No-parking signs to force homeless RVs from streets
The ban, approved in 2020, restricts oversized vehicles from parking on 83% of city’s roadways
MOUNTAIN VIEW >> Up until the coronavirus pandemic struck last year, Brenda Fajardo, 41, was living comfortably in a San Mateo apartment, taking care of her 2-year-old son and working odd jobs to make ends meet.
Then she and her husband suddenly found themselves out of work and couldn’t afford to continue paying the high rents of the mid-Peninsula.
So they cut their losses and moved into an RV they’re renting for $1,000 a month from a man who lives in a blue pickup truck hitched to it. The RV and
pickup have been parked on Wentworth Street in Mountain View for more than a year.
But in just a couple of weeks, it’ll be time to move again.
The family — now with a second child — won’t be alone, though. They’ll be among the first wave of RV dwellers in Mountain View forced to relocate to comply with a new local law that bans oversized vehicles from parking overnight on most city streets.
“I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t received any notice yet,” Fajardo said. “For us, we can move the trailer. But many other people won’t be able to. This is the first time for me living like this, so I don’t know what to do. It’s been really difficult to know what to do next.”
As the Bay Area’s yearslong housing crisis continues, more and more people like Fajardo’s family are renting or buying
recreational vehicles and parking them on the side of roads to live in them, drawing complaints from housed neighbors. Mountain View hasn’t been the only city to try curbing that trend.
Fremont strategically placed boulders to keep unhoused people from parking RVs along a stretch of Kato Road across the street from Tesla’s massive electric auto plant. About three years ago, Berkeley prohibited RV dwellers from parking overnight on city streets from 2 to 5 a.m. without temporary permits. Oakland permits overnight RVs only if they’re part of a city-sanctioned emergency housing program or comply with a pilot program that allows one vehicle per vacant lot.
In Mountain View, following years of complaints from longtime residents about a rise in RV dwellers taking up parking spaces and dumping trash, voters last year overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that prohibits oversized vehicles more than 22 feet long from being parked on “narrow streets.” Of the city’s 525 public streets, 83% qualify as narrow, according to public works.
The measure’s supporters said it was meant to make the streets safer, since RVs and other large vehicles can block motorists’ views. But critics say the ban is part of a greater strategy to reduce the number of homeless people living in vehicles.
Mountain View has hired contractors to start installing the first batch of “no parking” signs on 444 streets in the coming weeks, according to city officials.
Those signs will go up in the city’s northwest neighborhoods as part of the first phase, including the Monta Loma/Farley/Rock Street area where Fajardo lives. The whole rollout of signs is expected to take at least six months.
Dan Niessen, who lives
on Washington Street, can’t wait to see the RVs near his home leave. He and his wife Pascale Niessen both enthusiastically voted for Measure C.
“We are beyond happy,” Dan Niessen said in an interview Wednesday. “When we bought the house, all the RVs on Wentworth Street were already there. We are absolutely sympathetic to them. We hate the circumstances. But we’re happy that the city is doing something.”
The prevalence of vehicle dwellers has increased at such an alarming rate over the past several years that Mountain View has started a safe parking program for overnight campers that offers about 70 spaces in several locations — but it’s nowhere near the number needed to accommodate the nearly 300 vehicle dwellers estimated by officials to be currently parked on Mountain View’s streets. The Niessens want the city to expand that program.
Fajardo tried to enroll in the safe parking program, but she left after four days because there were “too many rules” that made life more difficult.
“What we’ll probably do is move the trailer to somewhere we can park,” Fajardo said. “We can look for other places to live, but we looked and couldn’t find any apartments. And who wants to rent a room to a family with two kids? We’re not stable here, but what else can we do?”
In a statement to this news organization, Mayor Ellen Kamei said the city is “committed to providing solutions or ending homelessness and the unstably housed,” evident through programs such as safe parking and LifeMoves, which provides housing resources for people who are unstably housed.
“The city is working to implement the ordinance in a thoughtful way to address the traffic safety hazards caused by oversized vehicles
on narrow streets,” she said.
Asked what happens if an RV dweller refuses to move despite the signs, city spokesperson Lenka Wright said officials won’t “speculate about the ‘what-ifs.’ “
Unlike Fajardo, a ban on oversized vehicles won’t directly affect Patrick True, 67, who lives on nearby Gemini and Jackson streets, which are considered wide enough for oversized vehicles. But he expects the soon-to-be-displaced vehicles to make their way to his side of the street.
A carpenter by trade,
True has lived in Mountain View most of his life, growing up in a small California bungalow on Palo Alto Avenue and graduating from Los Altos High School.
He wanted to move to Sonora to live with his best friend, but since that friend died True has been stuck in limbo, unable to leave the town he’s known for decades and living in an RV he thought would be for recreation.
He’s been there for more than a year now.
True said he doesn’t want to live somewhere he’s not wanted.
“I’ve worked all my life here, I lived here all my life and I can’t afford to live here,” he said. “I stayed as long as I could, the RV wasn’t my choice. It just happened and thank God I had it.”
When True says he doesn’t care about what people think of RV dwellers, it’s a little personal.
His sister Barbara True Willis, 71, is a staunch supporter of the RV ban and still lives in their childhood home, about a minute’s drive from where True’s RV is parked on the street.
Since familial strife drove them apart when their mother died, the two siblings have been estranged.
Willis said in an interview Wednesday that people who can’t afford to live in Mountain View should leave and go to places they can afford.
RV dwellers, she said, “create problems.”
“They go to our schools, to our parks, to our libraries, and they pay nothing,” Willis said.
“It’s not fair for people to talk about us like this,” he brother said. “We’re not any different than anyone else. How am I different than anyone else? Because I’m stuck on a street? Because I had some bad situations happen? When I turned into a senior citizen my life caved in.
“It sucks, and I don’t see it getting better. It feels like they’re just trying to depopulate. After this COVID thing, people need a little time to collect themselves. The city of Mountain View is being really cold and hard to these people.”