Neighbor tells homeowner he can't remove his garden wall because he wants to continue to park in front of it: 'He says his girlfriend now has nowhere to park'

When you have a car in an urban environment, you end up spending most of your time trying to park it. Especially when you don't have off-street parking and are forced to contend with the masses for the extremely limited resource that is the parking space. And every time you move your car to go somewhere, you have to try and park it twice, once wherever you're going, and again when you return home.

Even when you go out of town, you have to worry about your car, and arrange someone to move it for you so that it doesn't get ticketed and towed for being “abandoned.” You basically end up spending your entire life worrying about how long you have before you have to move your car again, counting down the hours, days, or minutes before some opportunistic parking warden is going to swoop in and tuck yet another ticket under your windshield wiper. 

In this story, this homeowner shared how, in an attempt to get around having to do this, he decided to remove his garden wall to allow for more parking, which prompted a confrontation with a disgruntled neighbor.

AITAH for knocking down my wall in the front garden and creating even less parking on our street?

_{Story / Strict-Historian2790}

I live on a pretty tight, narrow little street, not much road parking, if any [to be honest]! Folk are very lucky if they can find a parking space on the road I live on. My next-door neighbour has an open driveway. Then there's a wall at the front (owned by me, not him, it isn't a shared wall), then our smaller entrance driveway. His girlfriend comes over every day and parks in front of that wall, which, I mean, she can. She's not over our drive.

Anyway, I passed my driver's test recently, and want to get my own car, I'm using my partner's at the moment, but want my own, and i want to be able to put it on the drive. 

And figured if we knock that wall down, ill be able to, as it'll make our driveway bigger. So that's what we've done. 

Today, me and my dad were out front, knocking down the wall, and my neighbour comes outside looking all confused and asks what I'm doing. So I tell him my plans and he says his girlfriend now has nowhere to park. I asked why she can't park over his drive, he said when they go out they use his car, so it would be a pain in the a*%.

I told him I was sorry, but this was my wall and this is what i want to do. He then basically reprimanded me and kicked off at me for "removing one of the very few parking spaces on our road, like our road wasn't sh** enough for parking." I again told him that I was sorry, but that wasn't my problem.

AITAH?

To the neighbor's defense, change is pain. The uncertainty presented now, from what was a pretty good situation on his part, is definitely driving the reaction. Still, you can't just go around demanding that people do what you want them to with their own property. 

Though, you can't help but wonder whether there isn't some rule among the local authorities prohibiting converting every square inch of your front yard into a parking area. Usually there's at least some rule about what designates an actual driveway. It's very likely that the neighbor can just go on parking there like before, and the homeowner has no right to complain about the fact that he can't remove his car from his new parking space.

However, the homeowner's information provided in responses to this comment gives more information on this area of the situation. He clearly doesn't think that there is a rule preventing him from doing this where he lives.

W0nderingMe

INFO: I can't figure out how removing a wall reduces the amount of street parking.

Strict-Historian2790
Original Poster

Sorry, ill try and explain. Many houses on our street don't have driveways, and those people who live on the street have access to a carpark at the end of the road via a special key fob It's a very narrow street, me, and my neighbour do have driveways though, no idea why. I live in a village in the UK and our road is very "higgledy-piggledy." Its really awkward to explain, but there's basically barely any road parking down the street, because too many cars makes it impossible to get down.

But his girlfriend parks outside my house on the other side of my wall, really close. I'm removing that wall, so she'll no longer be able to park there, because it will be my extended driveway entrance and you can get fined for parking over people's driveways so obviously she won't be parking there. And there's literally barely (if any) anywhere else for her to park.

Sorry if that's confusing. 😅