San Francisco RV Community Fears New Parking Rules Could Push Them Closer to Homelessness

Updated 11:05 a.m. Tuesday

Kiko Suarez struggled to afford living in the Bay Area until he got a decent deal on an RV. Since making it his home in January, the carpenter has slowly found his footing again, working construction jobs in San Jose.

But, after months of parking his vehicle on Winston Drive behind Stonestown Mall in southwest San Francisco, Suarez could soon be forced out of the area and the community he’s helped build.

The city plans to impose new four-hour parking restrictions on the street where he and dozens of other families park their RVs starting Dec. 19.

“I’m not going to be able to deal with that, not with my schedule,” Suarez told KQED. “I don’t know where I will go or where I will park it.”

There are currently few parking restrictions on the strip of Winston Drive, where Suarez and the other families park, except for weekly street cleanings.

Starting Dec. 19, however, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will enforce four-hour parking between Lake Merced Boulevard and Buckingham Way from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday.

People who don’t move their cars will be issued a $92 ticket.

Earlier this year, SFMTA proposed the daytime parking limits at the request of Supervisor Myrna Melgar, according to the transit agency, “to make Winston Drive safer for pedestrians and cyclists who currently navigate the sidewalks and bike lane to travel between Lowell High School, SF State, Lake Merced, and the Stonestown shopping center,” SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato told KQED in an email.

The changes, approved at a Sept. 19 SFMTA Board meeting, are also intended to open up parking for nearby San Francisco State University staff, students and visitors and to make way for a traffic improvement project.

But several people living in the RVs say they will have nowhere to go and have been pushing the city to create a space where they could safely park, similar to the vehicle triage center that was set up in the Bayview during the pandemic.

The city is considering at least two contenders for a safe parking location for RVs. But there are no plans to open such a site before the parking restrictions go into effect.

“Despite assessing dozens of sites over the past two years, we have been unable to identify a suitable property for this service,” Emily Cohen, deputy director for communications and legislative affairs at the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said in an email to KQED. “We are not giving up on the goal of opening a westside safe parking program.”

Supervisor Melgar declined to comment on this story.

In the meantime, HSH has been meeting with the RV residents to connect people with housing.

HSH said it is actively in contact with about 70 households living in vehicles on Winston. Of those, 20 are families with children that have been offered short-term and long-term housing vouchers, according to Cohen.

Around 20 people living in vehicles in that area have already moved into their new short- or long-term housing offer. Dozens more are enrolled in the city’s shelter system, waiting for referrals to go through.

“We are actively working with these households to move them into long-term housing,” Cohen said.

But there are still many people living in the area who don’t have any housing lined up or a place to move their RV come December.

Finding temporary shelter in the interim won’t be easy. As of Oct. 23, there were 377 people on the waiting list for emergency shelter in San Francisco.

With the clock now ticking, advocates for unhoused people say the city must find a solution quickly so no residents are ticketed, towed, or forced to abandon their vehicles and live on the street.

“The families on Winston Drive and Buckingham Way deserve dignity and safety, including a safe parking site and access to permanent housing,” Eleana Binder, policy manager for the homeless services nonprofit Glide, said in a written statement. “Implementing the parking restrictions without options will push them deeper into instability and homelessness.”

People like Suarez say it will be impossible to move their vehicle every four hours while at work, so they’ll have to find a new place to park to avoid the $92 parking tickets. For him, a single parking ticket is nearly half of this daily $220 paycheck.

SFMTA also noted it has payment plans for tickets, community service alternatives and discounts for people experiencing homelessness.

Others said they have no other option but to try to stay and move their vehicle when they can.

Jessica Coello has lived on Winston Drive for about a year with her two kids, ages 15 and 17, who go to high school in the city. Like many of her neighbors, she started living on Winston during the pandemic after she lost work. It was cheaper than paying rent and has allowed her to save up some money for her kids’ college education.

“We aren’t going to have a safe place to go, and we’ll get a lot of tickets,” she told KQED about her fears looking ahead. “If we get a lot of tickets, they’ll tow the RVs, and we won’t have anywhere to live.”

Coello, who works in childcare and housekeeping, has struggled to find regular work after the pandemic. But she wants to stay close to her children’s school so they can graduate on time. She feels lost without options.

“They don’t accept RVs anywhere. Either they are too close to the houses, and people there don’t want RVs near, or we are on the streets, and they can’t stay there,” she told KQED. “If you put restrictions, we’ll be homeless. It will be an even worse situation for us.”

Joshua Hernandez, 21, moved to an RV on Winston Drive with his girlfriend just three months ago, after it got too expensive to continue renting their apartment in Daly City. He’s working as a plumber and his girlfriend is taking classes at Skyline Community College.

“Even if we worked long days everyday, it wasn’t enough to pay our bills and still go to college. So we moved here. And it feels way better now, we can save for our future,” he told KQED outside a rally on Tuesday morning where families living in RVs were demanding the city find a safe parking site before the new rules kick in.

For many of the families parked next to him, Suarez said, the new parking limits will “pretty much force everyone out.”

But Suarez hopes he’s wrong.

“I know people are fed up with homelessness, but what else are we supposed to do?” Suarez said. “The government needs to listen and do what’s appropriate. That’s all I hope for.”