Neighbors Confront Parking Freeloaders

“Excuse me,” Janice Parker said to the woman walking purposefully up Howard Avenue with her cell phone in her hand. ​“Which car is your car?”

“It’s the silver Nissan,” she said without any hesitation.

“That’s what, I thought,” Parker said. ​“It’s been there all day. I believe I’ve told you before that you’re taking parking from residents.”

Parker (pictured), a seasonal city sanitation worker who lives on Howard Avenue, walked with the woman as she retrieved her car at the end of work Thursday afternoon, admonishing her for taking advantage of ​“free” parking in the neighborhood.

Parker told the woman, in fact, the parking in the neighborhood isn’t free.

“Do you think that’s fair for us who pay taxes here?” Parker asked her.

“It’s not fair,” Parker answered for the woman. ​“I don’t care if it is a city street. We got tickets behind y’all parking here.”

At the first opportunity, the woman made short work of getting in her car and leaving.

Neighbors like Parker have been clamoring for a residential parking zone to protect the in-demand street spaces near their homes in the area around Yale-New Haven Hospital. Until they can get the zone changed, even if this one woman heeds Parker’s demand that she park elsewhere, there are plenty of other workers who will take the spot.

The Howard Avenue neighbors were among those who have shown up to City Hall during public hearings to testify about the daily battle they feel they shouldn’t have to fight over parking. The Board of Alders last week passed an ordinance that gives it more oversight on Yale-New Haven Hospital’s and Yale’s overall parking plans. They also created a working group of city officials and representatives from Yale and the hospital to work on parking issues.

None of that is likely to have an immediate impact on the day-to-day parking problems that neighbors endure, unable often to find spots near their homes.

Meanwhile, Parker and her neighbors have confronted the non-resident parkers after work.

The hospital, like the university, offers employees lots to park in (as well as mass transit and ride-sharing incentives) so they don’t have to hog neighbors’ street spaces. But parking in lots costs money.

“I can’t afford to park at work,” one woman (pictured outside the car window) told Parker. ​“My friend told me about this area.” And even though her car window was once busted out and she also once got a ticket when she parked on Minor Street, the woman said, she continues to park in the neighborhood. She said she parks specifically on Howard Avenue because when she got the ticket on Minor Street, which has some residentially zoned parking, a police officer told her she could park there and not get ticketed.

The woman said commuting by bus from her Wallingford home would take too long. She simply doesn’t make enough money to use the hospital’s parking lots, she said.

When asked whether she’d considered some other form of transportation that would link her to Yale’s shuttle buses, she said she hadn’t heard anything about other alternatives, or even the incentives that the hospital and Yale offer to employees to encourage alternative transportation.

When Parker suggested that the parking may not be free for long, the woman replied, ​“OK, I’ll park here until it’s not free,” which prompted Parker to shoot her a sharp look.

Parker said she and her neighbors accost freeloaders daily on the street. Most exchanges are civil, she said. Sometimes the neighbors get into arguments with people. The neighbors have taken to using their trash cans or tables to block people from parking; the parkers simply move the objects out of the way.

Parker has taken to using social media with hopes of shaming people who don’t live in the neighborhood into not parking on the street.

Neighbors are looking for a permanent solution that preserves parking for residents with possibly zoned parking in front of the residences on Howard Avenue and metered parking on some of the more commercial parts of the street. Parker said that neighbors have signed a petition for zoned parking, but they haven’t heard about any next steps, or if anything is happening.

Doug Hausladen, director of the city’s Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking, said he hasn’t seen the request for zoned parking in that particular part of the neighborhood personally. But the staffer who handles the residential permit process was out for the month of December so it may have been submitted already by Alder Latrice James, who would be responsible for getting the signatures and submitting a letter to the Traffic Authority for approval, Hausladen said.

James said the signed petition was submitted back in November, but it is not an automatic process. She said she was made aware of the absent staffer and its impact on the workflow for the Traffic Authority and trying to allow that person to get caught up before contacting Hausladen again.

“Parking is an issue throughout the Hill, so their concerns are definitely warranted,” she said. ​“I understand and have experienced the same concern on my street. The difference is I have a driveway. Not everyone has a driveway, particularly those who are in multi-family units. It is something that needs to be remedied.”

Hausladen said once the request is approved, the process is pretty straightforward from there. The zone is then changed, residents would purchase their permits, and his department would put up signs.

“I heard their complaints” at public hearings ​“and did talk to a number of people and explained the process,” he said. ​“Most were happy that there was a process in place to address their concerns in the short term.”

But Hausladen admitted that residential permitted parking isn’t a panacea. In neighborhoods even closer to the hospital, where residential zones exist, some people are willing to take the chance of being ticketed just to park close. He said parking zones are enforced on foot, and it will take something the city doesn’t have a whole lot of — money — to manage parking enforcement more effectively.

“We’re asking for budgetary numbers to increase our technology,” he said. ​“Residential parking is enforced on foot, and it’s not a very efficient method. People will be able to game the system because they know we can only cover so much area.”

Hausladen said his department is advocating for more money to help modernize the department with more advanced systems that would allow electronic ticketing and monitoring.

Abdussattar Abdussattar, owner of the Stop & Go Deli at 660 Howard Ave., said that some days cars are parked in front of his store all day, but the owners of those cars never come into his store. On the days that the cars don’t sit, it is just a rotating cast of cars, again, with drivers who don’t shop with him.

“They’re not shopping,” he said. ​“I think they are going to the hospital most of the time.”

Abdussattar owns the store but not its adjacent parking lots. He said he would like to see the area zoned so people who might wish to shop at his store have an opportunity to park too.

Parker said she doesn’t blame Yale-New Haven Hospital for what its employees do, because the hospital does provide parking. She said the fault rests with the employees, who don’t want to pay the money to park. She said Thursday it’s not fair that people who actually live on the block often find themselves with parking tickets because all of the spaces in front of their homes are taken up by people outside the neighborhood.

Howard Avenue neighbor LaShawn Greene said every day is a struggle.

“When I came in earlier, I had to park in her driveway because there is no parking,” she said of the small off-street spot adjacent to the multi-family complex a few doors down from Parker’s home. When multiple cars park in the space, people have to move their cars to let people out. And that’s only if all of the non-residents haven’t blocked the driveway thinking that it’s a parking space.

Leslie Jimenez, who also lives on Howard Avenue, said that she accidentally had the car of a friend of a woman who lives in one of the upstairs units towed for blocking the driveway. Parker said the women have actually become friends over their shared parking misery and their willingness to speak out over the issue.

Whenever they can get a car of someone who they know doesn’t live in the neighborhood towed, they do.

“The tow man knows us well,” Parker said.