Mayor Lurie’s long-promised two-hour limit on RV parking on SF streets took effect Saturday, though its effect may be limited, as many of the RVs already have a six-month extension lined up to stay parked right where they are.  

San Francisco has always had a fairly significant population of people living in RVs parked in street parking spaces, particularly around Bayview-Hunters Point, the Mission District, and around the Lake Merced and West Portal areas. This past summer, Mayor Lurie vowed to crack down on RVs parked in streets by enforcing a strict two-hour parking limit, though that allegedly strictly limit was just a plan to issue warnings. There would be no legitimate enforcement of the two-hour parking rule until November 1.

Well, as the Chronicle pointed out, November 1 arrived on Saturday, and the two-hour RV parking limit arrived with it. But the two-hour limit still won’t apply to many, if not most RVs parked on SF streets. NBC Bay Area points out that the city handed out hundreds of six-month extensions that would allow those dwellers to leave their RVs put for another full six months.  

There are currently an estimated 400 or so RVs on SF streets. Per NBC Bay Area, the SF Department of Emergency Management says they've handed out 299 of those six-month extensions. So that would indicate that three-fourths of SF RVs have the permit to go another full six more months before they have to start observing the two-hour rule.

"The permit is a transition tool and only prevents enforcement of the two-hour parking limit — it does not waive other parking or vehicle requirements, including operability," a Department of Emergency Management spokesperson told NBC Bay Area.

One very interesting tactic the city is taking in this case is to offer people a $3,000-$7,000 buyback for their RV vehicles. That seems like a strategy that could actually work! Though this early in the enactment of the new policy, the city has not provided data on how many people have taken that deal, nor for that matter, whether anyone whatsoever has been cited ot towed for exceeding the two-hour parking limit rule.  

People identified as living in RVs have reportedly already been assigned case workers, whose task it is to shepherd the RV dwellers into supportive housing. And that’s the goal with all unsheltered people in SF.

To that end, Mayor Lurie’s latest budget calls for 100 new adult rapid rehousing slots to be reserved for people in RVs, plus 100 more slots for young people ages 18-24, and another 50 hotel vouchers for adults. But in a city where the latest estimates say 8,300 people are living on the streets, those slots and vouchers are unlikely to make a visible difference.

Related: Lurie’s So-Called RV Crackdown Begins Today, But Two-Hour Parking Limit Still Months Away [SFist]

Image via Google Street View