SAN FRANCISCO – The city of San Francisco will close its only safe parking lot in early 2025 to homeless people living out of their cars.
The Bayview Vehicle Triage Center opened in January 2022 and has since encountered numerous, costly issues.
Now dozens of people who live there will have to find another place to call home, and many don’t know where they will go.
“I have no idea,” said Charles Rawls, who lived in the parking lot for about a year. ‘I’ve thought about it. I don’t want that street thing where you go from street to street to street every night. It’s insane. You’re not sleeping.’
Rawls planned to be there temporarily until he could get his vehicle repaired, but that still hasn’t happened.
He says he’s not the only one who has been denied repairs.
“They didn’t fix anyone’s car that’s in there,” Rawls said. ‘It’s supposed to be a triage. We’re supposed to bring our vehicles here to be repaired, and then we’ll go out on our own. But it just continues and gets worse. Then the rats come in.’
He says the experience has been tough.
“When I first came here, we had nothing,” Rawls said. ‘It was crazy. They put all this money into it and now they say you’ll be out of here in February. It’s insane.’
“Horrible,” said Aaron Wilson, describing his experience living on the property since March. “Day after day. Something torturous. Like a prison camp. Very unfairly treated. And we are the bad people because we alerted the authorities.”
A 2023 budget analyst report estimates the cost per vehicle at the site at approximately $140,000 per year.
Still, city officials just managed to connect reliable power in October, nearly three years after it opened.
New light poles were then installed, which stopped working within a few weeks. Wilson believes this is due to heavy shaking during the storms. The lights have not been repaired.
Wilson says many of the people who live at the facility feel the city is closing the site in part because they have complained about the lack of basic necessities such as ADA-compliant bathrooms and other amenities.
“They like to retaliate if you tell them,” Wilson said. “If you are a traitor, you are the lowest common denominator and you will have to pay for it.
CBS Bay Area was not allowed to enter the site, which has 24/7 security.
Wilson believes most people who live there are just trying to do the right thing.
“We are the good homeless people,” he said. “We are here in the shelter as it should be. We are not on the street to cause a nuisance or defecate in the street.”
Wilson has no plans for what he will do if he is forced to leave.
Residents believe they will have to vacate the building by mid-February, but he still hopes they will be given more time.
“What I think would be a good thing is if an attorney would come forward and give us a stay of execution on this, because we’re talking about 60-70 days that we all have to be gone,” Wilson said. “It’s just not enough time.”
There are approximately 30 vehicles at the location.
The city says case managers will work with residents to repair vehicles or transition them to permanent housing or shelters. But Rawls doesn’t think he would want to take it.
“I’ve seen their housing and no, I wouldn’t do that,” Rawls said of possibly moving to a shelter or permanent housing.
Many residents say they are still shaken by the city’s decision to close the site and hope they have somewhere safe to go.
