City’s RV parking ban leads to lawsuit

Groups suing to stop penalizing people living in their vehicles

Calling Mountain View’s parking ban on RVs and oversized vehicles “unconstitutional” and “inhumane,” the ACLU on Wednesday filed a class action lawsuit against the city, just days before the first “no parking” signs were set to go up across much of the city.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is being brought by six plaintiffs on behalf of all people who live in RVs and other oversized vehicles in the city. The plaintiffs are part of a growing group of people in places like Pacifica, Palo Alto and Berkeley who have chosen to live in RVs on the side of the street amid an affordability crisis,

many of them having been priced out of the area they know as home.

On Wednesday, nearly three dozen people gathered outside Mountain View City Hall — many of them holding signs with messages like “housing is a human right” and “end the ban” — to protest the city’s RV ban and support the lawsuit, which also argues that the ban “disproportionately impacts people with disabilities,” in violation of federal and state law.

In addition to the ACLU of Northern California, the plaintiffs in the Mountain View case are being represented by the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, Disability Rights Advocates and pro bono partner King and Spalding.

Speaking to the crowd and the press Wednesday, Michael Trujillo, a staff attorney at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, said RVs provide stability and shelter for people and families who otherwise would be homeless or displaced from their community.

“Silicon Valley is the highest-income region in the world,” Trujillo said. “Yet, the income inequality and worsening housing crisis have pushed Mountain View residents to find alternative ways to stay housed. Everyone should have the opportunity to live and feel safe in their own community, regardless of income level.”

For the past decade, more and more people have opted to live in RVs on the city’s streets rather than leave their hometowns. According to the last count by the city in July 2020, about 191 RVs are parked on the street and 54 RVs in safe parking lots. It’s unknown if the population of RV dwellers has increased since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2019, after years of complaints from some Mountain View residents, the City Council adopted an ordinance banning oversized vehicles and RVs from 444 of the city’s 525 total streets. With advocacy from the city’s fair housing proponents, the ordinance was temporarily suspended after a successful petition forced the ordinance on the November 2020 ballot as Measure C.

With about 57% of the vote in favor, Mountain View residents passed the ballot measure in November, and Mountain View in just weeks moved swiftly to enforce the ban by this summer. The first “no parking” signs are set to be put up this month in the city’s northwest side at the cost of nearly $1 million, and residents there are scared of being displaced.

Though the RV ban prohibits oversize vehicles from 83% of the city’s streets, another ban on parking oversize vehicles in streets with bike lanes makes it so about 90% of Mountain View streets are unavailable to RV residents. The suit says Mountain View enacted the ban “under the pretext of ‘traffic safety’ in order to expel indigent populations” after years of increased enforcement of parking laws that target the city’s vehicle residents.

The suit states that while only 69 citations were issued between 2015 and 2016 to people who did not move their vehicle after 72 hours, more than 328 were issued from 2016 to 2017. Additionally, 746 RVs were towed and impounded from 2015 to 2019 for a variety of parking violations, and typically it costs over $1,000 to reclaim a towed vehicle.

Celerina Navarro, a plaintiff in the suit who has lived in Mountain View for almost 20 years and has two kids who attend city’s schools, had her vehicle towed in 2018 and paid $1,200 to retrieve it. She said Wednesday that “it’s hard to live every day knowing your home can be ticketed or towed.”

“This is my home,” she said. “I was priced out of my apartment six years ago because of rent increases and I have lived in an RV since then. Every day you live in fear about your safety.”

Bill Freeman, senior counsel at the ACLU of Northern California, said in an interview Wednesday that his office has been in regular contact with the city about the ban since May 2019. He said the team of law firms sent a cease-and-desist letter to the mayor and city council on June 7, 2021, demanding that the city agree not to enforce the ban. The city responded by letter dated June 18, Freeman said, declining to agree to the ACLU’s demands.

On Wednesday, the city issued a statement saying they are currently evaluating the suit and have “no further comment regarding the lawsuit itself.” The statement says that” due to their size, an oversized vehicle on a narrow roadway can encroach into the vehicle lane of traffic, which can increase the risk of collisions for motor vehicles and bicycles as well as make it more difficult for emergency and critical service vehicles to navigate the street safely.”

The city, the statement says, will continue to conduct “multifaceted outreach” and provide information about the city’s affordable housing and safe parking programs.

“The ACLU of Nothern California is involved in this issue region-wide,” Freeman said. “The issue of banishing RV dwellers from communities — virtually the entire city of Mountain View — is unacceptable. People who live in RVs live in constant fear, so that kind of anxiety really affects their lives.”

From Chico to Santa Cruz, Freeman said the ACLU has seen communities “that feel they can solve their own problems by pushing unhoused people to the next town,” and they are fighting against unconstitutional laws that ban RVs or criminalize homelessness. In March, the ACLU filed a suit on behalf of a group of RV-dwellers and civil rights activists against the city of Pacifica, fighting for the right to park their homes on the city’s streets.

He believes a region-wide solution to the prevalence of RVs must be found.

“Every community has its own particular facts, but what they all have in common is this idea that we just really don’t want to have to deal with or see people who are living in RVs,” Freeman said. “Litigation is kind of the least best alternative for solving problems, but if policy-makers and officials aren’t going to comply with the constitution, we’ll take action.”