Tips for Boosting City Pride

There is a lot of talk about what it’s going to take to improve Costa Mesa. The complaints are endless: over-crowded apartments, over-parked streets, not enough park land or lighted fields, and the list goes on.

Many of these issues are structural and cannot be fixed over night. Some will take years.

But what can a resident do right now to improve the city?

The first thing you can do is take a look at your own home. The second is to take a look at your neighborhood.

How does your house look? Is the paint fresh and bright? Are the colors from the ’80s or earlier? Do you have large oil stains on the driveway?

How about your landscaping? Those shrubs you planted 30 years ago may have a lot of sentimental value, but they may also just be overgrown. You might want to think about replanting.

How are your fences? If they are original, chances they are more than 40 years old.

Now the next question will have more impact on your home and neighborhood than all of the above.

Can you park a car in your garage? We are all guilty at one time or another of putting so much stuff in our garages that we cannot get two cars in.

But if you cannot get even one car in the garage, it is way past the time to think about an early spring cleaning. One of the biggest blights to any neighborhood is cars on the street.

What has happened to many neighborhoods around town is that over time garages have become so full of stuff that more and more cars are being parked in the street. Though this is not in any way illegal or violation of code, it just looks better to have cars in garages.

Now I know a lot of you are going to say, “I can park both my cars in the driveway, so it shouldn’t matter if my garage is full.”

Trust me, it looks better to have cars in the garage instead of the driveway. It frees up space on your driveway for friends and family to park when they come by. It also makes the neighborhood look better.

Think also of the benefits. It’s so much nicer to get into a shiny car in the morning instead of one dripping with dew, especially if you just had it washed the day before.

By the way, this issue is more critical for apartment owners. Are your tenants using the garages for storage? Especially in these areas of higher density it is very important that garages are used for cars. These neighborhoods were not designed to have everyone park on the street.

Now, you may not be able to force tenants to park in the garage, but you can require, as a term of the lease, to keep clear a space for a car. It is easy to tell which landlords monitor garages and which ones don’t. The good ones check every 60 days to make sure they are not stuffed with junk.

While we are on the subject of landlords, how about implementing occupancy standards?

Though the city has its hands tied in enforcing reasonable occupancy standards, as long as you follow Fair Housing guidelines, you can restrict how many people live in an apartment. Seven people in a two-bedroom apartment may not be illegal, but it sure brings down the neighborhood.

I will let you in on a secret: It is hard to get good quality tenants if they cannot park their car and two families live in the apartment next door.

Next week I am going to talk about code enforcement and how you can get involved to improve your neighborhood.

Costa Mesa may have some issues but it has a great coastal location with terrific people and a lot of outstanding neighborhoods.

Let’s have everyone do their part to keep it that way. It’s called neighborhood pride. Costa Mesa pride. I would not live anywhere else.