San Francisco's rules targeting people who live in parked RVs on the streets are about to tighten up, as the SF Municipal Transit Agency has approved a law to tow people’s RVs if they refuse an offer of shelter.

A July 2024 count found 361 large vehicles like RVs in SF being used as shelter, just plain parked on San Francisco streets. And these do cause serious problems in certain neighborhoods, such as fires, illegal dumping of trash and waste, hogging up available parking, and limiting the sight lines of drivers.    

So, in accordance with Mayor London Breed’s recent ramped-up encampment sweeps,  the Chronicle reports that the SF Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) board of directors voted 6-1 on Tuesday to tow RVs being parked overnight on San Francisco streets. The new rule will apply to RVs and large vehicles that are parked in standard car parking spots between midnight and 6 am.

According to a release from the Mayor's Office, “The approved law will make overnight parking by inhabited RVs a towable offense between midnight and 6 am, but only if an offer of shelter, housing, and/or services are rejected.” The new rules also make overnight RV camping illegal in all SF streets, which was previously not the case (though enforcement has been rather scant in zones where it was not legal).

“This approval by the SFMTA Board of Directors will help us to enforce our laws to ensure that our streets are safe, livable, and accessible to everyone,” Mayor Breed said in that press release. “Our outreach workers are going out every [day] to offer help to people and to engage with those living in vehicles and encampments. Our message is clear: accepting our help is not just an option, it is the option.”

According to the Chronicle, this new enforcement will start November 1. The Chron adds that the cost of these new rules will be “about $230,000 a year for sign installation, enforcement, tow subsidies and storage.”

SFMTA board members, who voted 6-1 in favor of the new law, insist that this will not be a huge mass crackdown. “I think implementing this would be quite infrequent, relatively speaking,” SFMTA chief of staff Viktoriya Wise said before Tuesday’s vote, according to the Examiner. “We think that maybe, on average, we can do perhaps one block a month.”

But homeless population advocates are calling this “an attempt to bully poor  families,” and the Examiner adds that a very contentious public comment session went for more than two hours.

“I’ve been moving my vehicle every other day just so I can avoid having problems,” one RV dweller who identified himself as Roger said during that public comment, per the Chronicle. “I get anxiety attacks when I’m around a lot of people … and the shelter that they’re offering is a navigation center, in which you have 100 people living in the same shelter.”

The best solution here would probably be more vehicle triage centers, providing bathrooms, showers, and potable water for residents. But those are expensive, and sometimes fail to deliver the promised utilities.

So SF’s solution for now is to start towing RVs. Again, this won’t start until November 1, so there won’t be any tangible results until after the November 5 mayoral election. Though Mayor Breed will probably be touting this as a personal accomplishment on her part before the November 5 mayoral election.  

Related: City Vows to Crack Down on Bernal Heights RV Encampment, Which Has Been Growing In Recent Months [SFist]

Image: Google Street View