Los Angeles - Overnight Parking in Santa Monica?

Even though the City of Santa Monica has an extensive website with parking lot locations and real-time availability, it doesn't quite address the issue of whether people can park overnight. Does anyone know the rules around overnight street and garage parking in SM? Or am I stuck with the $30/day valet charge for the hotel? :td:

Even though the City of Santa Monica has an extensive website with parking lot locations and real-time availability, it doesn't quite address the issue of whether people can park overnight. Does anyone know the rules around overnight street and garage parking in SM? Or am I stuck with the $30/day valet charge for the hotel? :td:
The city garages are open 24 hours a day(or at least they have been when I've been there in past years). The city's website confirms this:
http://www01.smgov.net/planning/temp_transport_old/wheretopark.html
Structures 1 through 9
Open 24 hours 8am - 6pm: first 2 hours free, $1 each additional 30 minutes; $9 maximum daily; entering after 6pm: $5 flat rate

http://parking.smgov.net/det_downtown.html
http://parkingspacenow.smgov.net/

I saw this on their website.. called the city, who then directed me to call Central Parking.. although they tried to be helpful, both parties gave conflicting answers. The city said the garages were open 24hrs but did not know whether overnight parking was allowed.. but they did verify that garages had to be open 24/7 because residents needed a place to park, etc. Central Parking said the garages weren't actually open 24 hrs and it was a park-at-your-own-risk situation (which is true anyway, regardless of the time).

Has anyone had experience with actually trying this out?

All metered streets in SM are no parking from 3-5am.

Many residential areas in the tourist areas require a parking permit and some near the beach are immediate tow away if you do not have the proper residential permit.

My guess is that the hotel valets use structures 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, and 6 to park customers cars so they must have access somehow to get in and out 24/7.

Last time I parked overnight in one of the garages was a little more than a year and a half ago. No problems, no concerns, although I would consider normal safety measures like not leaving anything valuable in the vehicle. I did not try to go in and out in the middle of the night. There are some garages that are not 24 hour garages that may be part of the confusion.

Thanks. I am thinking of Structure 2, which looks promising.

Will post afterwards with experience.

I have not tried parking overnight in structure 2, but do know that the downtown Santa Monica Parking Structures have self serve kiosks that accept credit cards for easy exit. These parking structures are easy to enter and exit at all times.

Well, for starters, the Santa Monica Parking Structures have signs that clearly state "No Overnight Parking". Thus, it's definitely park at your own risk in those situations.

As for viable, legal options.. I ended up parking overnight in residential areas. In my case, this was on 2nd street north/west of Idaho St. In these areas, the street signs restricted parking once a week for cleaning (usually a weekday for 2 hrs).

Most other spots, metered and non-metered, required a resident permit for overnight parking (or simply did not allow overnight parking altogether). This is clearly stated in the street signs for parking.

Last but not least, there were a few metered spots that did allow non-resident overnight parking but you had to be up early the next morning to feed the meter. We saw these kinds of spots on 2nd street between Wilshire and California.