Coalition sues to stop ‘poverty tows’
The old Buick made Charlie Mikich’s back ache and Kai Martin’s knees throb, but it worked as the San Francisco couple’s home of last resort — until it got towed.
Rather than pay the impound fine, the couple bought a roomier blue van where they often stayed near Golden Gate Park, in the Sunset neighborhood where Mikich grew up. That, too — like the red van and the Mercury Grand Marquis that would come later — got towed.
“In the four years we’ve been together, we’ve had four vehicles taken,” said Mikich, 39. “The moment ... we can start feeling at least somewhat comfortable with our life, it gets uprooted again.”
For the growing numbers of San Franciscans like Mikich and Martin living in cars, trucks and RVs, towtruck bills aren’t just a financial headache. They can amount to a sudden eviction. And it’s a practice that homeless advocates are fighting to stop amid a much bigger postCOVID reckoning.
On Tuesday, lawyers for nonprofit advocacy group the Coalition on Homelessness asked a county Superior Court judge to halt socalled “poverty tows” that result from five unpaid parking tickets, according to a copy of a legal motion provided to The Chronicle.
The towing lawsuit was first filed against the city and county of San Francisco, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the city’s Police Department and towing contractor San Francisco AutoReturn in 2018, but plaintiffs say their case was bolstered when the city temporarily stopped the tows during the pandemic.
“Now we know that the city’s systems all keep functioning, even if the city doesn’t tow for this reason,” said Elisa DellaPiana, legal director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, which filed the court motion along with Bay Area Legal Aid and law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.
The battle over towing is one of several legal challenges, protest movements and political campaigns playing out across California as homeless
and tenant advocates push to stop displacement and extend eviction moratoriums after the current statewide order expires on June 30. In the process, Bay Area governments and residents must answer big questions about where people should go as cities reopen and housing prices soar.
San Francisco transportation officials announced in May that they planned to “resume enforcement” of towing programs following a temporary moratorium that began in March 2020, after shelterinplace orders were announced. The move led to contentious public meetings and vows from the city to do more to eliminate the burden on poor and homeless residents, but activists are still planning additional protests.
SFMTA officials told the agency’s board of directors in May that towing is necessary to ensure public safety and address “quality of life” concerns. The agency reported 1,941 tows for five or more unpaid tickets during the 2019 fiscal year, which made up about 4% of total tows that year. Homeless advocates say that penalties for expired registrations (4,048 tows in 2019) and parking for more than 72 hours (1,987 tows) also disproportionately target unhoused people.
At around $574 per vehicle, towing is also expensive for SMFTA. Last year, the agency lost $4.7 million on its towing program. And while the city paused nonemergency tows during the past year, activists point out that police and transportation authorities still had leeway to tow some vehicles.
It already happened this year to Mikich and Martin, who say it’s not always clear why their cars and vans were being towed, though they acknowledge that registration problems were one recurring issue. What’s more pressing, they say, is the financial pressure to either bail a car out or buy a new one, plus the fear of police who often dole out citations.
“It really makes it to where you can’t sleep well,” said Martin, 37. “Every little door closing, you think it’s going to be a cop behind you.”
SFMTA officials have said they plan to bring a more comprehensive towing plan forward later this year to address equity concerns, and the agency offers fee reductions and payment plans for lowincome and homeless residents. Still, some public officials have recently questioned the effectiveness of the city’s current approach.
“I don’t think it makes sense for us to make poverty tows, you know, from an economic standpoint, not even talking about the moral one,” SFMTA Board Chair Gwyneth Borden said at a May meeting. “The whole idea of shuffling people around the city to avoid being towed is not a sustainable, or even a good way, for people to live or to be treated.”
About 35% of the 5,180 unsheltered people counted in San Francisco in 2019 lived in vehicles, up significantly from 13% of homeless residents in 2015. The city and others around the region were slated to conduct updated homeless counts this year, but the process was put on hold due to the pandemic, making it unclear exactly how many people may currently be living in vehicles.
Just before the pandemic hit, an experimental city Vehicle Triage Center near the Balboa Park BART station was closed after offering safe parking and resources to people living in up to 30 cars and RVs at a time. San Francisco also has a “Problem Solving” program that offers some cash aid to people who lack stable housing.
In practice, Kelley Cutler, a human rights organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness, said she met at least one person a week before the pandemic scrambling to raise hundreds of dollars to get a vehicle out of an impound lot or figure out where to sleep instead.
“Think about it,” Cutler said. “If you lose your housing and you happen to have a vehicle, you have a little bit of safety there. You can lock the door. You’re not having to literally carry everything on your back.”
But San Francisco’s homeless response efforts have changed drastically during the pandemic, with officials closing public access to the shelter wait list amid largescale sweeps of encampments, major new investments in safe sleeping sites and hotel rooms funded by state and federal programs.
Take Mikich and Martin, who both have health issues and since August have lived in a shelterinplace hotel room with her therapy dog, an Akita mix named Phantazma. They’ve been promised help finding longerterm housing, and they’re really hoping it pans out.
Mikich said their Mercury — the couples’ only other housing prospect — was recently towed for an expired registration.