Make ‘poverty towing’ moratorium permanent
It began with a $90 citation. It ended with 32yearold MiQueesha Willis losing the home she shared with her 2yearold son, Tobias. And it all went down because the city of San Francisco chose to tow her legally parked car.
Willis, a construction worker, was living in her car with her child due to the high cost of housing. She parked near the worksite, but often could not move her car to avoid parking tickets due to the demands of her job. Between taking care of Tobias and trying to find stable housing, the ticket became the last thing on her mind.
Over the next few months, Willis accumulated multiple tickets while the attendant late fees compounded by hundreds of dollars. She couldn’t afford to pay. One day, when she returned from work, her car — her young family’s only form of shelter — was gone.
Willis experienced what is commonly referred to as a “poverty tow.” When someone cannot afford to pay five or more parking tickets, San Francisco has historically towed their car. When someone’s car registration is overdue, San Francisco tows their car. And when someone parks their car in the same spot for 72 hours because they can’t afford a private parking garage and free spaces are few and far between, San Francisco tows their car.
These tows disparately impact San Francisco’s poorest families, who are punished for not being able to pay. From July 2018 to June 2020, there were 13,600 poverty tows conducted in San Francisco. A quarter of these poverty tows — 3,405 tows — occurred in BayviewHunters Point, the neighborhood with the largest Black population in the city. District Six, which includes the Tenderloin, saw the next highest total, with 2,374 poverty tows, followed by District Nine, which includes the Mission District, with 1,693 poverty tows.
For people unable to afford traditional housing, a vehicle provides security and stability beyond a tent or makeshift encampment. But because the cost of retrieval after a tow can balloon to $2,500 or more, many wind up losing their vehicle completely.
When your car is your home, its loss is devastating.
Like Willis, many people living in vehicles work full time, sometimes taking on more than one job to get by. And yet amid the Bay Area’s housing crisis, they are still unable to afford rent. Losing a vehicle means losing critical shelter, storage for possessions and transportation. It can also mean employment, debilitating debt and being forced to sleep on the street. This trauma upon trauma is too drastic a punishment for parking violations, and for the noncriminal activity of being poor.
As if that weren’t reason enough to eliminate the practice, towing the cars of the working poor like Willis actually costs the city money; San Francisco loses millions of dollars from towing each year. Annually, the city’s tow program operates at a $4.7 million deficit, with lowincome tows representing $1.4 million of the shortfall. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is already facing a multimilliondollar budget shortfall thanks to the COVID19 pandemic. This has resulted in cuts to service that have impacted those who were already struggling in our city: lowincome communities of color.
Permanently eliminating poverty towing would improve transit equity while helping to preserve SFMTA’s coffers.
To his credit, SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin suspended poverty towing during COVID19 shelterinplace orders. Tumlin, too, knows the challenges of seeking shelter in a vehicle: Following the loss of his apartment to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, he was forced to live out of his car for a month.
On Tuesday afternoon, the SFMTA Board of Directors will hold a hearing on towing reform. This could be the opportunity to end poverty towing in San Francisco once and for all. Or it could be the beginning of a return to the cruel and ineffective preCOVID19 status quo.
SFMTA’s nonemergency towing moratorium has been in place for over a year. It has provided safety and eased the anxiety of thousands of the city’s most vulnerable residents throughout the pandemic. This is tantamount to a successful pilot program. Instead of reinstating a towing regime that punishes our city’s poorest, it is time to acknowledge the success of the moratorium and permanently end poverty tows.
The economic consequences of COVID19 have only made it harder for lowincome families and people who are vehicularly housed to meet their basic needs. San Francisco should do everything it can to make it easier — not harder — for working families to survive and thrive.