u/Character_Bobcat_357

I and my roommate (both uni students) lived together for the last 5 years, recently our relation degraded for a bunch of personal reasons. We’ve been living in a new place for a year, and the first 8 month we’ve been paying the rented parking spot equally for like 50.- a month each (we’re three). We did that because neither of us really used the spot but we’re forced to pay for it.

A few month ago he acquired a car (for like 10’000.-, including services and repair) and he’s been using the spot for like 70-80% of the month since.
So I’ve asked him how he wanted to sort the payment of the spot since he was now almost exclusively using it. (With my other roommate we maybe used it like 1-2 days in three month)

I proposed him two options;
- Count the days he used it, and pay 3.- per day so that if he used it for the whole month he would pay the entire price (150.-) and if he didn’t use it at all, each of us would pay 50.-. And this would be applied to all three of us, and nobody would have the priority on the spot if more than one of us wanted to use it at the same time.
- Pay the entire thing every month and he would then get the complete priority for parking.

He’s been avoiding the discutions every time I mention it, and he’s been making me feel like an asshole for asking him money. He currently paid only 30.- for using the spot for like three entire month.
We’ve had another conflict today where he justified himself by saying that we weren’t doing that before, so why change it right now. Also that’s he’s the only one who tried to rent it to other people and that he doesn’t really have the money for it.

Am I the asshole for asking him money and insisting about it ?
Please help me, I kinda feel bad because of him and want to apologize if I was in the wrong. I tried to be as impartial as possible but don’t hesitate to ask for detail in order to clear out anything about my behaviors or his situation.

Edit: forgot some relatively important information, we used this spot for our bicycles before. But not anymore as we got (justified g complain from neighbor when having both cars and bicycle because both couldn’t fit entirely on our spot, we have a common bicycle storage room in the building, but it’s constantly overfilled and absolutely horrible to navigate without spending 10min just to get your bike out of it. People mostly use it to store their bike for long term. Daily user keep theirs by theirs doors or on their parking places.

Edit+: here are the main arguments:

YTA:
- petty budgeting for example: if he was using the kitchen more would you make him pay ?
- not an optional cost, everyone has the responsibility to pay for equal availability

NTA:
- privilege were lost on my side and gained on his side, which would be corrected by making him pay
- we already do cost splitting relative to our benefits: larger room pay more, exclusive bathroom pay more, so kind of the same logic for the spot
(This argument wouldn’t hold if his usage didn’t affect us in any way, but it does so I think this argument has some relevance)

I’m still not convinced, I agree with both. Would feel like the asshole if his usage didn’t affect me. I will still answer the replies until I feel like I know where I sit.

Edit++:
I’m more and more convinced that I have an ESH situation here; I understand the pettiness of my action about this specific matter, and the inconvenience I’m causing him. And I also agree that he’s taking advantage of an agreement made in different circumstances and that he’s not really considering my other roommate and me when leaving his car here almost non stop and not leaving any room for us to use the spot.
I’m probably not going to reply to any more comments, except if you make good points that were not already mentioned.