Parking issues

[FLRussianHubby]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Florida

I live in a relatively large (24 buildings with 25+ units per building, spanning almost an entire mile of real estate) apartment complex in South Florida. We have been having severe parking issues for the last several months. On the average night, if one does not get home by 9pm, there are absolutely no parking spaces to be found. For instance, Last night, I had to park literally about 1/2 mile from my apartment due to no spots being available.

Our lease requires us to have a mgmt-issued sticker for parking priviledges. Each apartment is issued ONE visitors parking pass for overnight visitors. All of this is well-defined in our lease. Additionally, we are a gated community.

During my 1/2 mile walk back to my apartment from my car, I inventoried the vehicles parked just around the last 5 buildings of my complex. I counted 28 vehicles with no permits or visitors passes at approximately 1am.

Approximately a month ago, our city notified management that they will be towing all illegally-parked vehicles for "safety" reasons. Building management notified the residents and also re-stated the rules about parking passes in our leases. They provided a deadline of Sept 1 to be in compliance with the parking pass restrictions or vehicles would be towed. It is now Sept 11 and no tow trucks have been sighted....

Upon discussing the situation with building mgmt today, I was informed that they will only be towing illegally-parked vehicles. NOT vehicles without the proper documentation.

I believe that they are in violation of my lease because of this situation. I also believe they are in violation of our city zoning rules pertaining to the number of parking spots available vs. the number of residents in the complex--I am currently waiting for a call back from code enforcement to discuss that situation.

My question is this: Do the residents of our area have any legal rights in this matter? I am seriously considering withholding a nominal portion of my rent for each night that I am unable to locate a reasonable parking spot, while there are unauthorized vehicles present. Would this be legal to do? If not, what else do you suggest, other than moving? (our lease also specifically states that if we break the lease, there is a 2 month penalty that has to be paid--I simply cannot afford to shell out $3000 to break my lease--not surprisingly, this is a provision of the lease that building mgmt DOES enforce....)

Thank you in advance....

 

[Zigner]

Violation of your lease? Do you have 1 parking pass and 1 visitor pass?

 

[FLRussianHubby]

Having a parking pass is entirely useless if the building management has chosen to not enforce it's requirement to have vehicles on the property. In our lease, there is a provision stating the number of parking spots we are allowed to use and even the condition of our vehicles (and the requirement that the license tags be current). (for what it's worth, there are currently THREE vehicles within the view of my balcony that are not drivable--they are junkers. AND one of them has expired tags. BOTH are violations that are specifically named in our leases)

If they are allowed to specify the number of vehicles per apartment (and their condition) but choose to not enforce it, I cannot see how we do not have legal recourse....

On our local TV station (a station widely known for being the birthplace of many of the top nationally-known newscasters on stations such as CNN and Fox), the legal advice group (headed by the head of Florida's public defender's office) has on many occasions mentioned situations where there is an implied reasonable expectation of a service and violations of that expectation do have legal ramifications. Anyone know anything about this? Wouldn't it be a reasonable expectation that if you rent an apartment, it comes with at least 1 parking spot and if your lease specifies authorized vehicles only that they are legally obligated to the residents to remove unauthorized vehicles in order to provide that 1 (or more) parking spots per unit?

I DO know that Florida zoning laws have provisions whereby a multi-family unit (apartment) must provide parking for a certain number of vehicles. I know this because a few years ago, my parents used to own a duplex and were cited and had to modify the parking area to provide a visitors' spot, per city code, or face daily fines....

 

[Zigner]

Having a parking pass is entirely useless if the building management has chosen to not enforce it's requirement to have vehicles on the property. In our lease, there is a provision stating the number of parking spots we are allowed to use and even the condition of our vehicles (and the requirement that the license tags be current). (for what it's worth, there are currently THREE vehicles within the view of my balcony that are not drivable--they are junkers. AND one of them has expired tags. BOTH are violations that are specifically named in our leases)

So what if it violates YOUR lease? They are not YOUR cars.

ETA: To be clear - since they're not YOUR cars, they don't actually violate YOUR lease. They *may* violate somebody else's lease..but not yours. And, your lease only tells you how many spots you're allowed to use. It does not guarantee use of those spots.

 

[FLRussianHubby]

I beg to differ with your "opinion." As your own signature line states, you are NOT a lawyer, so you are not really qualified to answer the question. You are stating an opinion.

That being said, I will await for someone who is actually qualified to answer the question.....

 

[FarmerJ]

FL it sure would be different if you had assigned parking but even with parking permits then I too think its fair assumption you should be able to park SOMEWHERE on the property complex BUT I think what will get you more action is if you learn what your citys ords are for junk vehicles / unplated vehicles sitting on private property and if you find any vehicles in violation of city ords to call the city and stay on them until they send some one out to write citations , see when its say expired plates and a city ord says vehicles with expired plates must be garaged or will be treated as junk then they also likely are going to notify the LL at some point, LL will not like hearing from them since this means city atty , inspections, police now have attention focused on them fair odds are they will begin to enforce the rules they have or even go as far as posting the lots that vehicles with out permits will be towed then problem should ease.

 

[Zigner]

I beg to differ with your "opinion." As your own signature line states, you are NOT a lawyer, so you are not really qualified to answer the question. You are stating an opinion.

That being said, I will await for someone who is actually qualified to answer the question.....

Keep waiting

 

[FLRussianHubby]

FL it sure would be different if you had assigned parking but even with parking permits then I too think its fair assumption you should be able to park SOMEWHERE on the property complex BUT I think what will get you more action is if you learn what your citys ords are for junk vehicles / unplated vehicles sitting on private property and if you find any vehicles in violation of city ords to call the city and stay on them until they send some one out to write citations , see when its say expired plates and a city ord says vehicles with expired plates must be garaged or will be treated as junk then they also likely are going to notify the LL at some point, LL will not like hearing from them since this means city atty , inspections, police now have attention focused on them fair odds are they will begin to enforce the rules they have or even go as far as posting the lots that vehicles with out permits will be towed then problem should ease.

You may be on to something there.... While it won't solve all of the problem, it's a start, as we have vehicles on the property that are probably code violations in themselves.... (one is right outside my window, actually) I'm waiting for a returned call from the city's code enforcement department (supposedly they are all at some conference today!)

I also like the idea of a "Unauthorized Vehicles will be towed at the owner's expense" sign--along with actually DOING the towing when there are violations. This place has a habit of making statements but not standing by them. As a result, most violators in the area just ignore the notes on the door....

 

[Zigner]

I also like the idea of a "Unauthorized Vehicles will be towed at the owner's expense" sign--along with actually DOING the towing when there are violations.

You have no authority to do this and could open yourself up to lawsuits. But, hey, what do I know, right?

 

[FLRussianHubby]

Not to worry--I'm not implying that I would do it. But, I would not have a problem at all with making the suggestion to the mgmt....

Of course, like I said, I severely doubt it will be done. So far, I'm going with contacting code enforcement. And, I was also informed (by a lawyer) that there's a really good possibility that they are in violation of the ADA rules--a few phone calls and they'll wish they never bought the complex!

 

[HomeGuru]

Keep waiting

**A: yes, I'll do that.

 

[HomeGuru]

I beg to differ with your "opinion." As your own signature line states, you are NOT a lawyer, so you are not really qualified to answer the question. You are stating an opinion.

That being said, I will await for someone who is actually qualified to answer the question.....

**A: this is funny.

 

[Zigner]

Not to worry--I'm not implying that I would do it. But, I would not have a problem at all with making the suggestion to the mgmt....

Of course, like I said, I severely doubt it will be done. So far, I'm going with contacting code enforcement. And, I was also informed (by a lawyer) that there's a really good possibility that they are in violation of the ADA rules--a few phone calls and they'll wish they never bought the complex!

Uh-huh

 

[FLRussianHubby]

Hey, one can dream....

 

[FarmerJ]

Like I said if there is a ord defining junk, non plated vehicles and you keep calling the city inspections about it yes they will get tired of the calls , too bad , eventually LL will know its getting the attention of inspections, police , city atty and like I said I can see LL acting on it, maybe in a positive way. Either way you look at it, LLs dont care for alot of negative attn from city officials since it can lead to other things being more closely looked at.