Will you be allowed to park in your driveway?
I wrote this weekend about Houston’s proposed parking in front yards ordinance (pdf). It’s still alive, despite some vocal objections from historic neighborhoods, and on the agenda for a vote tomorrow. It’s almost law.
Why are neighborhoods concerned? Consider the picture above (Michaux and Gregg, northwest of Downtown). The ordinance says that vehicles can park in front yards only on impervious surfaces. Many driveways in Houston don’t meet that standard. In these few blocks, I count at least 9 that don’t. Should those homeowners be able to park there?
If I read the ordinance correctly, it doesn’t apply to driveways — for now. But the same provision that allows grass driveways seems to be a loophole. A front yard is defined as:
Front yard means the area of a improved single-family or duplex lot, excluding driveways, circumscribed by the front and side property lines of the lot and an imaginary line coinciding with and parallel to the front building line of the residential structure extending to the side property lines. The front yard of a corner lot shall be determined by the street address of the residence.
The driveway is not part of the front yard and is not affected. So what’s a driveway? (emphasis added)
Driveway means the area of a lot constructed, improved, maintained or used for the primary purpose of vehicular access to a single-family or duplex residence from a public street or the parking of vehicles.
Thus, any surface used “for the primary purpose of parking vehicles” is a driveway, and you can park there all you want. As I read it, if I want to park a car on my lawn all the time, that lawn is used for the primary purpose of parking, and so it’s part of the driveway and not part of the front yard and this ordinance does not restrict its use.
In other words, the proposed ordinance would ban occasional parking on front lawns, but it would not ban permanent parking on front lawns. That’s a loophole big enough to drive a bunch of junk cars through. And if a judge agrees, then the pressure will be on to revise the ordinance to give it more teeth. And, once we’ve set up the idea that acceptable parking is defined by paving, banning parking in people’s driveways may be next.
One hopes that better sense will prevail. But the fact that an ordinance this badly written — and factually incorrect to boot — is up for consideration makes me wonder.
Park your thoughts in our thoroughly pervious forums.