Overnight parking at churches approved

Palo Alto will allow up to four safe spaces for vehicle dwellers

PALO ALTO >> Following the lead of Mountain View and East Palo Alto, council members have agreed to allow overnight parking for vehicle dwellers, but with stricter conditions.

A new safe parking pilot program that council members unanimously supported Monday night would start with four safe parking spaces on church parking lots that agree to participate in an effort to deal with the increasing number of people who are living in their cars.

The pilot is one of three steps the city is embarking on to allow overnight parking in the city, beginning with parking at religious institutions, then later to private commercial parking lots and eventually city-owned lots.

The program, like others in the Peninsula, also will connect vehicle dwellers with services and case management in the hopes of connecting them to more permanent stable housing.

But unlike some other cities that have taken similar steps to house temporarily homeless people living in their cars, Palo Alto’s religious institutions will have to first get a permit. And people living in their cars will have to comply with city rules mandating they have a California driver’s license, car insurance and car ownership paperwork.

The program also restricts overnight parking to between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m.

But some residents are worried about how effective such overnight parking will be since the program applies to religious institutions only for the first year and a half and the number of spots is not nearly enough to house the dozens of people living in their cars in the city. City officials hope starting the program will give them a better sense of just how many people are living in their vehicles in Palo Alto.

Council members last night agreed that the original plan was too strict for religious institutions, which would have had to renew their permits every 90 days and the program itself expired in March 2022.

Proposing amendments to the staff ordinance, Council member Tom DuBois asked colleagues to support him in notifying only residents living adjacent to a safe parking lot, not those living within a 600-foot radius as originally proposed. After an attempt to compromise at

300 feet, the council split in a 4-3 vote to accept the staff’s recommendation.

Council members Lydia Kou, Vice Mayor Tom Dubois and Mayor Adrian Fine dissented, arguing that something as small as what the pilot is proposing likely won’t affect residents all that much.

“We’re treating this like it’s 10 or 20 cars,” DuBois said. “We notify people within 600 feet for a large project like a police station. Immediate neighbors is what we do for twostory houses, and that’s what staff recommended. We are tailoring these rules for what’s a very small program, we’re overdoing this for four vehicles.”

But Greg Tanaka said that given the controversial nature of the measure, the city should make every effort to notify residents about the program.

“To not notify our residents is basically taking us toward possible failure,” Tanaka said. “There are people who don’t align with people who spoke today, and people will get upset about this which will take us back to square one. We should be cautious to make it successful, so we should get the feedback.”

Council member Alison Cormack, who supported notifying people up to 600 feet away from a safe parking location, also warned against setting up onerous requirements for people living in their vehicles. She said the council likely will have to revisit the issue of proper vehicle documentation.

“In those instances, cities have provided additional funding” to help people pay for driver’s licenses, registration or insurance, Cormack said. “That’s something we should think about to make this successful. People might come back and ask for assistance.”

Like many council members and residents who spoke before the council Monday, housing activist Kelsey Banes said the increase that the city has seen in vehicle dwellers over the past several years is but one symptom of a housing shortage that has persisted in the Bay Area for over a decade.

She added that though she supports the program, it could have gone further.

“The current proposal is very modest,” Banes said, encouraging council members to take more bold action. “The time limits are actively unhelpful for people who are trying to get back on their feet. Why not let them do 24-hour parking? It makes it much easier for case managers to know where a person is going to be.”

Banes also cautioned the council not to go down the same path as Mountain View, which included parking enforcement for vehicles parked on city streets as part of their overnight parking plan.

“Some of the most depressing canvassing I’ve done has been in Mountain View,” Banes said. “The desire for them to just disappear is there. But elsewhere isn’t a place; pushing people further into poverty, making their lives harder, is not going to help them get into housing.”

For Councilwoman Kou, the program is a significant first step.

“This has been a pretty long process, nearly a year,” Kou said. “I’m very pleased that we’re where we are now. In terms of addressing the problem and finding a way not to just sweep it under the rug, we need to ensure we can find jobs and stable housing for people to enjoy, and that children are cared for and are attending school.”