L.A. cracks down on RV parking
LOS ANGELES» For a while, Vincent Neill and his family parked their weathered RVs on a stretch of roadway in Canoga Park, where the kids had friends down the street.
But then business owners began to complain, he said. So Neill, his wife and their seven children relocated their caravan of vehicles to a Chatsworth manufacturing zone.
Then a new set of signs went up on that curving street, banning bulky vehicles from parking there between 2 and 6 a.m.
“We got evicted by the red zone,” Neill said.
So the family moved again, this time to another industrial street about a mile away. And Neill said others soon followed: By February, as many as a dozen RVs were regularly stationing themselves on a single block of Irondale Avenue, a nagging frustration to nearby businesses and a stark reminder of a simmering crisis.
As dilapidated campers have become rolling homes for the destitute, they have become another battleground over blight, nuisances and the rights of the poor in Los Angeles. Facing complaints about trash, clogged roads and other hazards, the city has banned them from remaining overnight on street after street but often has ended up merely moving the problem.
Across Los Angeles, it was illegal to live in a vehicle until a federal court struck down that citywide ban four years ago. L.A. then passed a new law that barred vehicle dwellers from spending the night near homes, parks and schools but allowed them to park and sleep on a scattering of streets in industrial and commercial districts, marked in green on city maps.
But even those roads can be off-limits if the city has posted street-by-street signs banning overnight parking. More than a year after the new law went into effect, the City Council has clamped down gradually on where RVs — the most obvious manifestation of people sleeping in their vehicles — can park legally for the night.
A Times analysis found that since the ordinance was approved, lawmakers have
voted to ban “oversize vehicles” from parking overnight on more than 300 street segments from Chatsworth to San Pedro. Some of the banned areas span only a short block, while others extend as long as 3 miles.
Not all of the new restrictions have been triggered specifically by RVs. Many areas with new limitations on parking were prohibited for vehicle dwellers. But lawmakers say the rise in homelessness — and people living in their vehicles as a result — has helped drive the demand.
Scores of streets have gotten new signs in the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods represented by Councilwoman Nury Martinez, who voted against the new law allowing parking in commercial and industrial areas.
“It’s easy to stand up and say, ‘Allow people to live in their cars,’ when the issue is not going to be as prevalent in their district as it will be in mine,” Martinez told the Daily News.
Businesses and residents have pushed frequently for such rules, complaining that commercial and industrial streets have been inun- dated with bulky vehicles. The council also has imposed street-by-street restrictions in some areas that ban vehicles of all sizes from parking overnight.
At a recent meeting at City Hall, Chandra Mosley and other members of the View Heights Block Club pleaded for new restrictions on trucks and RVs parking in their South L.A. neighborhood. Mosley said that the street across from her church had become an eyesore over the last year, cluttered with trash and sewage dumped by people living there in campers and buses.
Some neighbors have seen drug deals as they pass, she added.
“Even walking down the street to pick up my newspaper I’m getting complaints,” said Councilman Bob Blumenfield.
“We don’t want our neighborhoods to become campsites.”
But simply banning RVs on more and more streets is “untenable,” Blumenfield said.
Los Angeles has been slow to provide “safe parking” locations for people living in RVs and other vehicles to spend the night legally.
So when the signs go up, the blocky vehicles sometimes move just a few streets away, spurring complaints from a new set of neighbors. That was what happened when new signs went up on some streets in Chatsworth, including the curving road where Neill and his family had once parked.
“When they cleared them out over there, they all landed over here,” said Michelle Jurgaitis, general manager of Classic Cosmetics Inc., which abuts Irondale.
Jurgaitis said she felt for families living in the RVs, but she lamented that some vehicle dwellers had strewn the business’ property with needles and excrement. Workers have had to park far away in the early morning because the street was lined with boxy vehicles, she said.
And Jurgaitis said the small shop on their manufacturing site had been losing customers.
Irene Shaffa, who owns another nearby business, said workers had become fearful of taking walks at lunchtime, and they waited to make sure everyone was picked up safely before they left. The shabby state of Irondale had even spurred her company to fly employees out of state for important meetings.
“We deal with a lot of major corporations and we will not bring them to our warehouses . ... It’s embarrassing,” Shaffa said last month.