In Colorado Springs city council members have recently approved of new carport rules. It is going to impact new and existing carports and those existing ones will not be grandfathered in to the changes apparently.
Those that don't make the cut will either need to be taken down or they will need to be fixed.
If a homeowner has a carport on their property that hasn't caused anyone else any trouble, or their property, it is still a problem for the city it seems and they are now going to be cracking down. But why now? The rules come after some allegedly had complained that the carports restrict vision and that they aren't nice to look at.
According to one city council member there is one citizen that allegedly received a 'complaint' or violation code themselves it sounds like, and were then so upset that they drove around the city and made complaints about 60 other carports they found in the community that they believed to be troublesome.
This is the sort of behavior that quickly and unjustly restricts individual liberty from one community to the other. How many complaints does it take before property owners have their rights violated and are told what sort of carport they can or cannot have? It doesn't sound like it takes a majority to get the ball rolling on that sort of infringement. This sort of overreach eventually extends to being told what curtains you can have, whether you can have a garden or grow food, or even if you can collect rainwater.
The city should look for better things to do than cracking down on how people park their vehicles. This isn't the sort of behavior that improves lives for members of the community but instead is an action that deteriorates quality of life for some and erodes individual liberty with power grabs over carports.
Sources:
https://www.koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/city-council-approves-ordinance-regulating-existing-future-carports
https://gazette.com/premium/colorado-springs-approves-new-carport-rules-no-existing-carports-will-be-grandfathered-in/article_dd574a90-4cba-11ec-bed6-df2b62115a77.html