BY ELAINE GOODMAN
Daily Post Correspondent
Despite city efforts to reduce the number of RV dwellers parking on Palo Alto streets, the vehicle count has been holding steady or even ticking upward over the last few months, one resident has reported.
Bob Marinaro rides his bike along Palo Alto streets every few weeks, tallying in a notebook the RVs he finds parked there. While the RVs provide housing for people who might otherwise be homeless, businesses and residents say the vehicles block driver sightlines, take away customer parking and create sanitation issues.
Marinaro said the number of RVs hit a low point of 131 on March 29. But then the number started creeping up, reaching 143 in his June 9 count. In a June 26 count, Marinaro tallied 130 RVs.
“That is better than the numbers in the 200s that we saw last fall, but we have not seen any appreciable decrease in the last several months,” Marinaro said in an email to council members and others to share his findings. “The unfortunate fact is that we have not seen any movement by the City Council in recent months to give us any indication that they are effectively working (on) the issue.”
Marinaro documents the street where he finds the RVs and notes when there’s an RV parked on a street where there were none previously. He emails out his results to about 150 people, typically including photos.
Marinaro’s first RV count was on Oct. 21, 2025, the day after City Council approved a package of measures to address the growing numbers of RVs, which the city refers to as oversized vehicles or OSVs.
In his first count, Marinaro found 220 RVs parked on Palo Alto streets. The number gradually fell over the next five months as the city carried out its OSV plan.
Progress has stalled
But now, according to Marinaro’s counts, progress appears to have stalled or is being reversed.
The city has acknowledged that many people find the RV situation unacceptable.
“Some OSV residents are ‘bad actors’ and their behaviors include angry verbal outbursts, an excessive amount of belongings on the street and sidewalk, and accumulation of trash and unsanitary disposal of sewage, which can attract rodents,” the city said in a past report.
Steps the council approved in October to address the RV issue included ramping up the towing of unregistered vehicles parked on city streets; banning detached trailers from parking on public streets; and prohibiting “vanlords,” who rent out RVs.
Council also formed a committee to focus on the RV issue, consisting of council members Ed Lauing, Julie Lythcott-Haims and Keith Reckdahl.
A report from the committee last month said that from Jan. 15 to May 6, the number of RVs parked on city streets dropped from 191 to 133.
According to the report, 31 RVs were towed from October to December 2025 and 46 RVs from January to April. From January through mid-May, 19 citations were issued related to vanlording.
In other measures, council authorized a one-time deep cleaning of streets in RV parking areas followed by street sweeping twice a month. Vehicles must move to other spaces on street-sweeping days, allowing the city to see if any RVs don’t run.
At the same time, the city is working to expand safe, off-street parking opportunities for RV dwellers, such as the Geng Road lot which expanded last year to accommodate 22 vehicles. An outreach team has worked to connect RV dwellers to food, clothing, and showers, and asked them what they need to move into non-RV housing.
Wasn’t involved in politics before
Even though he’s a long-time resident, Marinaro said he hasn’t been involved in politics before. But this particular issue has sparked his ire.
“It’s just a quality of life thing,” he told the Post.
Since he’s started the project, Marinaro said he hears from businesses and residents about how the RV parking impacts them. In one case, an elderly resident had to go out and knock on an RV dweller’s door at 11:30 p.m. to ask them to turn off their noisy generator.
Marinaro hopes the RV parking issue will get attention during this year’s city council races.
He said more effort should go into finding safe parking for the vehicles or non-RV housing options.
And the city should look more closely at how other cities have handled the RV parking issue, he added.
“Palo Alto has generally been viewed as accommodating” to RV dwellers, he said.
Council is afraid to deal with this problem. They could instruct the police to enforce the existing law — that you’ve got to move your RV every 72 hours or you’ll get towed away. The police figure that, absent any instruction from council, they can ignore the law. They don’t want to have to fight the homeless advocates and other self-appointed activists who would stick up for the people living in these vans. Council, just tell the police to start enforcing the law. It’s that simple. No more excuses.