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Honest mistake that got my car towed by the church

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I hate to beg, ask for help even, or get anyone in anyway involved in my business, but I’m officially asking. A situation arose recently where my truck got towed by our lovely neighbourhood church. The neighbourhood we live in has one single street for parking on to share between 3 apartment complexes, a youth hostel, and a handful of houses. Needless to say finding parking is always a struggle. Especially when the church patrons would rather use the street because it is all of 20 feet closer to the church than the parking lot is. Leaving no other option than to park in their lot anyway. This is not out of convenience on the residents part but sincerely necessity after the church patrons chose convenience. And yes they do have signs posted saying that is their lot and anyone there without their consent basically can and will be towed. I understand that. During the day it’s fine as long as you remember to move it so that you don’t park there overnight. I usually do. Twice out of the entire two years we’ve lived here I have forgotten to move my truck. An honest mistake, not out of convenience or laziness. The first morning I was lucky enough to be working at 6am and moved my car early enough - even though they put a note on my car time stamped at 6am when I leave at 5:30am... the second time I wasn’t so lucky and they towed my truck - again at 6am on a Sunday morning when they obviously didn’t even want to give me the chance to wake up and fix my mistake. Add to that the fact that their lot is absolutely never even close to full during service hours so my truck being there one day out of 365 days would not have hurt anyone. I have tried multiple times to plead with the church about the parking problem and how I have never taken advantage of their parking spaces and only ever end up in their lot because of a situation their patrons create in the first place and they won’t even have a conversation with me. As you can see I’m not asking for a lot of money here. But unfortunately for me, and unbeknownst to the church because they refuse to look outside of themselves even for a second to consider others poor circumstances, this came at a time when I was hit with multiple financial blows all at the same time ranging from taxes to car repairs to less hours at work to apartment issues our landlord ignores so we have to fix out of pocket. It may seem like why would I even bother asking for this amount of money especially when it’s because of a mistake I fully admit I made but I promise you it was an honest mistake when and it would really make a world of difference in my life right now. I’m not trying to bad mouth churches or Christians. I’m saying this one particular church made a decision that was legally right but morally wrong and affected me more than they ever could have guessed at this point in time in my life. I know this is a lot to say just for it to end up meaning my truck got towed because I made a stupid, unintentional error and now I need help paying for the ticket... but I would not ask if I didn’t feel that there was truly an injustice at the root of this situation that needed to be righted for some faith in humanity to be restored. When I can’t even associate a church with a place of forgiveness and helping those in need when that’s what the whole thing is supposed to be about, you really just need a reminder that people are better than that. And yes I obviously need the money too...

Organizer

Katie Dilworth
Organizer
San Diego, CA

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