Neighbors do not like to make concessions: some believe that if they have lived in a house for decades, they have the right to a permanent place under the windows. Therefore, they try to delimit the space in all possible ways: putting up old tires, throwing ropes, etc. Others are sure: whoever comes home from work first is the one who belongs.
Experts interviewed by Rossiyskaya Gazeta offer civilized ways to resolve any conflict.
Practical solutions to the problem of parking spaces
In practice, residents and management organizations try to solve the parking problem in different ways.
“Once they set fire to a garbage dump in a house, four fire trucks arrived, but there was no way to get into the yard,” recalls Valeri Shutov, president of the Association of Owners of Zvezdnaya 17 (Kursk). that unoccupied parking spaces should be allocated for emergency vehicles and special services (in front of each entrance there is parking for an ambulance, a fire truck, places for refueling fire trucks at hydrants, etc.) and whether there is a division of parking spaces , then there will be no parking at the house at all, only guest parking will remain – arrive, unload and leave. Everything fell into place immediately. Now no one says bad words or gets angry, and when they tried to install metal locking devices behind the house, they called the local police and within ten minutes they cut all the chains and padlocks.”
Previously, parking spaces were not allocated to residents, they were occupied by those who arrived first, and there was a lot of indignation, says Sergei Belosludtsev, president of the Tsentralny-98 (Omsk) Owners’ Association.
“Then the board made a decision: we give parking spaces for cars on the territory owned by the HOA for a fee, with payment in receipts monthly, to apartment owners for a year. There are no complaints from residents. Now “Everything is in order, the spaces are cleaned by the janitors, they are neat and clean,” says He. It is possible to hold a meeting of owners to allocate part of the parking spaces to specific owners for rent, using the funds received for the maintenance of the territory agrees Valentina Osipova, president of the board of directors of the Strogino-1 housing cooperative (Moscow).
There is an option to equip the entrance to the courtyard with an access system that determines the maximum number of parking spaces, comments Magomed Ramazanov, general director of the Comfort Management company (St. Petersburg): If all parking spaces are occupied, then The resident will not be able to enter. This prevents residents from crossing for a personal confrontation, but it costs money.
“There is a paid parking lot nearby, but the residents do not want to use it, so they disperse themselves in the yard,” says the head of the Nizhny Novgorod Homeowners’ Association, Lidiya Yurina. It’s good that the house is away from highways. “The option of creating additional free parking spaces nearby is unrealistic: there is not enough free land near the house,” notes the president of Lenina 160 HOA from Serov (Sverdlovsk region).
Everything is shared, everything is common.
Parking spaces in the courtyards of high-rise buildings are mainly located on land plots of apartment buildings, which belong to common property and are in common and shared ownership of the owners of the apartments of such a building, explains Nadezhda Kosareva, president of the Institute. from the Urban Economy Foundation. The general meeting of owners may adopt the procedure for using said parking spaces. If such an order is not adopted, all owners will have the same right to use parking spaces, according to the principle “who comes first, parks the car.” So there is no reason for controversy here, but there is incorrect and discourteous behavior on the part of those who try to limit the parking rights of their neighbors, the expert believes.
It is possible to determine a special procedure for use only if the local area has been inspected and registered in the cadastral register. Exactly how to do this is decided differently by regions: in some places these issues are dealt with by city authorities, in others by the residents themselves. If the land is registered as shared common property, residents can place a barrier at the entrance to the yard (if permitted by city improvement rules) to isolate unauthorized motorists, as well as agree on the use of the parking lot by of the residents. of the house. This requires a decision of the general meeting. If they wish, residents can, for example, circumvent, provide permanent spaces for disabled neighbors or decide not to have any parking spaces in the yard.
The managing partner of the company “Ilyumzhinov, Rusyaev and Partners”, lawyer Ilya Rusyaev, adds that the estimated cost of topographic survey for apartment buildings is 30 to 50 thousand rubles, depending on the region and the area of the site. The costs will be borne by all residents in proportion to their contributions.
“After registering the site, the owners will be able to establish the required number of parking spaces, determine the rules for their use, including the possibility of renting parking spaces for residents or third parties. This will avoid conflicts and disputes in the future”, adds the lawyer.
Another option is to negotiate with local authorities to organize free or paid municipal parking. This will require a request from the resident initiative group to the administration with a request to consider this possibility. Most of the time, municipalities meet citizens halfway and assign them a parking lot if there is free land next to the house.
In theory, a resident could buy a piece of land in the yard to park his car as if it were his own, but in practice this is unlikely. To do this, he needs the consent of the neighbors to reduce the common property. Or businessmen can open a paid parking lot there (many cities have this type of parking lot: the area is surrounded by a network and there is a security guard at the entrance).
“Therefore, residents have several legal ways to streamline the parking process and avoid conflicts over parking spaces. The main thing is to take the initiative and constructively resolve emerging problems,” Ilya Rusyaev is sure.
Less parking means less traffic jams
The lack of free parking spaces in the courtyard of a high-rise building is both a legacy of Soviet planning of the adjacent space, which, in principle, did not provide for the mass availability of personal vehicles, and the conscious position of many developers. they underestimate the parking coefficient when designing, says Nikita Chulochnikov, president of the AKON Association. Paid parking spaces in affordable and middle-class homes sell poorly for two reasons: their small size and high cost. According to the building codes approved in 2016, the dimensions of parking spaces are much smaller than the actual dimensions of most modern cars, he notes. The proportion of optimally sized parking spaces is clearly insufficient; Its cost is much higher and can be correlated with the cost of the car itself.
When designing the local area of new buildings, there are not enough parking spaces, and the driveways are narrow, which does not allow convenient parallel parking; A free parking area for guests is often not provided for, continues Chulochnikov. To allow the passage of large special equipment (garbage trucks, firefighters, etc.) at the entrances within the blocks, parking is often prohibited and barriers are dismantled.
A way out of this situation, according to Chulochnikov, could be a regulatory increase in the size of parking spaces and legislative approval of a higher parking coefficient for new buildings and its flexible differentiation for housing of different classes. When selling housing in a new building, you can initially provide for a reserve and the owner’s obligation to purchase at least one parking space in the future, which will be transferred to the new owner when the apartment is sold, he believes.
Meanwhile, in recent years, authorities have strongly recommended that regions lower standards for the number of parking spaces for new buildings. Unclaimed underground parking drives up the cost of apartments, and extensive parking around buildings eats up space. Additionally, if there are parking problems, the resident can give up the idea of buying a car, which will reduce traffic congestion. Priority is given to the development of public transport.
Kosareva believes that it is possible to more flexibly regulate the rules for creating parking spaces during the construction of new houses. In large cities, the abundance of parking spaces only worsens traffic congestion. If we are talking about a small city without traffic jams, the authorities can require developers to provide more civilized parking around the house.
You weren’t standing here
Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Property, Land and Property Relations of the State Duma Sergei Gavrilov calls on residents not to establish their own laws.
“Let’s start with the fact that no one has the right to consider part of the yard as his property only at his whim, therefore the statements that “this is my parking place”, as well as any deceptive structures: chains, fences brick and boards, marks on the asphalt, as well as statements threatening to vacate a parking space, do not have legal force. In addition, it must be understood that a parking space, by force of law, remains part of a building or structure , and not drawings on the asphalt, structures made of boards and bricks, improvised structures made with chains, etc. If your neighbor has simply marked off a space with bottles, cones, tires, boards with bricks, or old chairs or stools (i.e. , structures that do not need to be dismantled with special means), and interfere with parking, then you can first write a complaint to the management company or the local administration that garbage and other foreign objects are not removed from the yard, attaching a photo of these objects, in this case they will simply come and take them away,” explains the parliamentarian.
Another option is to contact the territorial body of the district administration: supervision of state lands is carried out by state land inspectors who take measures to suppress or eliminate the consequences of identified violations of agrarian legislation.
“In accordance with Article 7.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, unauthorized occupation of a land plot, which means that a person uses a land plot without legal basis and against the will of the owner, entails imposition of fines: an administrative fine for citizens of at least five thousand rubles; for officials, at least twenty thousand rubles, and if it is proven that any company has taken over parking spaces, the fine in any case will be at least one hundred thousand rubles. To solve this problem, it is necessary to write down the number of the vehicle whose owner parks in this way, take photographs of his vehicle and his improvised fence, write a statement and send it to the local land control department, attaching the photographs taken and, if possible, the address of the car owner. As a result, the state land inspector arrives and fines the offender, such calls can also be made again. If someone parking illegally threatens you or damages your car, don’t hesitate to contact the police. Write down the threats and write a statement. It makes sense to install a recorder in the car that records what is happening around it,” adds the deputy.
