Challenges to Implementing the New Front Yard Parking Ordinance

As of July 15, it will be against City code to have more than 40% of your front yard devoted to parking, any area devoted to parking must have a clearly defined edge, and must be made of an all-weather material such as concrete, asphalt, brick, crushed gravel or "other approved materials." To see how this new ordinance will affect Glenwood, I spent several hours today driving around my neighborhood including the streets of Dillard, Silver, Gregory, Highland, Lexington, Glenwood, McCormick, Neal, Portland and Aycock.

What did I find? I found 261 addresses that would not currently meet the criteria established in the ordinance. 27 addresses, or 10%, didn't meet a single one of these criteria. The most common "violation" is the lack of a defined edge. In fact, this was a factor in 244 of the 261 addresses written down. It is also the part of the ordinance that is the most vague, so I was being conservative. The most common scenario encountered was one where gravel had been placed in the front yard at some point in the past but had never been contained by borders (i.e., railroad ties, bricks, cinder blocks, landscape timbers, etc.) and the gravel had been compacted, eroded into the street or otherwise disintegrated and became overrun by adjacent lawn areas and weeds. It is likely that many of these "violations" can be easily and cheaply fixed by establishing a border and bringing in some fresh gravel to replenish the parking area.

The biggest aesthetic challenge is posed by the 55 addresses I found where parking currently covers more than 40% of the front yard. In many cases, there is no parking, but people drive right up to the front steps, park on dirt and in all which manners. In some cases, there is an existing concrete driveway, but with more than one car, one parks adjacent to the other on the grass, dirt, or a disintegrating gravel pad.

Glenwood has a disproportionately high number of renters and so it follows that the majority of these violations will end up being the responsibility of landlords; however, I can imagine many cases where low-income homeowners will be challenged to be able to comply with the new ordinance and will thus be required to park in the street. In an odd way, more cars parked on the street could actually be a benefit to public safety, as studies have shown that more cars parked on both sides of the street actually can slow the speed of traffic.

It appears that the ordinance has one loophole and that is with corner lots where the vehicles park on the side or back of the house where these lots are unfenced. In some cases, vehicles are parking on dirt and grass between the curb and the side of the house or 4 and 5 cars are parked in the backyard where the access is from the side street and not the front of the house. This creates some unsightly conditions and it doesn't appear to fall within the the front yard parking ordinance restrictions. It may fall under another ordinance, but on this, I am not sure.

The plan is to continue to conduct the survey of the neighborhood and turn over the addresses to the City's Zoning Department so that they can send out letters informing the property owners of the new ordinance.

It should also be noted that during today's tour of the neighborhood, more than 16 nuisance violations were recorded and reported to the City. Most of these seemed to be cases of overgrown lots associated with vacant homes.