Residents launch campaign to block city’s RV ban
Mountain View has 30 days to gather more than 3,700 signatures
Mountain View had barely finalized its plan to ban RV dwellers from parking their vehicles on most streets throughout the city when a group of residents and housing advocates began a campaign to stop it in its tracks.
Outside of the city council meeting Tuesday night, organizers with the Mountain View Housing Justice Coalition handed out materials in their quest to collect more than 3,700 signatures — or those from at least 10% of the city’s registered voters — in the next 30 days.
If the organization and its volunteers are successful, they will stop the ban from taking effect and leave the council with a decision to make — either repeal the ban or ask the voters whether or not they want it.
“A lot of people in Mountain View want us to do something about vehicle dwellers, but I think most people want a solution rather than a ban,” said Lenny Siegel, former Mountain View mayor and a member of the Housing Justice Coalition. “And since we don’t have a solution yet, we’re going to start collecting signatures.”
Last month, the city council voted to essentially push all occupied, oversized vehicles — those measuring more than 7 feet high, 7 feet wide and 22 feet in length — away from residential areas of the city and onto a few primarily industrial streets starting in 2020. On Tuesday night, the council took a second vote to finalize that decision.
In doing so, the council passed two separate ordinances. One ordinance completely bans oversized vehicles from parking on city streets with designated bike lanes starting in January 2020 and the other bans the vehicles on narrow city streets measuring 40 feet wide or less starting on June 30, 2020.
The final approval Tuesday night culminated several years of discussions around how the city should handle the more than 200 residents living in RVs, campers and vehicles on streets within the city.
It also placed Mountain View among a growing number of Bay Area cities, including East Palo Alto and Berkeley, that have enacted parking restrictions to manage the growing number of residents who have sought refuge from the region’s crushing housing crisis by living in vehicles.
City staff and council members have said the ordinances aim to address safety concerns from residents in residential neighborhoods, including oversized vehicles blocking the line of sight for other drivers and encroaching on bicycle lanes. The 40foot wide street threshold was chosen because it was deemed to be the typical width of a residential street.
But some residents, including Siegel, say the ban passed by the council is “dishonest” and doesn’t match the problem that they’re trying to solve.
Some of the largest concentrations of oversized vehicles in the city are concentrated on Crisanto Avenue, Continental Circle and Wentworth Street. Most of those roads are bordered by a park, train tracks, apartment complexes or industrial buildings — but very few, if any single-family residential homes.
“I’m not opposed to the ordinance regarding the bike lanes… but this whole thing about streets being too narrow just doesn’t match the real world where the vehicles are located,” Siegel said, calling the ban “intolerant, inhumane and unconstitutional.”
More than a dozen members of the public spoke to the council Tuesday night and urged them to “stop the ban,” a sentiment echoed on stickers they wore. But one resident stood on the other side of the aisle.
Mountain View resident Shari Emling said she appreciated the council’s work on the measure.
“This is a regional issue and there is not a lack of compassion on this,” she said, pointing to the $2 million in funding the city has earmarked for programs and services for the homeless and unstably housed in recent years.
Despite vocal opposition, the council passed the measures without any discussion and with the same voting record as last month. But Councilmembers Alison Hicks, Chris Clark and Lucas Ramirez voted against the ban on narrow streets.
In addition to the new parking restrictions, the council on Tuesday night gave final approval to its safe parking program, which will provide up to 80 vehicle dwellers with a parking lot to sleep in overnight and connect them with caseworkers who’ll work to transition them to stable housing. The program will operate in a handful of parking lots throughout the city from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. every day.
But with half of the program’s anticipated 80 spots on temporary lots that will close by March 2020, many of the city’s vehicle dwellers will be left without the opportunity.