Berkeley weighs opening city lots to RV dwellers
The Berkeley City Council was set to vote Tuesday on whether to let 25 RVs park in cityowned lots during nonbusiness hours — a move that comes nearly a year after the city backed off a plan to enforce an RV parking ban.
If the new measure is approved, Berkeley could begin to enforce its ban on RV parking on city streets from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. and cite violators. The citations would be given after RV dwellers are notified of the parking ban going into effect.
Under the plan, Berkeley would give priority to RV dwellers with children, people who work or study in Berkeley, and former city residents. Those eligible could park in six city lots for up to three months but would have to leave during business hours.
While there, residents would receive social services and help finding work or a permanent place to live.
The plan would cover a fraction of Berkeley RV dwellers. In December 2018, city staff counted 193 RVs, campers, converted buses and vehicles that people slept in, said Matthai Chakko, a Berkeley spokesman. A month later, in January 2019, a regionwide homeless count estimated 161 people living in RVs in Berkeley.
“The idea is that we want to give safe RV parking to as many vulnerable RV households as we can,” said Councilwoman Rashi Kesarwani, who estimated Tuesday that there were about 50 RVs parked near Harrison and Eighth streets alone.
In March, city leaders in Oakland criticized Berkeley’s proposed parking ban, saying Berkeley’s homeless RV dwellers would just come to Oakland. At the time, Oakland’s City Council president urged the Berkeley City Council to consider “compassionate alternatives.”
But Kesarwani said city staff never found a place to open a safe RV parking location for more than 25 vehicles. The new proposal is a compromise, she said, to help ease concerns from business owners near Gilman Street who have complained about health and safety concerns due to a growing number of RVs.
“Unlike some of our neighboring cities like Oakland and San Francisco, who have been able to identify large parking lots to be used for safe RV parking, the city of Berkeley did not have a large publicly owned parking lot that was not being used for another purpose,” she said.
Oakland opened its first RV location in June with 50 spaces and plans to open a second next week with 41.
Councilwoman Kate Harrison amended the proposal at Tuesday’s meeting and directed the city manager to continue identifying RV dwellers who would qualify for parking, as well as searching for other possible locations for people to park in.
Councilwoman Cheryl Davila expressed skepticism about the proposal.
“I wonder if we can really do some serious outreach on trying to lift people up instead of criminalizing them all the time for something that they can’t really change because they don’t really have the ability to change,” she said.
Davila also said she didn’t think three months was enough time to let people park — a concern that was echoed by people attending the meeting. One person called out, “Where do they go?”
City Manager Dee WilliamsRidley said staff would notify RV dwellers “multiple times” before citing them.
Several people held signs at the meeting that read, “Home is a sanctuary. Home is comfort. Home is refuge. Home is our RV.” Another sign read, “Shelter is a human right! Our community’s dreams live inside RVs.”
Negeene Mosaed owns a physical therapy clinic in downtown Berkeley and said she was disappointed in the city’s proposal.
“They have come up with a way of finding shelter,” she said. “They’re keeping themselves alive. And we are going to take this away from them? Or are we going to drive them out of town and criminalize them?”
Mayor Jesse Arreguín said the proposal is a “temporary and emergency” solution and said the city still plans to pursue more permanent solutions in the future. Arreguín said he’s been in conversation with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Emeryville Mayor Christian Patz about opening a regional RV safeparking location.
Kesarwani, a cosponsor of the Berkeley RV proposal, said it wasn’t perfect.
“It is a compromise policy that is trying to balance two very competing concerns and trying to honor the experience of both the smallbusiness owner in the Gilman district, as well as the lowincome senior living in an RV because they feel that they have no other place to be,” she said.