A break from steep towing fees for low-income people
While visiting friends in San Francisco earlier this year, Pamela Lynott was hit with overwhelming dread when she realized her car had been towed in the city with the highest fees in the nation.
The 65-year-old Lagunitas resident, who is disabled by multiple chronic spine injuries, takes in $964 a month in Social Security Disability Insurance, and was shocked when she learned she’d be on the hook for more than $400 to get her vehicle back.
“I was floored because I thought ‘How am I going to do this?’ ” Lynott said. “I can’t be without a car. I had to pay them. I didn’t have a choice.”
Although it’s too late for Lynott, on Tuesday the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors voted to lower towing fees for people like her, who are well under the federal poverty line. The program goes into effect July 1.
For individuals who make $24,280 and under, and households that bring in $50,200 and under, the MTA will offer a waiver for the more than $200 in administrative fees it charges people whose cars get towed. They will still be on the hook for a $229 fee charged by the towing company that contracts with the city, AutoReturn.
Low-income people who qualify under the new city policy can get on a payment plan for outstanding tickets, so they won’t have to pay hundreds of dollars up front when they arrive to get their towed vehicles back. And they can also have their boot fees greatly reduced.
“What’s hard for people in situations like this is trying to come up with that big lump sum,” said Anne Stuhldreher, director of financial justice in the city treasurer’s office, who helped advocate to have the MTA reform its fee policy.
“Imagine if you are low income or homeless, it can be devastating,” she said. “If you are homeless, you can lose your home, and for too many San Franciscans their car is their home.”
Towing costs average around $557 in San Francisco, the highest in the nation and two to three times higher than other major cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The cost has doubled in San Francisco over the past decade, and the number of cars being towed has decreased by 40 percent, Stuhldreher said.
If the regulations passed by the MTA on Tuesday were in effect when Lynott was towed, she would have had to pony up only about 50 percent of the fees to get her car back.
Instead, she paid the full amount and had to ask for help paying rent from a nonprofit homeless advocacy group.
When the city signed a new five-year contract in 2016 with AutoReturn, it negotiated a 5 percent decrease in fees. The company, though, can still charge drivers nearly $60 for the first day in storage fees and nearly $70 a day after that.
Those fees come in a city where around 95,000 residents are at or below the poverty line. The new regulations, though, will only affect people at 200 percent below the poverty line.
Even though she won’t benefit from the new regulations, Lynott is still pleased the city is doing something to alleviate some towing burdens.
“The greedy sons of guns still get their money, and the person gets to not be totally derailed from their life,” she said.