> RV dwellers say San Francisco should open a safe parking lot where residents could empty trash and access electricity. But city officials shuttered an RV lot in April, saying it cost about $4 million a year to service three dozen large vehicles and it failed to transition people to more stable housing.
you can't transition people into housing that either doesn't exist or isn't affordable. I sure as hell wouldn't want to move into a shelter if I already had an RV. Seems like getting rid of them will just lead to more people on the streets and I'd much rather see an RV park than a tent city.
Why does it cost $4 million a year to service three dozen large vehicles? A huge part of the problem seems to be SF’s inability to provide services in a way that would be sustainable for low cost housing options absent immense subsidies.
My wife’s family is from Oregon and it’s full of people who don’t have any real job but live in a trailer and get by doing part time handyman work or the like. Somehow the state manages to provide them trash pickup.
An RV is just a nicer tent, it is not a house. If people won't transition to housing, then they need to leave SF. If they can not afford SF, then they need to leave SF and live somewhere else where they can.
When properly accommodated, it's a nicer tent with electricity, AC, and an actual bed, kitchen, and bathroom. With tents you get dangerous hotplates/camping stoves and people pissing and shitting in streets instead of toilets. Some people really prefer the mobility, but most would happily transition to housing as soon it is made affordable/available. There are more vacant homes in SF than homeless people, and foreign investors buy up huge amounts of residential property and leave them empty.
> If they can not afford SF, then they need to leave SF and live somewhere else where they can.
To clarify: you believe that the cheapest available housing today should be used to determine if someone is allowed to live in SF? If not, how are you quantifying “can afford SF”?
This move is so counter-intuitive to me. You prefer tents? You want people to have less security? You’d rather people stored their stuff in a cart that they have to push around everywhere?
You can’t abolish poverty but you can sure make it worse.
And it shows. I encounter tent residents far less often now vs. last year, and there's no way those people have all moved into added RV capacity. It was already at its limit.
(I've skateboard commuted through SOMA in SF most days for coming up on 2 years)
Temporary tents seem to be more tolerated. There are a few I see every night in my area, but they aren't there during the day. Its the semipermanent encampments that are really being targeted. I see less full-time living on the sidewalk, but there are definitely people still sleeping there.
The country is continuing to rapidly move to an authoritarian ideology and to illiberal hate and criminalization of poverty. Limousine neoneoliberal Democrats and far-right MAGA both display illiberal animosity towards a narrow subset of disadvantaged groups. It's about as rational and empathetic as deporting the people who pick your vegetables, make your dinner, and build your homes. But until the confluence of related problems* are address systemically, criminalization won't solve.
* Cheaper housing with greater inventory, comprehensive medical and mental healthcare, substance treatment programs that work, higher minimum wage, lower housing cost:income ratio, and tailored and helpful support and investment in people who don't have enough to magically pull themselves up by their invisible bootstraps.
>The proposal sets a two-hour parking limit citywide for all RVs and oversized vehicles longer than 22 feet (7 meters) or higher than 7 feet (2 meters), regardless of whether they are being used as housing.
Maybe I'm jaded but I see this as a way to extract revenue from commercial vehicles while sailing under the flag of screwing the homeless so that it can be marketed to residents voters.
I assume the forcing function is residents demanding the removal of the RVs, not a proposal from city hall that needs to be marketed properly. At least in San Jose there is a lot of grassroots efforts against RVs.
Whoever's forcing it to be written (which I agree is in large part the people) the people doing the writing care very deeply about city revenue and are experts in tweaking the minutia to get their pound of flesh for the city or at least reserve their right to collect it.
Like I said, maybe I'm jaded, but that's what every big city I've ever known would do.
If this was just about the problem RVs they could've easily exempted commercial trucks or put a 12 (enough to reset your logbook) or heck, 8 or 10 (a full day of work) limit on it. Yet they didn't do either of those and went with a time limit.
This seems very clearly crafted to not exempt commercial vehicle drivers who are sleeping off their logbook and/or people who are driving commercial trucks to places where they will use the contents of those trucks for their business purposes.
I understand the jaded perspective, but I’d think the only time a large commercial vehicle will be parked for that long will be on the business’s property. Otherwise it is out doing deliveries or whatever it is.
No? You go to the restaurant supply store with your oversized commercial vehicle, buy a shit ton of ingredients, go back to your restaurant, unload, then leave the vehicle parked while you use said ingredients to serve food all day.
$4m for 36 RVs seems like a pretty good deal. Why not spend $44m and handle all 400 of them?
Surely they will spend somewhere between $4m and $44m trying to effectively force this 2 hour limit which will not result in 0 RVs where they don't want them
>Surely they will spend somewhere between $4m and $44m trying to effectively force this 2 hour limit which will not result in 0 RVs where they don't want them
They'll make it back on the other end by engaging in revenue enforcement against box trucks and other legitimate business as the rule seems very clearly crafted to apply to them too.
And then the next year 1600. By the late 2050s you'll have more RVs than people on Earth and by 2072 their mass will become so great as to collapse the planet into a black hole!
The whole thing is a mess. I drive through a spot with a lot of RVs in Seattle. I’ve seen people come out of an RV, smash a driver’s window at a stoplight, and proceed to throw something which looked like chili powder in his face.
I don’t want people like that by me.
Yet RVs are an incredible cheap housing option. I would simultaneously advocate for opening up a space to park a bunch of RVs that these folks could live... just not by me :/
So I really don’t know what to do. Just a few bad apples can ruin public safety in a community for everyone else. I don’t know that we can both provide safety for home owners and the housing option for non home owners :/
The proportion of troublemakers is much higher in the very low socioeconomic status cohort. Heavily policing public spaces is too expensive so instead social moats are erected. House prices rise to unaffordable levels and this is cheered on by current residents and politicians. Nice neighborhoods are not connected with public transit and are inconveniently located so only residents will drive there.
In New York Columbia University Public Safety officers escort any non-community members off their campus.
I lived on the Peninsula in a van for 9 years when/where it was legal around Palo Alto. Criminalizing homelessness and concentration camps in all but name isn't fair or moral.
Readit News
you can't transition people into housing that either doesn't exist or isn't affordable. I sure as hell wouldn't want to move into a shelter if I already had an RV. Seems like getting rid of them will just lead to more people on the streets and I'd much rather see an RV park than a tent city.
My wife’s family is from Oregon and it’s full of people who don’t have any real job but live in a trailer and get by doing part time handyman work or the like. Somehow the state manages to provide them trash pickup.
We aren't limited to just those two options
To clarify: you believe that the cheapest available housing today should be used to determine if someone is allowed to live in SF? If not, how are you quantifying “can afford SF”?
Gatekeeping that someone must have enough money and/or privilege to buy real-estate to your liking is part of the illiberal snobbiness.
Deleted Comment
You can’t abolish poverty but you can sure make it worse.
Tents aren't tolerated anymore: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/28/supreme-court-homel...
And it shows. I encounter tent residents far less often now vs. last year, and there's no way those people have all moved into added RV capacity. It was already at its limit.
(I've skateboard commuted through SOMA in SF most days for coming up on 2 years)
Deleted Comment
* Cheaper housing with greater inventory, comprehensive medical and mental healthcare, substance treatment programs that work, higher minimum wage, lower housing cost:income ratio, and tailored and helpful support and investment in people who don't have enough to magically pull themselves up by their invisible bootstraps.
Deleted Comment
Maybe I'm jaded but I see this as a way to extract revenue from commercial vehicles while sailing under the flag of screwing the homeless so that it can be marketed to residents voters.
Like I said, maybe I'm jaded, but that's what every big city I've ever known would do.
If this was just about the problem RVs they could've easily exempted commercial trucks or put a 12 (enough to reset your logbook) or heck, 8 or 10 (a full day of work) limit on it. Yet they didn't do either of those and went with a time limit.
This seems very clearly crafted to not exempt commercial vehicle drivers who are sleeping off their logbook and/or people who are driving commercial trucks to places where they will use the contents of those trucks for their business purposes.
Surely they will spend somewhere between $4m and $44m trying to effectively force this 2 hour limit which will not result in 0 RVs where they don't want them
They'll make it back on the other end by engaging in revenue enforcement against box trucks and other legitimate business as the rule seems very clearly crafted to apply to them too.
Deleted Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
https://math.uchicago.edu/~shmuel/Modeling/Hardin,%20Tragedy...
I don’t want people like that by me.
Yet RVs are an incredible cheap housing option. I would simultaneously advocate for opening up a space to park a bunch of RVs that these folks could live... just not by me :/
So I really don’t know what to do. Just a few bad apples can ruin public safety in a community for everyone else. I don’t know that we can both provide safety for home owners and the housing option for non home owners :/
That fixed my local problem. Obviously the people moved somewhere else though.
Deleted Comment
In New York Columbia University Public Safety officers escort any non-community members off their campus.