Skip to main content
You’re wrong: City code absolutely allows private property owners to tow trespassing cars immediately—Hungry Tiger & Retriever Towing did it to me in 2008. Moreover, since private lots can’t hunt you down like the government can, holding your car for ransom is their best chance of getting paid. So my question stands: Why don’t private lots tow right away rather than writing fake “tickets”? —Welcome to Portlandistan
This question refers to last week’s column, in which I explained why private lots give you parking ticket-like “penalty notices” when you don’t comply with their rules, rather than just towing your car and taking a dump in your air filter like they did back in Mayor Frank Ivancie’s day.
I don’t doubt that you got towed, Welcome, and I certainly sympathize with your desire to live in 2008 forever. (You won’t believe who they got to be president after Obama!) That said, the portions of city code pertaining to private parking enforcement have been amended to parkers’ benefit several times over the past 20 years.
The rule about having to wait 24 hours before towing, for example, was supposed to go into effect in 2005—could you be misremembering the date? Then again, maybe you’re not; news accounts from that era suggest that plenty of tow operators continued their predatory practices for several years after those 2005 reforms made them theoretically unlawful.
I understand that you want to believe city code doesn’t say what it says (since it would mean admitting you’re wrong), but it’s pretty clear: If you’re not a repeat offender, and you’re parked in a real space (i.e., not on the sidewalk, halfway across the median, or nose-down in a decorative fountain), any “registered [parking] facility” has to wait 24 hours before having you towed. (The rules may be different for unregistered facilities, but they’re not the ones giving out penalty notices, so we’re not talking about them.)
Frankly, your own question makes the most potent argument for believing that this rule exists: Why else would they be cutting us slack? Either (a) gimlet-eyed private parking lot operators and their allies, the famously predatory towing companies, are, out of the goodness of their hearts, passing up the chance to screw folks like you and me out of thousands of dollars, or (b) some WW reader is talking—just slightly!—out of his ass. Your call.
Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.