and those people often have cars.

We see this at BYU and UVU, but it's a common problem everywhere. Colleges don't want to make the parking lots to accommodate their students; apartment complexes and landlords of rented homes don't want to provide adequate parking (why would either group—land is valuable!). So you have ordinances that allow landlords to cram people into residential areas, often without requirements to provide for adequate parking for the cars that all those people will naturally have.

The lazy "solution" to this problem is to contract out with towing companies, who essentially drive laps through their designated parking lots (especially during peak times). Practically speaking, there's very little oversight of their towing practices—no matter whether the towing company made a mistake or not, you have to pay. And you have to jump through their hoops to get your car back, so if they say you need a notarized letter to get your car, you need a notarized letter. If they say it costs $75 a day for your car to sit in their impound lot, you won't get it back until you've paid them what they say you owe. It feels like a shakedown; they seize your car without any sort of notice or process or proof, and you don't get it back unless you can figure out who took it, get yourself down there, and pay them enough to give it back to you.

This works particularly well in college towns because college students are generally living on razor thin margins—they don't have the know-how, time, or money to legally fight a towing company; they don't have a secondary method of transportation (it's not like they have a second car they can drive while they sort things out with the towing company); they're not members of the community in which they live (but their landlords are), so student concerns with towing are rarely priorities for the city counsels that pass local ordinances; etc.

And so you get situations like these (all of which have happened to my siblings or cousins in Provo/Vineyard):

• Park improperly (for less than 15 min) to go pick up your date that lives in the building—towed by a tow truck that was waiting in the parking lot
• Park in the spot next to your spot (because a car with a dead battery that you tried to help jumpstart is improperly parked in your spot)—towed, even though it's the summer and the parking lot has TONS of extra spaces
• Park correctly, but with your lot sticker on your car's rear side window (instead of windshield or rear window)—towed, b/c towing company didn't see your sticker (and still had to pay)