City’s Parking Crunch Creates Exclusive Spots

Feeling lucky? Try finding an empty parking space on Vista Street in Hollywood at night.

The aged apartment buildings on that narrow street north of Fountain Avenue are so tightly packed it is hard to tell where one ends and the next begins.

Off-street parking spaces are small or nonexistent. Tenants have been known to circle the neighborhood for half an hour in search of a stretch of empty curb.

Those lucky few who find a space in front of their homes cling to it as if it were undeveloped beachfront property. They will walk, ride a bicycle or hitch a ride--anything to avoid moving the car and giving up that prime spot.

But parking spaces in that crowded neighborhood just became even more elusive.

One block away, south of Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood, city officials recently imposed a preferential parking district that prohibits overnight parking for everyone but residents with permits.

Residents, that is, of West Hollywood. Hollywood residents need not apply.

“This makes it even worse,” said Bunny Hale, a Hollywood resident of Vista Street for more than 30 years. “That was the last bastion for parking. If you had to, you could go across the street to park. Not anymore.”

As the battle for scarce parking spaces intensifies in Southern California, preferential parking districts have become one of the most popular tools wielded by frustrated homeowners and city officials to preserve valuable neighborhood parking space.

But as the dilemma on Vista Street shows, the proliferation of such parking restrictions often comes with pitfalls.

Preferential districts are typically found in well-to-do neighborhoods that border busy commercial strips, high schools, colleges or densely populated neighborhoods where parking already is at a premium. The idea behind the restrictions is to preserve the curb space for homeowners and their guests, barring “outsiders” from grabbing those precious spots.

Homeowners and tenants can establish a parking district by getting the support of at least a majority of the residents on a block. Local transportation officials usually follow up a successful petition drive with a study to determine how many cars on the street belong to nonlocals. Public hearings usually follow, allowing critics to object.

After the district is established, residents must pay for parking permits, which range in cost from $6 to $15 a year, extra for guest passes. Some cities reserve the right to withhold permits from those with unpaid parking tickets.

But such restrictions have generated protests from business owners, students and others who, after losing their regular street parking, are forced to pay for spaces in garages or resort to another unpopular option: walking.

Critics complain that residents don’t deserve parking priority just because they own or rent property on a street. They argue that public streets are funded with tax dollars generated by an entire region, not a single block.

“This is a controversial issue,” said Bahman Janka, transportation administrator for Pasadena, home to four parking districts. “Some people like them, and some people don’t.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of restricted parking districts in 1977, they have become nearly as popular as strip malls nationwide. Los Angeles has about 65 preferential parking districts. Santa Monica has 48, Long Beach has 24 and West Hollywood has nine.

With each district has come new problems.

In Sherman Oaks, parking was in such short supply near a restricted district that some nonresidents began forging parking permits to poach those coveted neighborhood spots. Los Angeles is designing a forgery-proof permit that residents can place against their car windshield.

In Mission Viejo, where preferential parking districts were imposed near Capistrano Valley High School to keep students from taking residential spaces, some bold youngsters have taken to knocking on doors, introducing themselves and asking homeowners whether they can borrow guest permits to park on the street. And some residents have obliged.

In Long Beach, the city imposed parking restrictions around Long Beach City College to prevent students from filling the curb spaces in surrounding neighborhoods. But business owners west of the college protested a recent expansion of that district, saying their customers rely on those residential streets for parking.

In Santa Monica, several parking districts near the beach were in danger of being nullified two years ago when the California Coastal Commission learned that the city had failed to get the panel’s approval for such restrictions.

The commission, worried that the parking districts would limit visitors to the beach, has since given Santa Monica retroactive approval with a few added restrictions.

Meanwhile, on Vista Street in Hollywood, Sascha Strebel, a resident of 17 years, is fuming over the new restrictions imposed in West Hollywood.

As it is, she said, parking is so tight that neighbors on her street often park as far as three blocks from home.

Now she is upset because the owner of her apartment building has threatened to pave over the front lawn to add parking spaces to make up for those lost by the restrictions in West Hollywood. That could mean an increase in her rent.

“It’s outrageous,” she said.

But across Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood, reactions to the new parking restrictions are much more positive.

“We are just thrilled,” said Richard Schultz, who lives in a home on Vista in West Hollywood just a few yards from Strebel’s apartment.

Schultz said he signed the petition to create the preferential parking zone because he and his neighbors were tired of coming home from work to find the curb in front of their homes crammed bumper-to-bumper with cars. He said the district has worked so well that city officials might consider expanding the restrictions to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“This is just so much better now,” Schultz said.

What about his neighbors in Hollywood, he was asked. What should they do about their parking crisis?

“They should do the same thing we did and try to get their own restrictions,” he said.

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