San Francisco. On September 17, the End Poverty Tows Coalition rallied at City Hall, where current and former vehicular dwellers and their supporters eloquently spoke out against a leaked proposal to ban RVs and make overnight parking of ‘oversized vehicles’ illegal all over the city of San Francisco. This ban was drafted by Mayor London Breed’s office along with the SFMTA [San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency], who would be given sole authority, with no public oversight, to tow and impound people’s homes. This would affect hundreds of people, many of them families. The protesters urged its members to reject this attempt to criminalize people who live in RVs and other vehicles, and instead invest in safe parking and real, permanent housing. ‘Do not evict families from their homes!’
One speaker after another testified about what this new mean policy would mean for already vulnerable people: it would steal people’s only shelters – and along with them their privacy and safety – and drive them onto the streets, where they would be vulnerable to the elements, violence and the daily sweeps coming down on people who can’t afford housing in this city of sky-high rents. Homeless people in San Francisco are being chased from one spot to another by the police and city workers in these daily assaults on camps and individuals living on the streets.
Ninety percent of the homeless families in the city live in RVs or other vehicles. Now the mayor is proposing to make overnight parking of RVs illegal and subject to ticketing and towing. Many of those threatened with having their only shelter stolen are immigrants, so are also vulnerable to attacks by the INS and deportation. Many are able to work because they have this minimal housing. This new policy will be particularly hard on the many children who would lose their only home.
Here is some of the testimony from the rally and from the hearing inside City Hall:
Lukas Illa, Human Rights Organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness, kicked the demonstration off with these rousing words:
“Working people with vehicular housing are being pushed from street to street where they face harassment from both city workers and neighbors alike. Instead of this bill that further criminalizes people in poverty, where are the resolutions calling for the filling of the 700 vacant units of housing in the city? Where are the resolutions making it easier for the vehicularly housed people to pay off their tickets or update their registration? Where are the resolutions for establishing more than one parking site in this city of 800,000? The city has made working families the target in the media and the public in a frenzy of classist and racist rhetoric, labeling RV residents as not worthy of dignity. This city has failed in its promises and is threatening to push people who already have shelter onto the streets and making sure that people who desperately need shelter are kept waiting longer.
Armando Martinez, RV dweller, who was pushed off his site on Bernal Hill:
“This is [holding up picture] my dog Audrey. Because we have been pushed from street to street, she was killed by a hit and run on Folsom St. I want us to ask for more! ASK FOR MORE!! Ask for safe parking. Ask for daycare for your children, schools for your children. I live in an RV because I don’t want to be homeless, but guess what, I’m homeless! My neighbors on Bernal Hill were fantastic, they supported us, but there are always bad apples in the barrel that make things worse. So I’m asking you from the bottom of my heart London Breed, please stop with the rhetoric, it’s dangerous and hateful and it certainly the hell is not compassion!”
Santos:
“I want housing and nada mas! I was tired a long time in the street. I’m fed up at how I’m treated, dealing with the cops and the city. Everybody gets tickets, tickets tickets! The solution is housing for everybody”
The people then went into City Hall and testified before the Board of the SFMTA, appealing to them not to pass this mean and destructive proposal. One after another they asked for common sanity and humanity.
One stated that “Someone who is running for President right now is demonizing immigrants. How different is this from what is going on here, by making up stories about ‘RV dwellers’, claiming they are refusing shelter, but we have been there and see that they don’t qualify. These events traumatize children permanently”
Another, a woman who drives Uber and lives in her RV, asked “Since when is San Francisco elitist? You have enough money from property taxes, help the people with some of it. I work and I can’t afford rent in San Francisco. We are just trying to survive.”
Another speaker asked “Do you know what it’s like to lose your belongings time after time? And you have to start over again and again and again. Most of the people who get their RVs towed never get the possessions back or their vehicles back. We don’t need more policies that punish people because they are poor.”
Update: After a second rally and the people’s eloquent testimony before the SFMTA October 2, the agency’s decision was to unanimously accept the proposal, which will fast- track tows and loss of shelter, resulting in a great increase in people living in the streets, many of them families. Instead of making the sane and humane decision – to reject this men-spirited plan – the SFMTA unanimously passed (with a weak amendment that won’t change anything) this new way to scapegoat the poor.
The End Poverty Tows Coalition and its members have vowed to continue to organize against this criminalization, to demand safe parking spaces for RVs ad other vehicle dwellings, and for real housing for all.
San Francisco poet and organizer Sarah Menefee is a long-time homeless rights activist. She is the Homeless Desk on the People’s Tribune Editorial Board, and a founding member of such organizations as the San Francisco Union of the Homeless, Homes Not Jails and 'First they came for the homeless’. Known for her poetry about the streets, her latest collections are Winter Rose, Sign and Holy Eel.
