BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A committee of Palo Alto council members tonight (Aug. 25) endorsed the idea of permitting RVs on certain streets scattered throughout the city.
The Policy and Services Committee also voted to ban trailers and broken-down RVs from city streets, to add street cleanups and street sweeping and to explore a buyback program for RV dwellers transitioning to a homeless shelter.
The committee’s recommendations will go to the full Palo Alto City Council for a vote before City Manager Ed Shikada starts working on the initiatives.
Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker voted against the idea of limiting RVs to certain streets.
“It’s sort of odd to say, ‘These parts of our city will house and host these oversized vehicles,’ … I’d rather solve the root problem, which is creating safe parking and/or housing for them,” she said.
Councilmen Greer Stone and George Lu were in favor of a permit program for RVs on non-residential streets, but only after the city looks at commercial parking lots or church parking lots as a place for RVs to park.
The committee quickly discarded the idea of paving over the Baylands Athletic Center as a place for RVs to park, because doing so would require voters to approve the removal of parkland.
The committee agreed Palo Alto should ban “vanlording,” or renting out RVs on city streets.
“This is an obvious one to do. These are public streets,” Stone said.
Dozens of residents and business owners spoke at tonight’s meeting, asking the city to address RV dwellers, who have grown in numbers since parking along El Camino Real was replaced with bike lanes in the spring.
Assistant to the City Manager Melissa McDonough estimated that 200 people are living in RVs in Palo Alto — double the count from two years ago.
Residents said RV dwellers dump garbage and human waste, block sidewalks and bike lanes and make employees and visitors afraid.
“It’s a situation that is bad and getting worse,” said Barry Katz, speaking on behalf of 400 households in the Ventura Neighborhood Association.
“Someone is going to get hurt, and it’s going to be a tragedy,” said Jeanette Baldwin, service director at Anderson Honda at 1766 Embarcadero Road.
A few RV dwellers asked the city for compassion.
“Some of us ended up here due to neglect and abuse, and some of us made some mistakes that led us here. But for the majority of us, this was never a choice,” said an RV dweller named Justin H., who didn’t give his full last name.
No, RVs on city Streets in Palo Alto. You cannot just move in and take over when I am paying to live here. Who are you? We pay taxes and yet we are being held hostage behind them. Their RVs are as big as our homes. We have human waste on the streets rats running around, our parking spaces for our businesses are being used up. Businesses are being surrounded by them. Most don’t even have vehicle registration to be on city’s streets. Some were abandoned and taken over by trespassers. On Fabian way they were setting up new trailers and renting them out posted online. Fabian Way has twenty RVs five have current tags. Spoke with special police dept. From parking enforcement, they don’t even have a tow company that moves the RVs or a place to store once moved. it’s not fair. It’s not how we live in America. It’s not how we live in Palo Alto. We will not be subjected to that kind of living we pay taxes. We deserve to live in well lit, spacious, clean environment not with everyone running up and down our streets with bikes and accumulating bikes, and and porch furniture on our city streets. city streets are public streets, Public streets means everybody. Walking down Fabian Way should be called the doomed loop. It has two schools and senior housing and a kids recreational center. Imagine kids riding bikes to school. The Vans are parked across the street from the schools 20 of them. Imagine every day going home to 20 RVs on your block. Look we are human beings everyone deserves a decent place to live. I am 65 and work two (2)jobs just to live here. I thought Palo Alto was were I wanted to live the rest of my life but sadly my mind is changing. What are you doing? What are you causing? You can’t even move them. You can’t even move them from in front of the businesses How we to trust you that you (City Council) can’t even move them. Move them onto city property. Half of do not have tags on the license plate the other half do not even have license plates. I say we demand action asap. Your inaction to this situation has caused this. Do your job for your constituents, we the people of Palo Alto are not happy with the current situation. Fix it and make us a community that’s not being held hostages in our neighborhoods .
I live by Fabian way and it sucks. I feel bad for the people living there because I know they’d rather live in an actual apartment or home but I can’t stand being amongst RVs anytime I walk outside my house. We are going to be moving once our lease is up.
Many of these RV owners have nicer cars than my own. They get to live in Palo Alto…rent and tax free. Enough of this.
Vanlording has been around for years or maybe decades since the media started glorifying RV living as a lifestyle choice for techies, grad students etc. hoping to reduce their rents.
What are our “leaders” waiting for in terms of banning this practice??
Oh, sorry. Vice Mayor Veenker would “rather solve the root problem, which is creating safe parking and/or housing for them,” she said.”
How’s that working out? What concrete actions does our esteemed virtue-signalling vice mayor propose to eradicate homelessness, poverty, income inequality etc etc
Gee, who could have imagined that replacing parking on both sides of El Camino would not only hurt retailers/restaurants but push the RVs into neighborhoods rather than vanishing into thin air — much like the bicyclists NOT using El Camino.
But sure, let’s hear it for the bike coalitions claiming no one wants cars, the developers pushing their under-parked market rate developments whose cars also end up in neighborhoods, our “leaders” who keep pushing for more bike lanes and traffic calming to create more backups and slow emergency vehicles.
Remember when our “leaders” promised to go “block by block” to find 500 replacement parking spots for those spots they eliminated? How’s that search coming?
Are our “leaders” talking about moving the RVS serving Stanford construction workers ONTO Stanford campus and those serving tech workers into their companies’ parking lots?
What CONCRETE actions are being taken? Or is this just more time-consuming virtue signalling?