Abandoned car in my space

pmayes, be sure of your responsibilities if leaving it in your space and reporting it to the police.

I have heard that if you report it while it is still in your space you can be held to be responsible for disposing it and if you tow it on to the street AFTER reporting it you can be charged with dumping.

Is this car still registered? You should be able to find out using your traffic authorities’ web site.

Regardless, if you tow the car outside, and leave it parked normally in the street (not on the  nature strip), this should not be immediately considered “illegal dumping”, and I doubt the council can take action against you. It would just be an unregistered car parked there. Even councils have to wait a reasonable period of time before the car can then be declared “abandoned” and remove it, which becomes their responsibility. It seems that they cannot claim compensation from previous owners even if they are identified. The original owner is hardly likely to come back and complain that you moved his car.

In the past I have had a few cheap old “bangers” which I have used till they break down. I have then rung up one of the companies that offer “free removal” of cars; a tow truck turns up and takes the car away, I have never been asked for PoO or even personal ID.

@Kangaroo said:
You may (after a suitable period of notice) have the right to move the vehicle (to a legal parking spot), but I would strongly suggest you do not dispose of it.

What “right” is that?  As a far as I can tell, the law comes down firmly on the side of the vehicle owner which may not be clamped or towed without the owner’s consent.

But Kangaroo is right. The tarpaulin business does make a difference.  I would ask the strata manager to send a notice to all owners and residents telling them that a vehicle has been wrongly stored in a private parking space and giving them seven days to move it before “action” is taken to remove the vehicle and charge for the use of the space.

Or you could do this yourself.

I would say there’s a strong likelihood that and absentee owner has mistakenly stored the vehicle in the wrong space and has no idea that there is all this trouble around it.

Failing that, drag the car on to common property and let the Owners Corp know how it feels when someone washes their hands of a problem.

I have just remembered a case like this in a building in which I used to live where a tenant told a friend he could park his car in the block’s garage while he (the car owner) was away in Europe for six months.

The EC ran around in circles trying to find out who was responsible and I think it was only when a notice was sent to all residents saying that if the car wasn’t removed within seven days that “action would be taken to dispose of it”.

It wasn’t exactly an empty threat but there was nothing they could legally have done.  There was no comeback on either the tenant or his mate because the former hadn’t breached any by-laws and the latter didn’t come under by-laws.

It strikes me that it would solve a lot of problems in strata  if everyone who sets foot in or drove into a strata building was told that they either accepted they were subject to strata by-laws … or they could leave.

Kangaroo said 

Gotta go … I have to drag my bag of garbage out to the landing, share it with all in my SP, you know … and let someone else take it to the garbage bin.

Very droll.  The thing is, the EC has access to information and communications that the individual owner doesn’t have.  The EC can also instruct the strata manager to perform basic functions, like writing to people.  The EC can also set the tone for a building by helping people who are being treated unfairly and hammering the perpetrators.

In this case, the EC has chosen to wash its hands and do nothing when they could, for instance, have sent an email out to all owners (something the individual owner can’t do) telling whoever owns it to move the car.

So the EC has broken the contract of cooperation that should exist in strata buildings.  The problem is dropped in the too-hard basket and it’s every man for himself. If that’s their attitude, then stuff them.  

My view, if you don’t want to make your community a better place, then you are on the EC for your own selfish reasons.  Please, no more about poor volunteers – they only have to say no when they call for nomionations at the AGM –  and if they don’t want to help their neighbours then that’s exactly what they should do.

It strikes me that it would solve a lot of problems in strata  if everyone who sets foot in or drove into a strata building was told that they either accepted they were subject to strata by-laws … or they could leave.

It beggars belief that that legal principle doesn’t that already exist both in theory and in practice.

All the advice I’ve seen regarding problem parking, especially for non-resident car owners, is that they can’t legally be touched. The practical upshot seems to be that the parking thief’s rights to access and property protection supersedes the rights of residents to access their garages/parking bays, supersedes the right of the EC to have contractors access the building to perform repairs and maintenance, supersedes the right of the Body Corporate to control/manage improper access to private (albeit shared) property.

Why?

ECs should be able to take timely, preventative action without turning the property in to a jail. However all legal options seem to be limited to reactive steps involving considerable effort, delays and expense. A case of too little too late.

My interest in finding a solution (Qld) is fast becoming critical. As the owner of the end-most garage on an adequate (but not wide) driveway I regularly have to deal with my access being blocked by other residents, their visitors, taxi drivers and the increasingly prevalent delivery drivers all assuming their parking convenience is sufficient reason to block me out (or in) and that I should wait on their pleasure for my access. The street is already parked out and a new large unit block under construction a few doors up is only going to be make things worse.

Worst case if I was blocked out and my car was damaged in a storm I should be able to simply legally identify and recover damages from the person whose actions directly prevented me from getting my car under cover. Plus recover damages for the delays and all expenses associated being without the use of my vehicle during repairs and costs of pursuit of these.

Or if I opened my tilt garage door from the inside and their car was scratched that should not be my responsibility. They should be paying the BC for the cost of repairs to the garage door.

What can I actually do (owner-resident and Treasurer on EC) so I’m not driven mad by the ongoing delays and frustrations I semi-regularly encounter and will likely encounter more frequently in future? I can appreciate how the concept of some spiteful action against the offending vehicle would appear to be both highly appealing and seem to be the “only” thing that an effected resident could do.