I used to think San Francisco was a compassionate city. But I’ve come to understand that what looks like bureaucratic dysfunction is often deliberate: a system engineered to displace.
Over the past year, I’ve watched my RV community be targeted, harassed, and evicted. Not by accident—but by design.
It began on Bernal Heights Boulevard, where our small group — about 12 RVs with individuals, families, and pets — lived in relative peace. We shared meals and watched each other’s things while folks went to work. Then came a wave of 311 complaints: reports of sewage, parking issues, even allegations of harassment we believe were fabricated. Police soon followed. One officer warned us we’d be arrested “if we so much as winked at a teenager.”
Then came the public shaming. One morning, I woke to see my photo and my dog Audrey’s on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. The headline: “S.F. revives old parking ban to clear the RV sprawl in Bernal Heights.” In the article, a neighbor described our RVs as “an eyesore.” Another said we “monopolized” the road. Seeing us framed like that, reduced to blight, was surreal, painful and galvanizing.
But some good came of it. About 30 neighbors sent letters of support to city officials, including then-Mayor London Breed. One letter from a housed neighbor, published in the Chronicle under the headline “Here’s what it’s really like being neighbors with RV dwellers in S.F.”, told a different story.
“Please do not report on the situation as if all Bernal Heights residents would like to push these folks away,” they wrote. “We’re grateful that people living in such dire straits are careful about being good neighbors… ‘San Francisco values’ do not include forcing people to move from a safe place where they are not bothering anyone.”
Their letter captured what the article missed: mutual aid, respectful coexistence and community.
Still, the city ordered us out. With help from the Coalition on Homelessness and the Vehicle Encampment Eviction Defense Network, we formed a caravan and relocated to the Bayview. Two days later, the city offered space at the Candlestick Vehicle Triage Center.
For many of us, the triage centers felt more like containment than care. At Candlestick, there were strict curfews, isolation from community, and few clear pathways to permanent housing. It felt more like a holding pen than a step toward stability. We said we’d only move if there was room for all of us. But when the time came, we were offered just one spot.
The next morning, a coordinated team of police, bulldozers, and city workers arrived. They dropped concrete barriers in our parking spaces, physically blocking us out.
That marked the beginning of our forced migration: from Bernal Heights to Bayview, then McLaren Park, San Bruno Avenue, and finally Bayshore — each move triggered by new complaints, citations and shifting excuses cloaked in red tape.
Some city workers showed empathy. But others were relentless. We were ticketed for parking violations even before the moratorium had ended, then cited for expired registrations — sometimes repeatedly for the same infraction. One morning at 5 a.m., a neighbor’s RV was pounded on with a baton, and they were ordered to move.
Even the city’s so-called solutions fell apart. The $15 million Bayview Triage Center closed with little to show. From where we stood, it never felt like the goal was to help. It was to get us out of sight.
This is why “infrastructure-first” homelessness strategies may work in other cities but continue to fail here. Those models depend on shared values and trust. In San Francisco, the system hides cruelty behind paperwork.
To outsiders, it might look like order. But we know better: the cruelty isn’t a glitch. It’s the point.
Today, some of us remain parked in Bayshore. Others have been pushed out again — to industrial corners, freeway edges, or nowhere at all. We’re still in touch, still trying to protect each other. We’re organizing to stop future evictions and push for alternatives that don’t isolate or punish us.
Real solutions start by treating vehicle residents as neighbors, not nuisances. And by working with us, not just around us.
