Lansing, MI Parking Rules: Abandoned Vehicles (2026)

Lansing amended the state Uniform Traffic Code it adopted under Chapter 404 to give city police explicit impound authority for abandoned vehicles, added after UTC Rule 618. 674) or simply abandoned. Once a vehicle is impounded, subsection (i)(2) requires the department to notify the owner by any manner reasonably calculated to reach them, and if no better method is available, notice can run as a newspaper announcement or a posting on the Police Department's website. The owner recovers the vehicle under subsection (i)(3) by paying whatever storage fees the City has incurred.

If nobody claims the vehicle or device within six months of impoundment, subsection (i)(4) lets the City donate it, with council approval, to a state-licensed charitable organization rather than auction or scrap it. Later subsections set up how those charities get chosen: an organization applies to the City Clerk with proof of its state charitable license, a mission statement, a description of how it intends to distribute the vehicles, and an indemnification agreement, and the Clerk forwards applications to council for referral to committee. The City then tries to rotate donations among all approved charities in roughly equal numbers, with pickups handled through the Police Department's quartermaster unit. 01(i) is specifically the tool for vehicles abandoned on public property.