RV dwellers take city’s parking ban to court

A group of RV dwellers and civil rights activists sued the city of Pacifica this week for the right to park their wheeled homes on city streets.

The plaintiffs, backed by the ACLU of Northern California, say a city ordinance that bans RVs and other oversized vehicles from parking on certain streets is unconstitutional because it unfairly punishes people for being poor and unable to afford fixed housing.

The burgeoning court fight echoes tensions that are mounting throughout the Bay Area, as high rent prices and a pandemic-shattered economy force many people to move into RVs. Cities from Mountain View to Berkeley are struggling to manage the huge numbers of RVs, trailers and converted vans and buses that now line their streets.

“It’s not just an issue in Pacifica. We’re seeing a lot of communities grappling with this systemic problem,” said attorney Shirley Gibson of the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo, who represents plaintiffs in the case. “Pacifica’s response to it was particularly dreadful.”

Pacifica’s ordinance, passed in 2019, bans RVs and other large vehicles from parking in certain places, including on streets less than 40 feet wide, near an intersection, or in spaces that encroach upon a bike lane.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say their clients started getting cited for violating the new rule in September, with one receiving at least 27 tickets he cannot pay. A first violation is punishable by a $100 fine. More than three violations within a year potentially could be grounds for a misdemeanor charge, a $1,000 fine and jail time. After five or more unpaid tickets, a vehicle can be towed.

The lawyers argue enforcement of the ban has been scattershot, leaving residents to guess where they can and can’t park. The city has not installed signs on every street where RV parking is banned. And the attorneys allege their clients have been ticketed on streets where it appeared parking should have been allowed.

They filed the suit in federal court in the Northern District of California, and plan to ask the judge to immediately grant an emergency injunction that would bar the city from enforcing the RV ban.

“The city has experienced a significant increase in the number of oversized vehicles, including motorhomes and trailers, that are regularly or routinely parked in city streets for long periods of time for work, recreation or habitation purposes,” the ordinance states.

Those large vehicles can impede traffic and block a driver’s line of sight, potentially causing a crash, according to the ordinance. The city also cited health concerns with waste accumulation around parked RVs, and said “significant city resources” have been spent addressing complaints and cleanup related to RVs.

City Manager Kevin Woodhouse and Mayor Sue Beckmeyer did not respond to requests for comment.

While the total number of homeless people not living in shelters or transitional housing grew by 40% in San Mateo County between 2017 and 2019, the number of people living in RVs more than doubled. Other areas are seeing an increase as well.

Many cities prohibit leaving vehicles in one spot for longer than 72 hours and use that rule to ask RV dwellers to move along every three days. In Palo Alto, local activists recently complained that the city is forcing unhoused people parked along El Camino Real, alongside the Stanford campus, to play musical chairs with their vehicles.

Others have passed bans that specifically target RVs. In Mountain View, enough people opposed a measure banning RV parking on certain streets to land the ordinance on the ballot. Measure C passed last year, upholding the RV ban.

In Fremont, the city sparked a backlash from homeless rights advocates after it used strategically placed boulders to keep unhoused people from parking RVs along a stretch of Kato Road.

One of the plaintiffs in the Pacifica case, Sean Geary, has received at least eight tickets so far for parking the RV he calls home. Now Geary, who says he has bipolar disorder, is afraid to leave his RV to take a bus to the doctor, in case the vehicle is towed.

“If I get towed there is no recovery,” he wrote in a blog post for ACLU of Northern California. “I cannot afford to get (my RV) out. I will lose all of my possessions. There is a very strong likelihood that it would put me permanently on the streets.”

That’s why Pacifica’s ordinance is cruel, Gibson said.

“To turn around and demonize and penalize Pacificans who are doing the only thing that they can to survive in the city that they call home,” Gibson said, “and essentially try to expel them from the city for not being able to survive in this impossible housing economy that Pacifica has set up for them, that’s odious.”