Neighbours have decided that myself and NDN park some of our cars in another street to make it fairer for everyone. AIBU to ignore the request?

[SumoFarah]

I live on a street with unrestricted parking and few driveways. I know it might sound excessive but my family and NDN family have 7 cars between us. I can’t get a drive out in as the street is really narrow so I would need the space opposite to be empty in order to exit.

A neighbour on the street knocked on my and NDN to explain that our six cars take up too much space and means that:

1. neighbours who finish work late can never get a space so have to park on another street and walk
2. their weekend visitors can never get a space
3. on weekends they sometimes have to park in the middle of the road to unload their shopping and then go and find somewhere else to park

We we’re told that ‘they all’ think everyone should agree to use a maximum of 2 spaces to use as they wish and any further space needed should be used in the free car park about 1/2 mile away.

Also that the two teenagers (one mine, one NDN) don’t need cars as they are still in school so should have no need for cars anyway.

I get that parking spaces are at a premium, and can be frustrating when all the spaces are taken, but I don’t want myself or my dc to walk 1/2 mile in the dark (or the light, for that matter) just to placate the neighbours when there’s a space available. All our cars are pretty much used on a daily basis.

NDN told the messenger neighbour that it’s first-come-first-served. I do understand the annoyance but don’t agree with the suggestion because some houses only have one car and some houses don’t have a car, so should balance out in theory, but obviously doesn’t in practice.

Would I be unreasonable to ignore the ‘request’?

Suggestions welcomed.

This is literally a public forum for discussing things. Anything anyone says, is open for fair comment. Otherwise don’t type it.

They have one car per adult. Do you really assume that every adult who has their own car never walks anywhere?

Public transport will make you a much more resilient independent adult than expensively insured cars….

in my opinion. And one I can back up.

Considering that the complaining neighbour who deliberately lumped two households together for drama purposes was saying that everybody should be allowed two spaces, it coukd only ever have been one house with 3 cars and the other with 4.

If it had been 5 and 2, or 6 and 1, the neighbour's complaint would presumably have borne more weight to ignore the household with only 1 or 2 and focus on the single house with 5 or 6.

Is complaining neighbour proposing measuring out the two spaces that they want to allocate, or is it based purely on number of vehicles?

Considering that young drivers tend to only be able to afford small cars, whilst many older drivers have larger vehicles, for all we know, one household could have a massive camper van and a LWB works van as 'their' 2 vehicles, whilst they are screaming "Selfish!" at the house next door with their 3 Aygos!

So would living in a tiny bedsit in a crime-ridden area, but that doesn't mean that most people yearn for resilient independence of that kind.

It also rather depends on what public transport provision is like in your area; a lot of city-dwellers often assume that everywhere has as functional PT as they do.

These posters never tell us anything about money….maybe yet another thing that never happened!

I think if you do this and your NDN doesn't then you'll soon get pissed off with it.

Basically you're going to be leaving one car somewhere else all the time and shuffling round, just so your NDN with 4 cars can use that space instead.

I do think 3 and 4 cars per household all parking on the street is excessive though and if there is an alternative you should use it, so well done for coming up with a solution.

I did assume given the space issues we were talking somewhere central yes.

"So would living in a tiny bedsit in a crime-ridden area"

Still measurably good for people to do so, I'd stick my children in those situations given the chance. But thats just me...

We are a similar household with numerous adults and numerous cars. Didn’t realise there was a ration🫤? We work it on one car per adult and have a pool accordingly as opposed to ‘individually owned’ (well, I have MY car, and then there are all the rest, but if I’m not using mine it gets snaffled pretty quickly by an opportunist as it’s always the newest and most lux🤣). The majority of these are parked on the street, because it’s a public street where anyone can park. We don’t own the road area in front of our house, anyone can park there, as can we anywhere else. It’s a public road and is a first in, best dressed scenario, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. We are more than happy to spend the costs on having multiple cars, so no idea why that would be anyone else’s business.

Eh? Why would OP have mentioned something as irrelevant as that - and why does that somehow make the whole parking issue that the thread is all about made up? Nobody in the street has actually mentioned money; it's purely the available space for parking that concerns them - not the fact that car insurance for young drivers is invariably extortionate.

She also hasn't given us any kind of run-down of how much they spend on fruit and vegetables each week, but that 'omission' doesn't mean we can safely assume that everybody in the household has scurvy!

'Central' is relative, though. It might be in the middle of a big city, but it could equally be a village with a few residential roads and everywhere else national speed limit roads with no parking - or anything in between.

You do surprise me that you would actively seek out crowded accommodation in a dangerous area for your adult children rather than any achievable much more pleasant alternative; but it's none of my business. It does sound a bit 'Four Yorkshiremen', though.

If the neighbours have 3 or 4 cars themselves, which I suppose they must, ignore them.

I believe the complaining neighbour does not have 3 or 4, OP and a different NDN have 7 between them.

If you know it's annoying, do something to alleviate it.

Yeah mine too but my point was that they didn’t tend to work far away from home ie commute. In my circle of childhood friends, I think only 1 mum drove - there were 32 kids in my class (born 1966) and not one home had more than one car. I don’t have any childhood friends whose mothers had their own car - there was only the “family car”.

So I’m not saying women didn’t work - I’m saying they tended to work close to home so didn’t have/need a car - that was the context of the thread.

Your neighbours are correct, you're taking the absolute piss out of everyone, unless there's some massive drip feed here.

Wow at first I was YANBU then I read you have that many cars and still feel you can take up all the spaces of other residents! You are being very unreasonable.

I grew up with F all, I haven't any qualifications and had several major life set backs before I was 16. My resilience thats got me through life and into owning my own business and doing well enough to look after my own children so well has in many ways backfired as they are far far less able to deal with perfectly normal life events. Yes I absolutely would put my children in less than perfect scenarios for their own long term good.

You and NDN do sound pains in the arse but I guess that you can park where you like so nothing to stop you cracking on.

It is irrelevant to the actual post though isn’t it? Clearly.

She doesn’t want her teenager walking five minutes either but is ok for everyone else to. While I am sure the OP will defend this most teenagers are fitter, healthier and unencumbered with stuff like toddlers or walking frames.

We slowly grew from 2 cars and a drive to 5 cars so we moved to a house with a big parking area. We now have 7😱

I think 2 spaces per household is fine and fair

First come first serve. No one owns the street