Leaving a note on the offender's car may work; but it may not if that specific person is rarely around to visit their friends' apartment. A better strategy would be to talk directly to your neighbors about it. That way they can instruct ALL their friends about where to park the next time they visit.
<ranting hijack>
A bit of an aside, Long Beach has this great policy where they do street sweeping *twice* a week, once in one direction and once in the other. Parking in my old neighborhood was bad enough as is; but street sweeping days really made it tight as everyone must pile in on one side of the street(s). One week I had to park a couple blocks down as there was nothing by my house. It was about 10:30pm and I had the good fortune of finding a big stretch of open curb. I parked behind a VW Jetta leaving a couple feet to get in and out. Plus I left space behind me big enough for another car. Just beyond that extra space was a driveway.
The next morning, I walked up to my car to find that someone left a nastygram note on my windshield berating me for rudely blocking their car in. I looked around and noted that, in front of my car, the Jetta was gone and an SUV was in it's place. Behind me, where there had been a blank space, another SUV was parked. Neither of those SUVs were there when I parked, so I have no idea why *I* got the nastygram.
Clearly someone had pulled out and one of the big SUVs decided to cram themselves in sometime after I parked. Looking at the layout, there was no possible way I could have squeezed in inbetween those two SUVs unless I had gotten out and pushed the car in sideways. Of course, the notewriter didn't want to think logically, s/he just decided to assume it was me somehow.
Man, so many rude people have damaged my car and my sister's car in the Long Beach parking culture. People trying to parallel park their big ol' cars were always smacking into my bumper and scratching it. My front license plate is all jacked up as if it's been hit with a battering ram. My sister also has several gashes in her bumper plus a big 4" scratch and dent where someone tried to parallel park into the back driver's side door of her 2000 Jetta.
I stopped being Miss Considerate and starting leaving big healthy gaps between my car and the one in front of me even when moving up a little meant someone else could have parked behind me. Too bad!!!!
</ranting hijack>
Good luck in getting it sorted out, Lifesaver. Hopefully your neighbors just didn't know and they won't do it again.
.....Kelly
