by Dave Altimari, Ginny Monk and Shahrzad Rasekh, The Connecticut Mirror This article was produced for ProPublicas Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. A Hartford woman never saw her car again after it was towed while she sat in housing court fighting an eviction.A home care worker had her car towed while she hurried to assist a patient down the stairs. A young man lost his car and slipped into financial instability after he mistakenly put his apartments parking sticker in the wrong spot.Late last month, Connecticut lawmakers, following a series of stories by The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica, passed sweeping reforms to the states towing laws that will address many of the issues drivers have complained about. The stories highlighted how towing companies can begin the process to sell peoples cars after 15 days, one of the shortest windows in the country.Reporters heard from dozens of drivers across Connecticut who had to pay exorbitant fees or had their vehicles sold when they couldnt afford the charges. Many told reporters about the severe consequences they experienced after their cars were towed or sold, including the loss of jobs, personal mementos and housing.While some peoples cars might not have been towed under the new law, which takes effect Oct. 1, it doesnt solve all the problems that vehicle owners raised. Here are some of their stories, as well as whether the changes in the new law would have helped them.Towing Home Health AidesNot fixed: The bill does not address this issue.Home care worker Maria Jimnez circled the Hartford apartment complex for low-income seniors, looking for a place to park. Jimnez drives patients to and from errands like doctors appointments and grocery shopping. Her patient that day last November used a cane, and Jimnez planned to park close so that her patient wouldnt have to walk too far.Unsuccessful, Jimnez stopped in front of the buildings entrance. I turned on the hazard lights and left the car on, just long enough to let her know I had arrived, since I didnt have her phone number, she said. Jimnez said she told a few bystanders she would be right back and asked them to keep an eye on her car. She said she went inside only briefly, and when she returned, the car was gone. Bystanders told Jimnez the car had been towed and that theyd pleaded with the trucks driver, to no avail. Tracy Wodatch, president and CEO at Connecticut Association for Healthcare at Home, said many of her members complain about getting ticketed or towed when theyre doing their jobs helping people.When it happens frequently enough at a particular complex, she said, an agency might speak with the landlord to ask for a designated spot. But there isnt a statewide mandate. New Jersey passed a law in 2018 allowing home health care workers, visiting nurses and others to apply for a placard similar to an accessible parking tag to place in their cars.Maybe we can talk to the legislators off session to see if theres anything we can do, Wodatch said.The company that towed Jimnez, MyHoopty.com, was in Watertown, and Jimnez was stranded over 30 miles away in Hartford. How will I get there if I dont have a car? she recalled thinking.MyHoopty owner Michael Festa said the vehicle was parked in the fire lane without its hazard lights on for 17 minutes before it was towed and that the apartment complex had hired MyHoopty to prevent such parking violations. This is a critical safety issue, particularly at an elderly housing complex where the emergency access can be a matter of life and death, Festa said. (MyHoopty has appeared in other stories in our series.) Get in TouchIf you have information about health workers and caregivers being towed while on the job, email Dave Altimari at daltimari@ctmirror.org or Ginny Monk at gmonk@ctmirror.org, or call 203-626-4705. The apartment complex owners didnt respond to calls and emails for comment.Jimnez said she makes about $290 a week. By the time she got to MyHoopty, the company told her the bill was more than $400.Her husband footed the bill. But it wasnt easy: The only reason I could afford it is because I work mornings, I work nights, he said.Short Meters and Unpaid TicketsNot fixed: The bill does not address this issue. Marie Franklin paid the parking meter and dashed into Hartford housing court for a December 2023 hearing that would determine if she would get evicted from her apartment. She worried about the parking. People can wait for hours for the judge to call their cases, but the Hartford Parking Authority limits nearby meters to two hours.So people facing eviction sometimes run the risk of getting a parking violation, getting their cars towed or missing their names being called for hearings, which can cause them to lose their housing in a default judgement for not showing up to court.Joshua Michtom, a Hartford City Council member and an attorney who has represented children and parents in juvenile court, said although theres a nearby parking garage, its more expensive and it fills up. You have to be there, but then you dont know how long youre going to have to wait, Michtom said. And the courts are not particularly forgiving if youre not there the moment your case gets called.When Franklins name was finally called, a judge rejected her plea to stave off eviction. Dejected and stressed about losing her home, she walked out of court only to discover her 2015 Volvo was gone. Franklin had more than a dozen unpaid parking tickets, some of which were nearly 20 years old. Shed forgotten about some, and others were for vehicles she no longer owned. About half of the tickets were for exceeding the meter limit or parking over the line near the courthouse.I had paid for the parking meter and everything, Franklin said. They drive around, and they look for peoples cars. Marie Franklins car was towed during her eviction hearing. (Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror) Jill Turlo, CEO of the Hartford Parking Authority, said the agencys officers use license plate scanners to find people with outstanding tickets. Turlo said high-traffic metered areas, like the street the courthouse is on, are regularly patrolled by parking enforcement. Turlo said that the parking authority has not received any requests to extend the time for metered parking near the courthouses.While towing cars for unpaid parking tickets is a common practice for cities, Minnesota passed a law last year barring such tows, seeing them as an unfair burden on low-income families. Several cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, have also stopped such tows after a California appeals court ruled that towing cars for unpaid parking tickets violated peoples rights against warrantless seizures, said Rebecca Miller, an attorney with the Western Center on Law & Poverty.Hartford has one of the strictest policies in Connecticut. A city ordinance allows tows after two or more unpaid tickets that date back to September 2012. Other cities including Danbury and New Britain dont tow for unpaid tickets. Norwalk and Waterbury will tow if there are four unpaid tickets; Stamford tows for three unpaid tickets or more than $250 owed, officials in those cities said. The limit in Bridgeport is $100, and New Havens is $200.We do have an ordinance where we can boot a car for unpaid tickets, but we havent used it in years, said Deborah Pacific, director of the Danbury Parking Authority.When Franklin went to eviction court, she had been trying to hold onto the place she and her daughter lived while she looked for a new job. Between unpaid fines, late fees, and towing and storage charges, it would have cost almost $3,000 to get her car back, she said. Get in TouchIf you have information about towing near courthouses, email Dave Altimari at daltimari@ctmirror.org or Ginny Monk at gmonk@ctmirror.org, or call 203-626-4705. I would have chose to pay whatever I owed to my housing. So my car, there was nothing I could do, Franklin said.The vehicle was towed by Metro Auto Body & Towing, which did not return calls and emails for comment. It was later sold by the lender.After losing her car and housing, Franklin moved to Florida to stay with her son.Parking Sticker in the Wrong PlaceFixed: Apartment residents now have 72 hours if caught without a parking permit or with an expired one.Its often little discrepancies that lead to big consequences. When Tishawn Tillman moved into his Hartford apartment in September, he got a parking sticker that allowed him to park in the buildings private lot. He said he wasnt sure where to put it, so he stuck it on the drivers side window. But less than a month later, his car was towed by Cross Country Automotive in Hartford.There is absolutely no legal documentation in my lease that says that this has to be strictly on the windshield, Tillman said.Minor rule violations such as parking crooked or not backing into a space have caused peoples cars to be towed and then sold when they couldnt afford the fees. Stories like Tillmans drove legislators to act. Under the new law, the towing company would have had to warn Tillman, giving him 72 hours to get a new sticker and place it in the right spot. The law also says towers have to get permission from the apartment complex to tow a vehicle unless its blocking traffic or parked in a fire lane.Tillman said he assumed his car had been stolen. But the police told him it had been towed.Tillman contacted Cross Country: I asked them, Did you see my sticker? And they said, We didnt see the sticker. He said he called the apartment manager, but he wouldnt help.When I realized that neither of the parties were going to budge on the matter, I told them that I wasnt going to pay the fine, even if I had the money, which I didnt at the time, Tillman said.Tillman said his bill was $200 but growing every day.He filed a complaint with the attorney generals office, which said it unsuccessfully tried to resolve the issue through its voluntary mediation program and recommended he complain to the Department of Motor Vehicles.Sal Sena, Cross Countrys owner, submitted a letter to the attorney general saying there are signs all over the parking lot explaining the rules. The apartment manager, Jack Matos, wrote to the attorney general that he talked with Sena about giving TIllman a discount on the towing fees.I reiterated Tishawn needs to make sure that its placed on the windshield, Matos wrote.Frustrated, Tillman eventually gave up trying to get his car back.I went from being a self-made young man with his own apartment and car to having to burn a hole in my pocket just to get to and from work on ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, he said.Unable to Reclaim Car Despite Having the TitleFixed: The law allows vehicle owners to reclaim their cars with other documents besides DMV registration.Shaleah Carr needed two more weeks until her DMV appointment in April to register the Chevrolet Malibu she had just bought from her mom. It was the earliest appointment she could get.Her boyfriend had taken the car to his brothers house to work on it when they decided to take it for a test drive. But the car broke down on U.S. Route 5 in South Windsor, and police called for a tow. Her boyfriend told the tow truck driver that the car was registered to Carrs mother and that Carr had the title and proof of insurance. But the towing company, Tolland Automotive, wouldnt release the vehicle to Carr because she wasnt the registered owner, said the companys owner, George Fellows. The vehicle was towed on a Friday afternoon, and by the time Carr was able to get to the lot on Monday morning, she owed more than $300.I told them Im on one income and I cant afford it, Carr said. I just paid my rent for that month, and I even asked, Do you guys do payments? Since then, her Malibu has been sitting in the companys lot. Shaleah Carr couldnt reclaim her car even though she has the title. (Shahrzad Rasekh/CT Mirror) Carrs dilemma has happened to people whose cars have been towed across Connecticut theyve been unable to quickly register their cars and then blocked from reclaiming them because theyre not registered in their names yet. By the time they can register their cars, so much time has passed that the tow bill is too expensive or the company has sold their car.The new law gives consumers time to register their car before it can be towed and requires towers to release vehicles if presented with the title or a bill of sale as proof of ownership. The law also requires towers to accept other forms of payment besides cash and demands towers have business hours on weekends so fees dont accrue while theyre closed.Fellows said police called them to the scene. Then we found out that this guy didnt own the car at all, Fellows said. Without the owner there, it had to come back to our shop.Carr called her mother. I was like, Youre going to have to come up here, but even if she does, she cant really do much, Carr said. She didnt have the money to get it back either.Carr said the last time she called Tolland Automotive, the bill was $800. Given that she paid her mother only $500 for the car, she said, it almost wasnt worth trying to get it back anymore.Fellows said Carrs mother did come into the office earlier this month with proof of registration, and he is willing to release the vehicle if she pays what is owed.Its all on them, he said. I mean they knew what the issue was back then. Why havent they come back? Asia Fields contributed reporting.