Every day when Marlon returns from work, he checks whether his RV is still where he left it — that it hasn’t been tagged, ticketed or towed away.
He’s part of the Arostegui family, one of the first to start parking on Winston Drive in 2022, after the intergenerational household lost its shared apartment during the pandemic. After a mass eviction last year scattered the family across different housing situations, Marlon has moved from one street to another, trying to avoid parking tickets and towing.
“I came to work,” said Marlon, a 42-year-old immigrant who was granted asylum and a work permit. Gigs, however, are hard to come by.
When the city towed his RV last year, he bought another motorhome for $3,500 from a family that had just been moved into housing, hoping it would give him another chance at stability. Now, his home is once again at risk.
On Nov. 1, San Francisco began enforcing two-hour parking restrictions on large vehicles citywide, citing and towing those without permits. The only residents temporarily safe are those with 6-month permits under the city’s Large Vehicle Refuge Program, a program Mayor Daniel Lurie has framed as a “compassionate response” to vehicular homelessness.
Yet months of reporting and dozens of internal documents reveal a rushed rollout, shifting rules, and little city infrastructure to make the crackdown work as promised. With only a fraction of vehicle-homes permitted, advocates warn the policy could dismantle fragile support networks and push families into smaller cars or onto the street.
This approach contradicts a public assurance from the mayor’s staffer Eufern Pan, who told SFMTA board members in June that towing would not begin until outreach, permits and appeals had been completed for all large vehicles.
For people like Marlon, the new policy offers no refuge at all.
“Those folks are going to be left destitute with the only thing that they have — an RV — and all their belongings in it,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, during a press conference on Nov. 5. “They’ve been towing for [expired] registration and there’s just been a real huge clampdown overall.”
When asked to explain the reason for beginning enforcement without a grace period, amid major policy shifts, the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) did not provide comment.
Who gets a permit — and who doesn’t
Each six-month permit is available only to residents who agree, as a binding condition, to accept the first offer of shelter or temporary subsidized housing made by the city. But these offers may not work for everyone.
Marlon was offered a housing subsidy in Lake Merced’s Parkmerced apartments during last year’s RV evictions, but declined, unsure he could keep up with rent without steady work. “If I had had a permanent job, it wouldn’t have been a problem,” Marlon said. His goal is to one day become a taxi driver and save enough to bring his wife and four children from Nicaragua.
“If God allows it, I’m going to give myself two more years, three at most, to fulfill my purpose,” he said.
For now, Marlon is focused on keeping the aging RV he calls home, which can’t pass a smog test, another requirement for registration. Though he was able to obtain a permit, he continues to receive tickets for expired tags, while he saves up for the costly repairs needed to meet the state emissions standards.
The permit isn’t a safe harbor. It simply waives the two-hour parking limits on large vehicles. RV residents remain subject to all other parking rules, including moving every three days, and must keep their vehicles operable and registered. These are conditions many aging RVs struggle to meet. The city’s May survey found 82 large vehicles may be inoperable.
For those with inoperable vehicles, the city’s solution is to surrender them. “Case managers can help with options such as the vehicle buyback, relocation assistance and flexible financial support, and coordinate towing logistics when a vehicle is relinquished,” wrote DEM spokesperson Jackie Thornhill in an email. But she provided no details on the amount of aid available or what relocation entails.
People who enroll in the vehicle buyback program will receive $175 per linear foot of their RV, provided they show proof of ownership. Payments are split between enrollment and the acceptance of a housing offer. The consequence of enrolling is the permanent loss of the vehicle. Once in the program, the RV is considered abandoned, towed and dismantled; the Department of Motor Vehicles notified of its destruction.
Advocates warn against the rushed timeline.
“We need to have more time for these RVs to register,” said Gabriel Medina, the executive director of La Raza Community Resource Center. “These are mostly families, mostly immigrants, also scared single adults that are coming here and fleeing persecution from other countries.”
El Tecolote’s reporting found multiple groups excluded from the permit program, including people who:
- lack the documentation required to apply within the narrow timeframe;
- recently arrived in San Francisco after fleeing immigration raids elsewhere;
- had their vehicles towed before the time limits took effect;
- will not sell their RVs, but cannot drive out of the city due to parole restrictions;
- live in vehicles that are inoperable, fail smog tests, or need costly repairs to register;
- don’t have a title because the vehicle was gifted;
- weren’t counted in the city’s May census but have previously accessed shelters or been assessed in the homeless navigation system;
- are renting RVs while seeking stable housing.
When presented with these scenarios, Thornhill said for those not in the program, “the city will continue outreach and service connections while enforcing parking rules citywide.” She didn’t explain, however, how that outreach will continue, or how residents will be reached once their RVs have been towed away and people are displaced from the area.
Confusion also persists over whether disabled placard exempt vehicles from the two-hour parking limits. Even the Mayor’s Office initially got it wrong, informing Mission Local that placards were not exempt, before clarifying that such vehicles would not be towed.
Although the exemption is not explicitly written in the local ordinance, San Francisco cannot supersede state law. California Vehicle Code §22511.5 grants all vehicles with disabled placards the right to park without time limits in any time-restricted zone established by a local ordinance.
“They will not be cited or towed for violation of the 2-hour large vehicle restriction,” wrote Jen Kwart, spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office. “There is no contradiction between our local ordinance and state law.”
When legislation passed in July, the Large Vehicle ordinance only included exemptions for vehicles that were: (a) loading and unloading, (b) displaying an MTA-issued permit, (c) covered by a Residential Parking Permit or (d) registered with commercial plates.
The ordinance also allows the city to adjust the program rules to help the RV community, such as “creating short-term visitor permits or authorizing limited permit extensions for households that include children or seniors.”
So far, however, the city is not using that discretion and is moving quickly to enforce the new policy.
Who’s on the list? Tracking moving homes
As of October 31, San Francisco had issued 299 Large Vehicle Refuge Permits through outreach workers and community events, according to Jackie Thornhill, communications manager for DEM. The next day, another 23 permits were issued during the final permit event.
That leaves 181 eligible RV households — roughly 36% of 503 households on the city’s May count of large vehicles — without a permit. Though, Thornhill said many of these vehicles have since left the city or been towed from the streets.
But the city’s efforts to create a definitive list of eligible residents has been complicated by one reality: people living in RVs are a mobile community. While the program was built on a fixed May count of 503 large vehicles, more recent data reveals a much larger and constantly changing population.
An internal dataset obtained by El Tecolote recorded 698 unique vehicle homes between May and September, a cumulative log of every observed vehicle home in the city. This contrasts sharply with the city’s quarterly tally in September of 404 RVs, which represents a single point in time.
This discrepancy, between a one-day snapshot and a cumulative record, raises a critical question: is the city’s enforcement list accurately capturing the number of people now at risk of losing their homes?
The official May count was flawed. Even long-time residents like Armando Bravo Martinez were missed, whom El Tecolote documented during the displacement of a primarily Latino community in Bernal Heights in March 2024. This past documentation did not support his appeal for a permit. His eligibility hinged not on his established presence, but on finding a qualifying parking ticket from earlier this year.
That data gap is compounded by limited transparency on a key detail: when asked what criteria the city uses to determine if a vehicle is lived in — a fundamental step for creating its list — the Mayor’s Office and DEM didn’t provide an explanation. They also advised against reporting about the combined dataset, calling it “misleading,” but didn’t dispute El Tecolote’s data analysis.
A program rushed into existence
In less than 60 days, city staff have built and launched a citywide program. Yet internal documents and city correspondence reveal a process marked by last-minute changes and internal confusion, creating significant barriers for many of the people the program was designed to help.
A key point of contention was how applicants could prove their presence in the city, a requirement for the permit. The SFMTA Board passed the refuge permit without a defined appeal process in the June 17 meeting.
Board Director Stephanie Cajina was the only vote of dissent and raised concerns about the half-baked permit. “More than 50% of the things [in the program] are still in the planning phase,” said Cajina. “Do we have a Good Neighbor policy, and what is that? Have folks been made aware of what that is?”
Marion Sanders, Deputy Director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, responded that no Good Neighbor policy had been drafted for the RV population.
However, despite Cajina’s concerns, city staff running the program didn’t finalize an appeal process and Good Neighbor policy until a few weeks before enforcement began. Crucially, city staff struggled to define what proof should be acceptable.
An internal draft reveals staff disagreeing on the standards. “How far are we willing to go?” one staffer wrote. Another questioned whether a simple receipt should be enough: “I have a receipt from lunch in another city last weekend, but I don’t know if that should make me eligible for housing there.”
Their indecision had direct consequences. Guidelines were repeatedly changed, even after publishing them on the city’s website, narrowing the acceptable proof of presence from a period “on or before May 31” to a single day at some permitting events, before the city finally settled on documentation from January to May of this year.
What that documentation could look like also remained narrow. Having a child enrolled in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), for instance, was not enough to prove residency, said Friedenbach. Documents that were accepted included parking tickets, towing records and vehicle repair receipts that were dated between January 1 and May 31 of this year. Vehicle insurance and registration also qualified, but needed to have a San Francisco address.
For RV residents, especially those without a stable mailing address or paper trail, proving their presence in this way became exceptionally difficult.
“The city continued to change the goalposts for approval, including the types of acceptable documentation and the timeframe of their established presence,” wrote Guadalupe Velez of the Coalition on Homelessness in a press release. “Permits were only accessible to people identified in a city database as of May 2025, that could be revoked if RV residents refused any offers of service regardless of whether it meets their family size, disability or other needs.”
The process also creates a barrier for immigrants. A sworn affidavit, intended as a solution, was intimidating to some undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. Several RV residents told El Tecolote they worried signing an affidavit could affect their immigration cases.
On Oct. 9, one Colombian woman spoke to El Tecolote in the Lake Merced neighborhood, saying she fled New York with her husband and two small children earlier this year out of fear of immigration raids. Once they arrived in San Francisco, they searched for an RV online while staying inside a temporary shelter.
“We saved up money and we bought one,” she said. The woman was uncertain about the status of their permit after applying. Outreach staff told her the permit “might take a while” because the family had no proof they lived in the city before May. “It’s a little different [for us]. We are looking at other options.”So far, the chaotic rollout has resulted in 128 appeals as of October, according to a city spokesperson who spoke to El Tecolote on background. While 106 were approved, the shifting standards caused confusion and made it difficult to apply for many RV residents navigating the new permit process.
The fine print of being a “Good Neighbor”
When street outreach began in September, a key component was missing: the rules themselves. The city’s “Good Neighbor” policy, which dictates how residents must behave to keep their permits, was still being finalized by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, after an initial draft by the MTA.
To keep a permit, residents must display the city-issued sticker on their RV’s rear bumper, keep sidewalks clear of belongings, and dispose of waste only at official dump stations. Open flames are prohibited inside and outside their vehicles, as are connections to city or private utilities like hydrants or PG&E lines. Residents must also allow Public Works crews to remove debris and keep noise levels low to “respect nearby neighbors.”
Violations trigger escalating enforcement: courtesy notices for the first two offenses, a final warning for the third, and then permit revocation. Once revoked, vehicles become subject to the city’s two-hour parking limit and can be cited or towed immediately for safety hazards.
Advocates and RV residents say these rules break up community support networks and are often impossible to follow.
“One of the chief complaints of RVs is that they have trash problems, they have waste water problems. You hear that constantly from politicians, you hear that from [District 7 Supervisor] Myrna Melgar, in reference to Winston Drive,” said Lukas Illa, an organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness.
“And actually, that community organized amongst themselves to pick up their trash and facilitate going into a landfill. And same thing with their graywater, and there is no graywater disposal in the city, they’d have to go up to Marin [County],” he added.
One of the most significant practical barriers is the lack of legal options for sewage disposal. San Francisco’s only RV park, Candlestick RV Park, has no public dump station. An employee confirmed “the city never had a dumping site,” adding that the closest one is about 25 miles away in Redwood City’s “Trailer Villa.”
This means RV residents are forced to either drive dozens of miles, pay up to $97 for a one-time septic tank cleanout from a porta-potty company, or risk emptying waste out on the street.
An RV’s black water tank can hold between 9 to 53 gallons, with a similar graywater capacity. One call for service will only remove 55 gallons, according to an employee of United Sites Services, so residents may have to pay twice. For single occupants, tanks may fill monthly with daily use, but for families, it can be weekly.
Some residents have developed creative solutions, using cat litter or wood chips to absorb waste that can be bagged and disposed of in dumpsters. Others use sewage clean-out holes that can be found along sidewalks.
Yet the “Good Neighbor” policy allows permit revocation for sanitation-related violations, which can trigger tows. Without any local dump sites or affordable alternatives, advocates say the city’s lack of infrastructure makes compliance nearly impossible. In practice, they argue, the policy criminalizes basic human needs, punishing residents trying to follow the rules.
A permit without refuge for all
The city’s promise of refuge through its permit program is also undermined by a severe shortage of actual housing. While the DEM highlights new investments, the math tells a different story.
“There are approximately 15,000 unhoused households waiting for housing in Coordinated Entry,” wrote Guadalupe Velez of the Coalition on Homelessness. To meet that need, the city’s new resources include 100 rapid-rehousing slots for adults in vehicles — in addition to 65 slots reserved for families — and 50 hotel vouchers, said Thornhill, DEM’s spokesperson.
But these units are vastly outnumbered by the need.
Still, the city claims it has “sufficient housing resources to support this initiative and continue to serve people across our system of care.” Yet the result may be that hundreds of permitted RV residents remain trapped in a waiting game, without any housing subsidy in sight. Their precarious situation is worsened by a strict rule: refusing any offer of temporary shelter, even an unsuitable one, results in permit revocation.
At a permitting event in October, Aldo Gutierrez, 45, signed paperwork for housing for his wife and two daughters. In the meantime, he received a refuge permit. A renter his whole life until losing his construction job during the pandemic, Gutierrez had never applied for housing before.
“I’ve lived here for 30 years, and I’ve worked my whole life to pay for my own place,” he told El Tecolote.
When asked when his family would move into their new apartment, Gutierrez smiled and said, “We don’t know yet. We’ll wait and see.”
For those who do navigate the intricate process and receive a permit, the reprieve is temporary. Extensions may only be granted once, with any other additional time left to the discretion of MTA and HSH department heads.
Ivan Hernandez, 34, who was finally approved, sees the permit not as a path to housing, but simply as “a chance to have a moment of stability where they aren’t bothering you with tickets.”
His RV, for which he paid $2,000 in registration alone, is his lifeline. Hernandez lives with his Frenchie dog, Chaco, and considers his RV a sanctuary. He is unsure whether to sell his vehicle through the city’s buyback program as he doesn’t want to give up his safety net.
“I have a bathroom, a shower, a living room, a TV — everything,” he said.A city spokesperson with DEM clarified in an email that residents can keep their RVs, though they must move them to storage or parking outside the city once the ban begins. But this creates new burdens: paying for expensive storage, or risking theft by parking in an unfamiliar city where they must also navigate a new set of often hostile local regulations.
How enforcement will roll out
San Francisco residents may not see a mass removal of RVs overnight, but a phased enforcement plan is now funded and underway. The city has allocated over $560,000 for the initial rollout, according to a draft budget, though the Mayor’s office and DEM have not confirmed how the funds will be used.
An El Tecolote analysis of the budget shows the scope is limited: funding for parking control officers would cover about two full-time officers for a year. The plan calls for one weekly day of “resolutions,” potentially deploying about nine officers on that single day, coordinated by a supervisor funded for 10 hours a week.
According to public documents, the city will begin enforcement with education, outreach and services first, followed by signage posted this month. Yet enforcement and towing began Nov. 5, The San Francisco Standard reported.
The ordinance itself states: “The MTA intends to install 400 signs within the City to effectuate removal of large vehicles parked in violation.” About 100 signs will be placed “at entrances into the city,” with 300 more “installed strategically citywide.”
But Mayoral staffer Eufern Pan advised the SFMTA in an email to base the locations on four factors: where RVs are concentrated, where constituents are complaining the most, 311 data, and input from police and parking officers who work on homelessness.
This enforcement begins even as in-person permitting events have ended. Thornhill wrote in an email to El Tecolote that “to ensure maximum enrollment, vehicles identified in the May count will continue to remain eligible for permits.”
At a press conference, Friedenbach reiterated how less than half of city’s RVs in the city had “been stickered” with parking permits by the end of October, leading to “a lot of scrambling” from city employees trying to reach residents before towing began.
“There was no office to go to. There [were] online portals that people didn’t know about,” Friedenbach said.
When asked how residents can now obtain a permit without these events, city officials did not provide comment. But as of Nov. 5, a new online form had appeared on the city’s website to contact outreach workers and sign up for a permit.
For RV residents like Marlon, the enforcement translates into a daily burden of anxiety. Each new ticket, each night spent wondering if his home will be gone by morning, chips away at the very stability the city has pledged. This constant towing threat makes it clear: refuge is out of reach.
Marlon said that come November, his struggle is unlikely to change.
“First of all, I have to keep moving. I have no other choice,” he said. “What else can I do?”
Mariana Duran contributed reporting to this story.
Arostegui is part of an RV community that has faced forced displacement by the city since July. For him, the RV is not just a vehicle, it’s home.
Photo: Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote/CatchLight Local