can’t have blanket ordinances for the whole city without taking that into consideration.”

Front-yard parkers tend to have a more emotional response: It’s nobody else’s business.

“I think if you own the property, you should be able to do what you want with it,” said Shirley Antwine, after pulling her compact car onto the lawn in front of her Mid-City home.

But legions of homeowners and neighborhood improvement activists see an auto on a front lawn as the stamp of low property values and lower taste.

“If they want to live in pigpens, well then, they should go out to the desert and live in them,” said Palms resident Richard Van Cott.

Lawn parking is illegal in virtually all local cities, as well as the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. But enforcing the laws is often a problem. Code enforcement officers who issue citations are overburdened with other tasks. And they usually do not work during the evenings and on weekends--prime lawn parking hours.

That is the problem in the city of Los Angeles. Holden’s proposal seeks to intensify enforcement by giving parking enforcement officers--who now are limited to issuing citations on public rights of way--the authority to give tickets on private property. They could then venture onto front lawns and also are around during evenings and weekends.

Lawn parking is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, although actual penalties usually are much less severe.

So far, Angelenos seem to have heard little of the possible crackdown. But residents on both sides of the issue express strong opinions when they learn of it.

Neighborhood improvement groups are thrilled, noting that the cars are often unsightly--broken down and under repair.

“It’s probably, other than crime, the number one thing that people are concerned with in this neighborhood,” said Neal Jacobs, a Fairfax-area homeowner activist. “It’s a very visible problem and something people believe can be remedied.”

Jacobs and neighborhood activists elsewhere claim that one car parked on a lawn can slide a street down a slippery slope of other code violations and unneighborly habits--yards piled with trash, unkempt gardens and broken sidewalks.

“It’s like a broken window,” said Lana Suroko, who lives in Harvard Heights, west of downtown. “If you don’t take care of one, then another gets broken. Parking a car on the lawn is just another form of that. It brings down the whole neighborhood.”

Unreformed lawn parkers say the crackdown would not be fair. While they concede that a Chevy on the front lawn is not a likely motif for Better Homes & Gardens, they claim that they literally have been driven onto their lawns by a variety of urban dilemmas.

City officials concede that residential parking is a growing problem. Apartments and condominiums are increasingly crowding into neighborhoods once limited to single-family homes. And high rents and home prices have led more residents to cram into each home.

“There are more and more cars and just no place to put them,” said Art Johnson, chief of the city’s Bureau of Community Safety.

Residents say those citywide concerns are compounded by neighborhood quirks.

In one Venice neighborhood, residents park on their lawns because few of the homes have garages. Also, street parking is limited to two hours a day to prevent students from nearby Venice High School from parking in the community.

Pat McGann moved into the neighborhood less than two years ago and was dismayed to find well-tended lawns topped by Saabs, Volvos and Volkswagens. “I said: ‘What is wrong with these people? They must be a bunch of rednecks,’ ” McGann said, laughing. “But now I’m one of them. We don’t have any choice.”

There is plenty of parking on the street near Veronica Marrufo’s Mid-City home, but that does not mean it is the best place to park. Her family’s Chevy Blazer was nearly stolen three times in a year when it was left at the curb. Now the Marruffos keep the car on the front lawn.

“From here we can hear if someone tries to steal it,” Marrufo said. “It’s for our own safety and for the truck.”

Just down the street, Carl McDade leaned on a friend’s Cadillac, parked atop a dying lawn. “Nobody likes to park their car on their lawn, but in this neighborhood it’s a necessity,” said McDade, pausing before he added: “If you want to keep your car.”

But Holden does not buy such explanations, calling them “just people’s excuses to continue to do what they are doing.”

And while stopping lawn parking may not be glamorous, Holden insists it is important.

“If we are going to save our city,” he said, “it is going to be one little step at a time.”