After hours of public comment, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 7-3 on Wednesday to overturn the proposal an SFMTA decision to ban recreational vehicles from parking on public streets overnight.
Advocates for the unhoused, like Joy D’ovidio, voiced their opposition to SFMTA’s original plan, which would allow authorities to tow RVs and other large vehicles parked on streets at the agency’s discretion marked.
“We’ve all experienced the trauma of having a car towed. Imagine having your house towed away,” D’Ovidio said during the board meeting. “We need to be more compassionate than that.”
The measure also required the city to provide accommodations for RV owners before towing their vehicles. Lukas Illa, a human rights organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness, argued that the city does not have enough housing to make the ban feasible.
“There is no proactive contact with RV residents,” Illa said. “There is no specific infrastructure for RVs. There are no problem-solving mechanisms for people living in vehicles.”
On the other side of the argument, some supervisors felt the ban was a necessary first step in addressing the city’s persistent problem of homelessness. Supervisor Rafael Mandleman was one of three elected officials who voted against the reversal.
“I believe we should have our public spaces usable by everyone,” Mandleman said. “And I think if we wait to achieve that goal until we have a home for every unhoused person who finds their way to San Francisco, we will never achieve that goal.” And that will be a very big problem for our city. .”
According to the city’s street response dashboard, there were approximately 458 people living in RVs in October of this year, when the SFMTA voted to approve Mayor London Breed’s proposed ban. Supervisor Dean Preston said he hopes the reversal is an opportunity to rethink the way San Francisco handles homelessness.
“There should be a more comprehensive plan to address the fact that so many people, especially families, are forced to live in RVs because they cannot afford apartments in San Francisco,” Preston said. “But in the meantime, I really object to this attempt to really ramp up policing and towing.”
