CT Towing Companies Ignoring Law Meant to Protect Low-Income Residents

Elias Natal left for work one evening last December and his Buick was gone.

Natal, a resident at Sunset Ridge Apartments in New Haven, discovered the car had been towed by Lombard Motors, the company contracted to police parking at the complex. What followed was a four-day ordeal that advocates say illustrates exactly what Connecticut’s new towing law was designed to prevent, and exactly how that law is failing.

Connecticut’s General Assembly overhauled the state’s towing statutes in 2025, pushing through rules that took effect in October with the explicit goal of protecting low-income residents from predatory towing practices. The law requires towing companies to give advance notice before hauling vehicles for minor violations like missing parking permits or parking in the wrong space. Companies must also accept credit cards, provide change for cash payments, and stay available after hours so residents can retrieve their vehicles without racking up storage fees.

Lombard Motors, according to Natal, followed none of those rules.

No signs. No notice. No change.

Visits to Sunset Ridge and interviews with tenants showed the complex had posted no towing warning signs, which the law requires apartment complexes to display. Natal said he was told he’d been towed for failing to display a parking permit, but he had photos showing the sticker was visible on his windshield exactly where the apartment manager told him to put it. When he and his partner, Jasmin Flores, found Lombard’s lot, the company was already closed. No one came to the phone. The car sat overnight, and the storage clock kept running.

When they finally got the money together, the bill had climbed to nearly $500 in just four days, even though Lombard’s lot was only a few blocks from Sunset Ridge. The company demanded cash. Natal and Flores paid. Then they had to argue to get their change back.

“Especially after the copious amounts of money that they asked of us, to then not give us back like our minuscule change is just, it’s dehumanizing,” Natal told CT Mirror.

A pattern across New Haven and Norwalk

Natal’s experience isn’t an outlier. The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica spent roughly 18 months investigating towing practices across the state, finding that existing laws consistently favored towing companies at the expense of low-income residents. That reporting contributed directly to the legislative overhaul. Now, follow-up reporting shows the new law isn’t being uniformly enforced.

Residents at low-income apartment complexes say towing companies continue to patrol their properties and remove cars for minor violations, despite a provision requiring most involuntary tows from apartment complexes to be triggered by specific complaints rather than roving patrols. The pattern appears concentrated at properties where many tenants receive state or federal rental assistance, including at Sunset Ridge and at Samuel Roodner Court in Norwalk, where investigators documented ongoing issues as recently as December 19, 2025.

The dynamic is straightforward: a tow truck company earns money on every car it removes. The faster those cars pile up fees, the more revenue the company collects before the owner can pay. Residents on tight budgets can’t always pull together $300 or $400 on a Tuesday night, which means an extra day of storage turns a nuisance into a financial crisis. In the worst cases under the old law, owners who couldn’t pay lost their vehicles entirely when companies sold them after a short holding period.

The General Assembly’s 2025 reforms targeted that cycle. The after-hours access requirement was designed specifically to stop storage fees from multiplying overnight. The credit card mandate was designed to remove cash-only barriers. The complaint-triggered tow requirement was designed to end the economics of patrol towing at apartment complexes.

Enforcement is the gap

The law exists. The Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles oversees towing company licensing and has authority to investigate complaints and revoke licenses. What isn’t clear is whether the agency has moved aggressively against companies that residents and advocates say are continuing to ignore the new rules since October.

For Natal and Flores, the legislative backstory offered little comfort. They paid $500 in cash, retrieved their car, and got their change only after pushing for it. The law that was supposed to protect them was on the books when Lombard towed the Buick. It didn’t stop the tow, didn’t keep the lot open that night, and didn’t prevent the company from refusing their credit card.

The General Assembly is currently in session through June, and advocates are already calling on lawmakers to revisit enforcement mechanisms before the summer recess.