BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council candidates have varying opinions on how to address 150 RV dwellers living on city streets.
“That is the top issue,” Councilman Ed Lauing said in an interview.
Lauing and Planning Commissioner Bryna Chang want the city to take on more legal risk by putting limits on RV dwellers.
Lauing said the city could put signs at the entrance to the city to ban RVs without a parking permit.
Council has already voted to permit around 40 RVs at the edges of the city, on Embarcadero Road and Coyote Hill Road.
“That covers what I feel like we should, as part of our values, do for some people that are hurting. I don’t feel any need to go beyond that,” Lauing said.
Lauing pointed to a lawsuit in Sebastopol, where four disabled RV dwellers sued the city in October 2022 after council restricted when and where they could park.
RV dwellers said they live in RVs out of necessity, and they’re being targeted with tickets and towing.
The city argued its RV restrictions were about health and safety concerns and complaints about a lack of parking near businesses.
Federal Judge Kandis Westmore sided with Sebastopol on Nov. 22, 2024, finding the city’s restrictions served a legitimate government purpose. The RV dwellers and the nonprofits have appealed Westmore’s ruling.
“The legal risk is real, and I think we should step up and take a bit more legal risk than we have before,” Lauing said.
Chang wants to prohibit RVs from parking in Palo Alto from 2 to 5 a.m. She said the city has already built a homeless shelter at 1237 San Antonio Road and offers RV parking at 2000 Geng Road, and those efforts should strengthen the city’s case.
“There are safety issues. There are sanitation issues. It’s pretty gross … We can take a little bit more legal risk as a city than we have. Unfortunately, had we done that a lot earlier, we wouldn’t have as big of a problem as we do now,” Chang said, pointing to Menlo Park extending its overnight RV ban throughout the city when there were around 50 RV dwellers.
Parks Commissioner Yudy Deng said the city needs to consistently enforce existing rules, such as a ban on parking in the same spot for 72 hours.
“It’s been a problem for a few years now, and we didn’t address it at the beginning,” she said. “My principle is: We do not only get them off the street; we should keep them off the street. So even though we have compassion, we also need to set clear rules and enforcement. Because definitely some of the RV dwellers are not good neighbors.”Mayor’s view
Mayor Vicki Veenker said the city is making progress.
“We’re finally getting to the point where we’re resolving it more fully,” she said in an interview.
Veenker said it’s too soon to consider a citywide RV ban because some RV dwellers would end up in city parks or parking garages. Veenk-er said she wants to focus on helping RV dwellers who live or work in Palo Alto, and she’s hoping the city can find a way to verify their ties to the city. She wants larger employers like Stanford and Google to step up and provide parking for their employees living in RVs.
Dr. Gary Gechlik said he wants to create an RV park at the duck pond in the Baylands, charging $20 a night and providing private security.
“That area is safe. We have plenty of land, plenty of parking. Instead of having these RVs scattered around town, we could finally monitor them,” he said.
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