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   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   For months, cities around the state have ramped up enforcement against   
   people sleeping in tents on the street. Now, some are focusing on a new   
   target: People who live in vehicles.   
      
   Wayne Gardiner, 58, watched his home of 20 years roll onto the back of a   
   flatbed tow truck in San Jose on a recent Monday afternoon. Then he   
   realized he’d forgotten something inside.   
      
   He threw open compartments in the bottom of the RV as fast as he could,   
   looking for the pressure-washing tools he uses for cleaning jobs to make   
   extra money. As the RV rose up onto the truck, about to head off to a   
   junk yard, Gardiner found the black backpack full of tools and pulled it   
   out.   
      
   Then he stood back with his rottweiler, Buddy, and some of his   
   possessions in green trash bags at his feet, and watched the truck drive   
   away. He held his emotions in check.   
      
   “If I get myself involved with that, I’ll be a wreck,” Gardiner said. “I   
   gotta let it go.”   
      
   San Jose is towing vehicles from different areas of the city in a new   
   effort to rid the streets of lived-in vehicles. Last month, it started   
   clearing its largest homeless encampment – a makeshift city in Columbus   
   Park, where Gardiner and hundreds of other people had been sleeping in   
   cars, RVs and tents.   
      
   San Francisco passed a new policy this summer banning large vehicles   
   from parking on any city street for more than two hours — effectively   
   making it illegal to live in an RV on the street.   
      
   Even smaller cities, including Carlsbad outside of San Diego, and San   
   Mateo in the Bay Area, have adopted new policies targeting people living   
   in cars and RVs.   
      
   The issue has attracted the attention of state legislators as well.   
   Assembly Bill 630, which cleared another legislative hurdle Friday,   
   would make it easier for certain cities to dispose of RVs parked on   
   their streets.   
      
   “We have stories from people who have inoperable RVs that are parked in   
   their neighborhoods, under freeways, that they know are ground-zero for   
   drugs, for prostitution rings, for other criminal activities that are   
   happening there,” said the bill’s author, Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez,   
   a Los Angeles Democrat. “So what we’re trying to do is address this   
   issue head-on.”   
      
   The push comes as rows of RVs and lived-in cars line streets in cities   
   across the state, frustrating voters and creating issues with trash,   
   waste water and traffic visibility. The number of lived-in vehicles on   
   San Francisco’s streets has risen over the past year — from 474 in July   
   2024 to 612 in June 2025, even as the number of tents dropped from 319   
   to 165, according to the city’s count.   
      
   Vehicle homelessness can be more difficult for cities to manage than   
   tent encampments. People often are reluctant to give up the safety and   
   security of their RV or car in exchange for a temporary shelter bed or   
   short-term housing. And many cities have nowhere to store RVs, and   
   nowhere for them to park legally.   
      
   Advocates for the rights of unhoused Californians say doling out   
   punishment to deal with the issue will make the homelessness crisis   
   worse. When cities tow lived-in cars and RVs, their owners often can’t   
   get them back because they can’t pay the towing and storage fees, said   
   Eleana Binder, public policy director for GLIDE, which serves San   
   Franciscans living in homelessness and poverty. They end up with nowhere   
   else to go.   
      
   “It does increase street homelessness, because people are right on the   
   edge,” she said. “For a lot of people, a vehicle is their only asset,   
   their last step before street homelessness.”   
      
   Tickets and tows   
   Ordinances that regulate homeless encampments often target people   
   sleeping in tents, not vehicles. As a result, police have used parking   
   ordinances to try to clear vehicle encampments by giving tickets and   
   either towing or threatening to tow. But that approach doesn’t take into   
   account the fact that the cars and RVs are people’s homes.   
      
   In some places, new policies that specifically address people living in   
   cars and RVs try to address that problem by providing services as well   
   as tickets and tows.   
      
   Gardiner, who watched the city of San Jose tow his home, was luckier   
   than many. The city paid him $2,000 for his RV, as part of a pilot   
   program intended to convince people to give up their vehicles and move   
   indoors. He also got a free hotel room, where the city told him he could   
   stay for up to a year.   
      
   Gardiner was one of several hundred people living in San Jose’s largest   
   encampment — a sprawling collection of RVs, cars and tents scattered   
   across a rutted, dirt field in Columbus Park and spilling onto   
   surrounding streets. City crews began clearing the camp in August, and   
   have towed 78 vehicles and moved 128 people indoors, according to the   
   city.   
      
   The city estimates 370 people lived at Columbus Park when the operation   
   started, but advocates say it was more. And not everyone has been   
   offered the $2,000 buy-back program, a motel stay or other help.   
      
   Valerie Vallejos, who lives in her van at Columbus Park while she   
   studies cosmetology at San Jose City College, said she was visiting her   
   children in Stockton when outreach workers came to the park offering   
   people services. Now she’s trying to get on the list, hoping to get a   
   housing placement or at least a reprieve from threats of towing. So far,   
   she’s had no luck.   
      
   “I’m going to keep coming back out until I get something,” she said.   
   “It’s my only option. What else can I do?”   
      
   San Jose is cracking down in other places, too. Officials launched a   
   pilot program earlier this year that bans oversized and lived-in   
   vehicles in certain parts of the city. The city first posts signs and   
   puts up flyers warning people to move their vehicles, then tows if   
   people don’t move. Since January, the city has towed 19 RVs and trailers   
   and 45 other vehicles, according to its online dashboard. But many   
   vehicles return after the enforcement blitz. To date, the city has   
   completed enforcement in 38 “tow-away zones,” where there were a total   
   of 1,175 cars and RVs. Ninety days after that enforcement, 671 vehicles   
   had returned to those locations.   
      
   “It’s a start,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who acknowledged that   
   towing won’t magically make street homelessness disappear. But he said   
   even forcing RVs to move temporarily can help mitigate the problems the   
   city has seen in long-standing encampments, such as methamphetamine   
   labs, fires and the accumulation of dilapidated, abandoned vehicles.   
      
   “This is about providing relief to neighbors and small businesses that   
   have had permanent RV encampments for years on end,” Mahan said.   
      
   Since the beginning of the year, San Jose has enforced three “tow-away   
      
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