Riding out the COVID-19 threat sheltered in RVs
Homeless struggling to find work, food, pay rent — but some have found a respite
MOUNTAIN VIEW >> Water sometimes gets inside Abraham Jimenez’s old, beat-up RV where he has lived with his wife for 10 years.
The sewage tank is always breaking down or backing up, a pesky problem he’s tried to fix the past four years but can’t because of his bursitis. His wife has been trying to fix a stove burner that no longer works by watching YouTube videos, all while helping out other RV dwellers with child care.
“My RV is very old, but it’s home,” Jimenez said in a recent interview.
He said his bursitis has kept him from doing handyman work most of the past year so his family has barely scraped by. And now with the coronavirus pandemic
closing everything down, Jimenez said, any chance for a job or steady work has disappeared alongside his savings.
But at the very least, Jimenez said he knows he can stay put where he is — at one of the 39 spaces set aside at the Shoreline Amphitheatre parking lot in Mountain View by Santa Clara County for some of the many homeless RV dwellers who have become a familiar sight up and down the Peninsula.
“When we were parked along a busy road, the trucks would always move the motor home when it went by. I hated it, ” Jimenez said. “Here, it doesn’t move.
Here it’s a good spot. I feel at peace.”
Before the coronavirus outbreak, Jimenez and other RV dwellers allowed to stay overnight at the Shoreline lot through Mountain View’s “safe parking program” faced a daily routine of having to move their vehicles elsewhere between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., often along Crisanto Avenue and Shoreline Boulevard.
When shelter-in-place orders went into effect in mid-March mandating that people stay put and isolate, homeless RV dwellers were allowed to stay 24/7 at the approximately 80 designated spaces in private and city-owned parking lots sanctioned under the program.
Hand-washing and sanitary stations were set up
at the sites, and hookups for water are coming soon. Generators are now allowed as well.
As “extremely generous” as those changes have been, Malia Pires, executive director of the youth and families advocacy group Reach Potential Movement, said there still aren’t enough available spaces and some program loopholes are leaving “vulnerable populations” of RV dwellers behind.
Dozens of those happen to be Hispanic day laborers, hospital workers, restaurant workers, landscapers and child care workers who have lost their jobs, she said.
Because the city’s safe parking program is only for RV-owning participants, those who rent can’t stay in the special lots unless their
vehicles’ owners give permission.
Though RV residents can receive rental assistance from the city’s $2.6 million relief fund — the largest in the county — Pires said the process isn’t easy for those who don’t understand English.
Although it’s overwhelmed with calls, the city’s Community Services Agency has a dedicated team of bilingual staff and offers resources in Spanish, English and Mandarin, said agency executive director Tom Myers.
He said the agency has been inundated with people seeking help, “and the lines for food circle around the block.”
Community volunteer Sandra Esparza does what she can to help out.
“Some of the people in
our city, they think (RV residents) are not part of the city,” Esparza said. “They have worked just as hard as us. People have to understand that we are all neighbors too. Even if we are living in different types of homes, we are part of one city.”
On Thursday, she and Pires delivered meals to Jimenez, his wife, Brenda, and the two kids he is taking care of — Josue, 5, and Daniel, 6, whose mother was out working.
“Those women help us a lot with food and we’re just basically surviving during this economic crisis,” Jimenez said. “In the 2008 recession, I lost my house in East Palo Alto in 2010. … There wasn’t much work and I had to collect cans to pay off my truck and to pay rent and survive.
I don’t want that to happen again.”
Pires has been working with Joya Supermarket to buy bulk items RV residents need with money donated by members and supporters of the Mountain View Housing Justice Coalition, among others.
She and Esparza also set up an Amazon wish list containing items such as camp stoves, body wipes, water containers and other items that make it possible for people to stay in RVs long term.
Cash donations are also welcome, but Pires said most people aren’t asking for money. They’d rather work.
Despite the difficulties, Jimenez said he’s OK.
“I feel good,” he said. “I don’t feel mad or frustrated. I feel comfortable.”