Letter to Editor: Parking worries with new large apartments and advice

South San Francisco, CA   January 16, 2020  by South City resident

I would like to apologize to our neighbors for taking up street parking but we have been given no choice due to harassing property managers.  Two different issues that will be explained below.

I live in a new apartment complex in ssf with a large underground parking lot.  When the apartment was first constructed it had a total of 15 guest parking spots.  Now the building managers have taken back 7 parking spots, 5 for cars and 2 used for storage thus only having 8 remaining spots for guests.  Management states that is too bad and if there is no parking the guest must park outside.

The next issue is assigned parking goes as 1 bedroom = 1 spot, 2 bedroom = 1 spot, and 3 bedroom is 2 spots.  Many people in the apartment do not fully utilize all their spots and have shared the unused space with fellow tenants.  Recently the property managers have decided to enforce the lease policy that only the tenant is allowed to park in their spot and no one else, not even their guests.  All other cars must be parked outside.  This has now filled the adjacent streets around the apartment.

Now with the new developments popping up, i believe it will have a big impact on parking with the surrounding neighbors.  Many families have more than 1 cars and 1 assigned parking spot is not enough and the burden of parking will be moved to the streets surrounding the new buildings.  I would hope to think that new developments and city planning would force developers to include enough parking in the designs.

If anyone has any advice for me it would be great but its very disappointing to see a empty garage that is not utilized while the streets are full and neighbors are forced to walk a few blocks due to management who decides to utilize every loophole in the lease as a display of their authority.