City seeks dismissal of parking ban suit

Leaders say owners of RVs have no basis for claims put forward

MOUNTAIN VIEW >> Arguing that the city’s RV parking ban isn’t an attempt to “banish its low-income population,” Mountain View is asking a federal judge to throw out a class-action lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban that was filed against the city in July.

The lawsuit, filed in the 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. It argues that the parking ban — which prohibits RVs from parking on most of the city’s streets — is “unconstitutional,” “inhumane” and burdens the growing group of people who have chosen to live in vehicles on the street amid a dire affordability crisis that has priced them out of the areas they know as home.

In its first arguments presented to the court since the suit was filed, the city of Mountain View is contending that the ban isn’t targeting its poorest residents and is instead focused on improving traffic safety along the city’s narrow streets. The city also notes it has made great strides in building affordable housing for low-income residents and has provided safer alternatives for people living in RVs, like its 101-space Safe Parking program.

The city said that plaintiffs based the lawsuit on the notion that the city has banned oversized vehicles in order to banish its lowincome population, but the city argues it “has done no such thing.” The city says that the plaintiffs further claim they are “at imminent risk of having the oversized vehicles they use as habitation taken away from them,” noting that “this too can be easily disproven by judicially noticeable facts.”

“What plaintiffs’ complaint makes clear is that the real purpose of this litigation is to secure a right to indefinitely locate their

oversized vehicles on their preferred roadways, regardless of any dangers this may pose to other vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists in their vicinity,” attorney Margaret Prinzig wrote.

“The fact that plaintiffs have been forced to live in their vehicles is deeply unfortunate, and the city is continuing its efforts to help its unhoused population transition to better, safer housing alternatives,” Prinzig said. “Yet plaintiffs’ constitutional rights do not extend anywhere near as far as they assert, and certainly do not extend so far as to prevent the city from enforcing parking restrictions that address public safety concerns.”

Attorney Michael Trujillo of the Law Foundation said he has taken a look at the city’s arguments and is reviewing them. Plaintiffs have until today to submit a preliminary injunction to keep the ordinances contested in the suit from being enforced while the suit is adjudicated.

“We’re focusing on the preliminary injunction now,” Trujillo said, noting he had no other comment. “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”

The lawsuit comes three years after the city adopted an ordinance banning oversized vehicles and RVs from 444 of the city’s 525 streets. Amid pushback 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 in just weeks the city moved swiftly to enforce the ban by summer 2021. The first “no parking” signs are already going up in the city’s northwest side at the cost of nearly $1 million, and residents have expressed fear 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 law foundation’s suit claims 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.

But the city says it has passed two ordinances that prohibit the parking of all oversized vehicles — not just vehicles used as homes — on the streets where they pose the greatest traffic safety risk: narrow streets and streets with bike lanes.

“Oversized vehicles may continue to park on streets wider than 40 feet, streets without bicycle lanes, and in the five safe parking lots the city has established to provide safer alternatives for its unhoused population,” the city said.

The city also said it has published every segment of every street where the parking restrictions will apply months in advance of implementation and enforcement, and it has announced its intention to provide individual notices to those who live in oversized vehicles on affected streets. Once the restrictions are in place, the city says “it will be nearly impossible for someone to be ticketed or towed for violating the ordinances unless they ignore signs posted near their parking space.”

“Because plaintiffs have no stated valid claims attacking the city’s oversized vehicle ordinance,” the city said, “this court should grant the city’s motion to dismiss all of the plaintiffs’ claims without leave to amend.”