End to RV parking shuts down makeshift homelessness solution
Driving out vehicles forces owners to find new places to reside
Joe Kniss, a.k.a. Joe Scrapper, emerges from his Itasca RV, a day of hard work behind him and a bottle of Henderson whiskey and cigarette on hand to mark quitting time.
“I know my days are numbered,” he said of his living situation of the past six months on West Eighth Avenue in an industrial section of Lakewood. “I’ll have to move along and find another place to live.”
Kniss and the owners of more than a dozen other recreational vehicles and trailers lining the sides of West Eighth and Quail Street have one month to find a
new place to take their RVs.
Lakewood City Council unanimously passed a measure this week barring people from parking RVs or travel trailers on public streets anywhere in Lakewood, a restriction that had previously applied only to residential areas.
The prohibition takes effect Oct. 26.
The measure effectively heads off a new front in the growing challenge of homelessness in metro Denver. Scott Shields, CEO of homeless advocacy organization Family Tree, said it’s the first RV encampment he has heard of in the area, and it illustrates the difficulties people are facing dealing with housing prices that have been on a tear over the past decade.
“The visibility of homelessness has become magnified in the last few years,” Shields said.
The city says the RV encampment tucked among a collection of federal offices, Jefferson County School District buildings and the headquarters of Christy Sports has elicited multiple complaints from surrounding businesses, including concerns about trash, the dumping of wastewater, oil and raw sewage, and the renting of RVs to others to live in.
What that means to people such as Kniss, who had found some refuge in Lakewood from the continuous pressure of finding a safe place to sleep at night, is that they will have to be on the hunt for a new place to park their homes on wheels where authorities won’t be knocking on their doors.
Family Tree has reached out to Lakewood to offer its assistance in helping the RV dwellers relocate. But Shields acknowledged the task will not be easy given the lack of available affordable housing in and around Denver.
Having an RV is better than not having any shelter whatsoever, he said, but it’s far from ideal.
“It gives folks a little bit of wiggle room, but there are challenges as to where these people can relocate themselves,” he said. “There’s not a lot we can immediately offer. But we’re going to be there to do what we can.”
According to the annual Point in Time survey by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, 2019 saw an 8.2% jump in homelessness across the metro area — from 5,317 to 5,755 people. The survey showed Jefferson County with 434 homeless residents.
Lakewood Police Sgt. Jon Alesch said his department will take a gradual approach — or “soft start” — to enforcing the new ordinance.
“We don’t immediately go out and enforce it to its full strength,” he said. “We’ll let them know that they have this much time to find another place and that we’ll be back to check on their progress.”
Lakewood’s situation echoes what has happened in several California cities, where sky-high housing prices have led thousands to turn RVs into homes and city streets into temporary residential lots. Similar complaints about trash and waste being dumped on city streets in the Golden State led officials there to take action, as well.
The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reported that the Mountain View City Council voted this week to prohibit the parking of RVs on most of the city’s streets, following similar moves in East Palo Alto and Berkeley.
Down a single block of Quail Street in Lakewood, RVs and trailers in varying states of disrepair line both sides of the street, some up on blocks and others with junk piled up in the driver’s seat.
Most have curtains drawn all the way around; behind one RV is an accompanying car with a shattered windshield. Kniss criticizes some of his fellow RV occupants for the appearance of their vehicles, saying it has brought unwanted attention to those like him who are “trying to keep a low profile.” Kniss has experienced homelessness for a dozen years.
It’s not possible, he said, for many in the metro area to come up with first and last months’ rent and a deposit to get into a home they can call their own, especially with surging rental prices in recent years. According to RealPage, a real estate software firm based in Texas, average metroDenver rents increased 82% from 2010 to 2018.
Wheat Ridge and north Lakewood led the pack in the metro area over that period, RealPage found, with average rents nearly doubling from $696 in 2010 to $1,380 last year.
“If you want to get rid of us, provide us with housing,” Kniss said.
Across West Eighth sits a white pickup truck with a trailer attached that he uses to collect scrap metal throughout the metro area. He recovered 2,000 pounds of material on a single day this week.
“This is my way of getting off the street,” he said. “People like me should be allowed to stay here. I’m not stagnant.”