Chicago Parking Enforcement Raids Private Homes

Published Nov 4th, 2009

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-Having visited Chicago, famed author Rudyard Kipling wrote: “I have struck a city – a real city – and they call it Chicago… I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.”

Chicago has all of the big city negatives you would expect: crime, congestion, pollution, corruption, grit, expense, poverty, stress, etc., but it also has something extra–Contempt for its own residents.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Chicago’s all-out war against car owners. Rather than adopting progressive community car parks or dedicating itself to an outstanding mass transit system, or giving tax breaks for car pooling or energy-efficient cars, Chicago’s approach is to create an impossible obstacle course of potential parking violations that seek to ensnare even the most clever individuals.

The war is fought on several fronts and your war chest is the primary goal:

(links to related news articles below)

• Increasing parking rates
• Reduction of available parking
• Increased parking enforcement
• Increased automated enforcement

The result is a Byzantine mine field of potential parking and driving hazards that are not only bleeding the residents of money, but bleeding their spirits as well.  With the ever-deteriorating state of Chicago public transit (CTA) and a new threat of increased bus and train fares, residents are feeling the constricting stranglehold of local government as it squeezes the life out of their mobility and ultimately–their quality of life.  Business owners, already feeling a hit from the city’s astonishing 10.25% sales tax, (the highest in the nation) are now faced with having to attract shell-shocked customers who would rather shop the burbs than risk entering the labyrinth of the Minotaur–that is now the city of Chicago.

I have sarcastically compared Chicago to a “breakaway Soviet republic,” because of it’s shabby appearance and dictatorial mayor, to “Gotham City,” because of its bleakness, lack of soulfulness and corruption, to the “Third World” because of its large tracts of abject poverty, gang violence and crumbling infrastructure, but I usually only meant those quips half-heartedly.

Now, however, I stand behind those remarks.  Today, the Chicago Police came into my private parking garage, in a condo building and ticketed all cars without a residential permit parking sticker at $120 per ticket.  This was on PRIVATE PROPERTY!  The government trespassed onto privately-held land and issued tickets without any warning and without the permission of the landowners.  This seems to violate every fundamental American notion of privacy and protection against unlawful search and seizure.  If I owned a house, with a garage attached to it, next to it or behind it, would I not be allowed to keep a car there whether it was registered or not, insured or not, and with or without a residential permit?  Why then is a condo owner, who OWNS their parking space not entitled to the same rights?  Beware all Chicago homeowners, for a knock at your door will soon be at hand, so the police may enter your garage and inspect your car for a residential permit.  If they can invade a private condo building, then they apparently have the authority to gain entrance to your enclosed garage as well.

Today I realized my hunch was right, Chicago cares nothing of its residents.  This is a city that is dying a slow death, as it consumes the last bit of revenue it can raise through absurd contrivances like selling its Skyway or its parking meters, by installing cameras everywhere, by creating street parking riddles through deceptive signage and by sending its police force onto the private property of residents to scope for any excuse they can to hang a ticket on your car.

I once joked that in Chicago you can get a ticket in your sleep.  That concept is no longer a joke, but a sad reality in a city that is broke, desperate and slowly sinking back into the swamp it once rose out of with such promise.  Never have I been in a city of such melancholy, where psychological depression hovers like a toxic cloud over the streets and buildings, where people settle for such mediocrity in their urban lifestyle and accept such a minimal quality of life.  Some residents–no less due to the fact that they’re either in denial or simply do not know any better–will even defend Chicago against critical observations, which are obvious to any outsider.

Today’s ticket and the subsequent state violation of my personal property is the final straw for me.  I gave Chicago five years to grow on me and instead it infected me with a rot to my soul that will take years to undo.  Clearly, the Olympic Committee sensed a similar sense of this ennui which permeates every corner of Chicago and they were keen enough to see through the window dressing of carefully-placed flower planters and river walk gimmicks.  Chicago is a sadly neglected, difficult and lifeless place to live–absent of much human warmth, dynamism, culture or vision and having only a smattering of the opportunities, tastes, sights and energy that are so abundant in other large cities.