It started as a normal shared-driveway gripe: someone swears the pavement is getting beat up, someone else swears they have every right to drive on it. Then one Spokane Valley homeowner looked out and found three bollards planted in the strip of blacktop that functions as the only practical access to her home and adult family home business.
The details, including who installed the barriers and why it escalated into a lawsuit involving Spokane Transit Authority, are laid out in the original post. But the moment that sticks is how physical this got: not a note on the door, not a cone, not a “call me,” but infrastructure—installed to make sure larger vehicles couldn’t get through.
A shared driveway turns into a choke point
On this small block there are four houses, and Atalalech “Tutu” Aberra has lived at the end of the drive since 2013. She runs an adult family home out of her place, caring for up to four clients with disabilities at a time. Last year she also bought the next-door house—between her home and neighbor Cary Edwards—tightening the pressure on what’s basically the neighborhood’s one narrow funnel in and out.
City documents say Aberra has an easement over a paved strip crossing Edwards’ property, and that the people coming to her home for care and services can use it too. In real-life terms, that means the easement isn’t just “Aberra’s car” now and then. It’s caregivers, visitors, and sometimes paratransit vans that her residents rely on for work, appointments, and basic life errands…