Dead Man Parking

It's the right thing to do. Grant special parking privileges for Chicago drivers with disabilities, that is, to ensure safe parking within steps of their homes. It's a program offered to Chicago residents for the modest cost of $70, plus an annual $25 maintenance fee and proof of disability.

Nearly 11,500 people in Chicago took advantage of this altruistic parking program last year. Problem is, according to a recently published investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times, a fair number of them are dead.

Throughout the city of Chicago -- from Beverley to Edison Park -- from Lincoln Square to Bridgeport -- some 260 active permits for this special parking program for the physically challanged are held in the name of someone who has long since passed away.

Some as many as five years ago.

Yet somebody in Chicago is using those special parking spaces.

That 1984 Buick LeSabre you've seen occupying that choice spot over on Kedzie Avenue? Dead man parking. The old, rutsing jalopy always sitting at the corner of 63^rd -- or is it 73^rd -- and Paulina Street? Dead man parking. In fact, dead men (and women) have been parking on city streets in neighborhoods all across Chicago.

It may not come as much of a surprise, in a city where certain cemeteries often show greater voter turnout than neighboring wards come election time, that 260 recipients of these special parking spaces no longer count themselves among the living.

The problem extends beyond the stolen identity of deceased disabled drivers. According to the Sun-Times investigation, 1,097 of these special parking spaces -- almost 10 percent -- have been reserved at Chicago addresses that hold no state-issued disabled drivers license. This, by law, is something one must have to even qualify for such a program.

Not wanting to appear draconian towards the disabled community, however, the Chicago Department of Revenue has allowed its monitoring of the parking program to grow lax.

Very lax.

As a result the program has been taken advantage of by imposters who assume the deceased person's identity -- sometimes for years -- while enjoying the convenience of a personal parking space just steps away from their front porch, storefront, or building entranceway. Perpetrators are most often relatives of the person who originally applied for, and was legally granted, the special 16-foot parking space by the City of Chicago.

Doing so, critics and community leaders say, not only cheats the system. It also cheats one's neighbors of legitimate dibs on that prime parking spot while tainting with corruption a parking program meant only to help those who need it most of a little less hassle.

Must be nice for these parking space scam artists; until, that is, one gets busted. Those 260 individuals who have had their identities stolen were not available for comment.

For more read "No Dead End to Disabled Parking in City" by Eric Herman of the Chicago Sun-Times.