San Francisco is moving to ban RVs citywide.
This is how the mass eviction of a Latinx RV community became the city’s blueprint for displacement.
Veronica Cañas sat inside a white RV with faded blue stripes on a warm summer day, cradling her baby boy as their laughter spilled through the open door. Outside, her husband washed the windows of their RV, keeping an eye on their six-year-old daughter zooming past in a plastic toy car.
For years, along a quiet stretch of Winston Drive near Lake Merced, a tight-knit RV community of Latinx families carved out fragile stability in the shadow of San Francisco’s housing crisis. Restaurant workers, construction laborers and Uber drivers parked their homes here, juggling long, unpredictable shifts while their children attended nearby schools.
Without city support, families built their own safety net: coordinating childcare, making dinners together, sweeping sidewalks and sharing jumper cables. But in July 2024, it all collapsed.
Despite public promises to delay enforcement until safe alternatives were in place, Supervisor Myrna Melgar and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) launched a crackdown that began on Winston Drive and spread to nearby streets. More than a hundred RVs used as shelter were pushed out and scattered across the city — accelerating a citywide RV ban so controversial it was eventually repealed.
What happened on Winston Drive wasn’t just an eviction. It became the city’s playbook for dealing with the growing number of people living in their vehicles across San Francisco.
In a statement to El Tecolote, SFMTA said: “We’ll continue working with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, SFPD, and the Mayor’s Office to make sure that anyone living on our streets or in recreational vehicles (RVs) has information about the many city services and resources available to them.”
But internal emails reveal that city officials weaponized parking codes, using them to evict RV residents from one street to another. As officials sidestepped accountability, the burden of displacement fell on working-class families who were shuffled into some of the city’s most under-resourced neighborhoods.
For months, El Tecolote documented the targeted displacement of a vulnerable community facing vehicular homelessness. Now, an investigation based on thousands of pages of internal emails, memos and city reports reveals exactly how the crackdown unfolded, why it backfired and the devastating toll it took on families and children. The records show:
- Weaponized bureaucracy: City officials used parking laws and construction projects to displace RV residents, even as internal emails flagged legal, logistical and ethical concerns. On Winston Drive, officials enacted a four-hour parking limit to pressure RV residents out, even as they admitted it wouldn’t hold up in practice.
- Misuse of laws: Political pressure and neighbor complaints seemed to drive the agenda. Officials appeared to stretch enforcement laws beyond their intended purpose. In one case, a 72-hour parking rule designed for abandoned vehicles was instead used to displace people living in RVs.
- Systemic failure: Displaced residents were forced into areas they considered less safe, where they endured relentless ticketing and cycles of eviction. Many families relocated a few blocks away to Vidal Drive or the Bayview — an already strained and historically underserved neighborhood, further destabilizing families living in RVs.
Residents said the deepest betrayal came from Melgar — San Francisco’s only Latina supervisor at the time — who had personally visited the Winston Drive community over the years, promising families they would not be forced out without a safe alternative.
“We trusted [Melgar] a lot,” said Angela Arostegui, who lived in an RV on Winston with her husband and two daughters. “She gave us false hope. She played with us.”
In a written response to El Tecolote, Melgar rejected claims that her office misled RV residents and said her goal had always been to restore the public right of way.
“I do not think allowing people to live on the street in a vehicle in unregulated encampments without basic services is a progressive policy,” she wrote. “It is our collective failure to address our housing crisis, and to shirk our responsibility to newcomers in a City that functions on immigrant labor. I also believe that the public right of way should be public, and safe, and the residents of the vehicles on Winston Drive were not in a safe or healthy situation.”
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A fragile Latinx RV community gets targeted
Winston Drive was home to dozens of Latinx families living in RVs — working-class residents who created their own support system when the city failed to offer help. Even as they followed the rules, pressure from neighbors and city officials began mounting.
Winston Drive, a long, wide stretch in San Francisco’s quiet Lake Merced neighborhood, became home during the pandemic to nearly 50 RVs parked along empty lots and student housing.
It was one of several streets where informal RV communities had formed across the city. According to San Francisco’s most recent Point-In-Time (PIT) count, the number of people living in vehicles rose by 37% since 2022 — to nearly 1,500 — even as the number of people camping in tents or on sidewalks declined.
These vehicle homes sheltered dozens of working-class Latinx families, who could no longer afford the city’s soaring rents. Living in RVs was the only way many could keep their jobs in food service, janitorial work and construction while their children stayed enrolled in nearby schools.
To city officials, it looked like homelessness. But residents didn’t see it that way. Living in RVs was a survival strategy — a way to stay housed, employed and near their communities.
“Everyone here works,” said Arlen Arostegui. As a truck driver, he once earned up to $4,500 a week, enough to buy an RV for weekend camping trips with his wife, Angela, and their two daughters.
Before Winston, the Nicaraguan family shared a three-bedroom apartment with six relatives. When COVID hit, their income vanished. Forced to leave, they spread across four RVs — some borrowed, others newly bought. Parked near one another, they rebuilt a routine: sharing meals, hauling water and raising children together.
For Veronica, Winston Drive became a fragile refuge after years of upheaval. She and her husband, Carlos, fled El Salvador after gang members threatened to kill their daughter over an unpaid $1,000 extortion. “They said, ‘We’ll start with the root — the mother and father,’” Veronica told El Tecolote.
On their journey, they escaped a kidnapping attempt in Mexico, and eventually arrived in San Francisco and became pregnant. It was a high-risk pregnancy, and she had to stop working. “I kept going until I couldn’t anymore,” Veronica said. Then she was laid off from her restaurant job. With only one income, their $3,600 rent became impossible to manage. “We looked for cheaper housing, but nothing was available. They told us we didn’t qualify for help because we didn’t have stable jobs.”
A friend loaned them an RV. After a few months, they bought their own and parked on Winston Drive. “It wasn’t easy, but we had privacy. Stability. Our kids could sleep.”
Later, Veronica’s family, headed by her mother, Eusebia Rosales, moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and parked another RV beside them. Eusebia lived with her husband, teenage son, daughter Alba, and Alba’s two young children.
Winston wasn’t perfect. But it offered something rare: stability. As long as residents followed the rules — moving for weekly street cleaning and keeping vehicle registrations current — they had an informal but consistent place to live.
But to leaders at San Francisco State University and affluent homeowners nearby, the community was an eyesore. Complaints about RVs, trash and safety concerns flooded Melgar’s inbox, prompting her to act.
“They have roped and carved out portions of the street for their own exclusive use,” wrote one District 7 resident in an email to Melgar’s office in May 2023. “This can only happen when we have feckless city officials. Solution: Resign immediately and let’s get someone who does something.”
Jason Porth, a top SFSU official overseeing campus development, also raised concerns. “I regret that the situation along Winston has continued to deteriorate,” he wrote in a July 26, 2023, email to the Department of Homelessness (HSH) and Public Works (SFPW), citing litter and safety concerns. “We have found syringes with needles, broken beer bottles, a chair.”
The city knew the risks — and did it anyway
Despite repeated warnings from SFMTA staff about legal, logistical and ethical risks, Supervisor Myrna Melgar worked with the agency to push through new parking restrictions without securing a safe alternative for the families who would be displaced. (Click on the links to see how the bureaucracy unfolded).
Inside San Francisco City Hall, talks about disbanding the RV community began in September 2022. Melgar, responding to neighbor complaints and pressure to increase street parking, pushed for parking restrictions on Winston Drive, as well as Lake Merced Boulevard and Portola Drive. Over the following months, she worked closely with SFMTA staff to craft an enforcement plan for the summer.
“This proposal may engender objections from homeless advocates,” wrote SFMTA curb policy manager Hank Wilson in a March 1 email to Melgar’s office. He added that Melgar had “mentioned that implementation could be held until a satisfactory safe parking site is identified.”
Melgar’s aide, Emma Heiken, followed up to ask whether SFMTA could post the signs but delay enforcement “only once we have secured a safe parking site for the RVs.” Wilson replied that while possible, “I don’t believe we’d want to put the signs up with the express intent of not enforcing them.”
By April 2023, SFMTA circulated a draft of the policy internally. “This proposal will generate a lot of controversy,” Wilson warned colleagues in an email. “And just saying ‘the Supervisor asked for this’ might not be convincing enough.”
Ahead of public rollout, Wilson asked Melgar’s office for a meeting. “The proposed 4-hour time limits would impact the large number of vehicles (120 or so) that are parked along those blocks with people living in them,” he wrote in an April 20 email. “If passed, it likely will push those folks living in vehicles to other blocks in the City.”
Despite the warnings, staff moved forward, scheduling a public hearing in June, with a final SFMTA vote set for July 18.
Senior Analyst Andy Thornley, who oversees street parking and curbside regulations, was tasked with coordinating RV removal from city streets. That same day, April 20, Thornley emailed Melgar’s office with stricter proposals, including overnight parking bans, but also floated more supportive approaches: a ‘refuge permit’ system and other “equitable responses” for RV residents. But, in a separate email, he acknowledged the permit program would be “too big and too politically fraught” to implement anytime soon.
By May 23, Thornley emailed homelessness department director Emily Cohen, writing that Supervisor Melgar “understands fully” the risks of displacing families. “We still need a reasonable feasible answer to the question, ‘Where will all these people go if they can’t park here?’” he wrote.
By late June, SFMTA staff recommended holding off on posting the 4-hour signs until most RV residents left voluntarily — a “fuzzy goal,” Thornley wrote to colleagues. Efforts to establish a second, west-side vehicle triage center had failed. “We all need to be thinking hard about what can be promised,” he wrote, “and how it will be actuated.”
“Messy” and “impossible”: Staff admit limits of parking enforcement
A new legal hurdle emerged in July 2023. California’s First District Court of Appeal ruled that San Francisco’s practice of towing legally parked vehicles over unpaid tickets was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The lawsuit, filed by the Coalition on Homelessness, argued that warrantless tows amounted to unreasonable seizures.
Under the ruling, San Francisco could no longer tow vehicles without a warrant — even if they had multiple unpaid citations. Towing would only be allowed if a vehicle was: (1) blocking traffic, (2) unregistered for more than six months, (3) abandoned or (4) part of criminal evidence or arrest scenarios. If the vehicle was inhabited, police presence was required to remove people — but even that wouldn’t override the warrant requirement.
For RV residents, it was a rare protection. Even with new parking signs, the city couldn’t legally tow inhabited RVs without a warrant. So officials searched for workarounds.A month later, Joél T. Ramos — a liaison between SFMTA and the Board of Supervisors — emailed colleagues after receiving a call from Melgar. She had just driven past Winston Drive with her children and neighbors on the way to Lowell High School.
“The situation on Winston is a powder keg waiting to happen,” Ramos wrote to SFMTA staff, quoting Melgar. “With generators and smoking regularly happening, she is deeply concerned.” Melgar asked the SFMTA to investigate three issues: RVs allegedly being rented out, vacant vehicles stored on the street and the condition of the bike lane.
“Let’s please make sure to advance the Winston changes,” SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin responded in an email, instructing staff to move the four-hour parking rule forward.
But behind the scenes, concerns persisted. On September 1, SFMTA Streets Division Director Tom Maguire asked Thornley if the agency could add “TOW AWAY” language to the proposal. City traffic engineer Ricardo Olea wrote back: “I don’t know about illegal, but it is improper to legislate and put a tow sign for something we know we cannot tow for.”
On September 6, Wilson emailed colleagues, acknowledging these enforcement challenges: “Actually enforcing the 4-hour limits and removing vehicles who violate them will be a messy, and in some cases, impossible process.”
Still, on September 19, the SFMTA Board approved the new 4-hour parking restriction for Winston Drive, with a condition to delay posting signs for three months to find a safe parking site.
Angie Rodríguez, who lived in her RV on Winston Drive near San Francisco State University for seven years, watches as it is towed for repairs in San Francisco, Calif., on April 25, 2024. Photo: Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote/CatchLight Local
Bureaucratic hurdles behind new parking rules
SFMTA staff were torn and confused about when to post the new parking signs and how to enforce them.
On October 26, 2023, Thornley flagged a wave of looming concerns: construction-related towing, RV displacement spreading to nearby streets, along with potential protests and media scrutiny. Even with the new rules, he warned, many RVs “won’t, or can’t” move without legal intervention.
In the same email, Thornley raised a critical question: Would the supervisor want to delay the posting of the new parking signs for a few months now, or until after Winston Drive’s scheduled repaving project? Staff deferred to Melgar on when to post the signs and when enforcement should begin.
Weeks later, he added that enforcing the new rules just before Christmas would feel “kind of tone-deaf.” Thornley continued to work on a refuge permit, but the program never materialized.
With no clear timeline, RV residents protested on October 24, what they saw as imminent eviction.
“We don’t want them to impose the 4-hour limit,” said Arlen Arostegui. “We just want a safe parking area or anything they can offer.”
The looming enforcement threatened to upend their daily life. Already juggling jobs and parenting, the family was also navigating a mounting stack of parking tickets, late fees and the existing parking rule.
“Mornings are crazy,” Arostegui said of the weekly Tuesday street cleaning. “We’re usually moving by 7:45 a.m. or 7:50 a.m., then it’s parking the RV again, tidying things up inside, getting the kids ready, and rushing them to school. They always arrive late.”
As the December 19 enforcement deadline approached, the signs still weren’t ready. Parking Director Ted Graff emailed his staff that they’d likely miss the December 19 deadline and should say so publicly. “I understand the Sup does not want to publicly announce this as it’s a stick for HSH but seems like we will get egg on our face,” he wrote.
For residents like the Arosteguis, the delay brought a brief reprieve.
“We have our little children,” Arostegui said in a December 18 interview with the Peninsula Press. “It’s almost Christmas, and we just want to stay together. But we don’t know where we’ll go next.”
Melgar pushes for ‘creative’ tactics for dealing with RVs
By February 2024, the parking signs were ready, but SFMTA staff still needed final sign-off from Supervisor Melgar and SFMTA Board Chair Amanda Eaken, an email from Thornley noted.
“This suspense is bad for everyone,” Thornley wrote in a March 4 email to a volunteer from the Coalition on Homelessness, noting that residents, outreach workers and even SFMTA staff were stuck in limbo.
In the meantime, as some longtime residents left Winston Drive — either with city support or on their own — new RVs quickly replaced them.
In an April 3 email, Ramos wrote to Director Tumlin and colleagues that Melgar “has been complaining about this issue for a while now” and wanted temporary “No Parking” signs or barricades to prevent new RVs from moving in.
“I’ll remind this group of how the Supervisor would really appreciate any creative thinking instead of just an outright ‘No. Not possible’ answer,” wrote Ramos.
In an email, a city attorney said placing signs at recently vacated spots and not the entire street would be “seen as improper.”
Ultimately, Ramos wrote that Melgar agreed to “just putting the permanent [4-hour] signs up in-lieu of all this,” and scheduled enforcement for May 1.
By mid-April, flyers posted on Winston Drive announced “enforcement will begin soon,” surprising RV residents who said Melgar personally promised them in group meetings that they wouldn’t face displacement unless alternatives were secured.
Amid public outcry, Ramos wrote to SFMTA staff on April 15 that Melgar was “getting the kind of response she needs from [the Department of Homelessness], who are imploring for more time to do more outreach to the RV’s on Winston.”
Ramos emailed staff to postpone enforcement until “at least until July” to give HSH more time for outreach, and “because that is when re-paving work will begin.”
The 4-hour parking signs went up the week of April 22, with enforcement now tied to the repavement project.
In public communications, Melgar and city officials appeared to use the construction project as a justification for clearing Winston Drive. The strategy worked: media reports framed displacement as inevitable, sparking confusion among city department heads, RV residents and their advocates.
When asked why she continued pushing for enforcement despite the absence of alternative housing, Melgar cited safety concerns, neighbor complaints and infrastructure plans:
“The lack of safety for the community from an unregulated residential community in the public right of way, and the escalating hostility from the neighbors, who are my constituents,” she wrote. “Additionally the road is scheduled to be repaved, along with getting multiple pedestrian and bicycle improvements.”
RV residents protest looming eviction as confusion over enforcement grows
Two months ahead of the scheduled July eviction, Thornley sought clarity on the repavement timeline.
“We’re still hoping to avoid a ‘leaf blower’ finale to the 50+ RV encampment,” he wrote in a May 24, 2024 email to a colleague. “'(cause we’re a smart rich city and don’t just compound our own problems carelessly), the difference between July 1 and July 31 could be critical.”
As city staff scrambled behind the scenes, RV residents braced for the worst.
On June 10, more than 40 RV residents and advocates gathered to protest what they saw as Supervisor Melgar’s broken promise: that no one would be displaced from Winston Drive without a safe alternative.
“We [are] so stressed out now,” said 11-year-old Hazel, one of Arostegui’s daughters during the demonstration. “We don’t know where to go.”
Organized by the Coalition on Homelessness, protesters blocked traffic on Winston Drive using a car and orange cones, rallying against what they believed was an imminent eviction.“That ‘July 2’ eviction date is based on a guess by [the Coalition on Homelessness],” wrote Thornley in an email that morning. “I doubt they have better intel on the contractor’s plans than we do.”
Organizers and RV residents blocked traffic momentarily appealing to the city to find a safe parking site for their RVs before a parking enforcement deadline on Winston Drive in San Francisco, Calif., on June 11, 2024. Photo: Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote/CatchLight Local
Later that day, Melgar issued a statement saying enforcement would begin only after repaving was complete, tentatively set for July. “As one Supervisor in District 7, I lack the authority to control the work plans of the City’s Departments,” she wrote.
But for residents, the uncertainty was destabilizing.
“There was someone who promised us a safe space, and we haven’t been given an answer,” said Margot Sevilla, a construction worker who lived in an RV with her extended family. “It really is distressing news.”
By this point, Melgar said that HSH placed 38 families into city-supported housing programs.
But for many RV residents, the offers weren’t realistic. Some said they were told they didn’t qualify for rent assistance. Others said they were offered temporary shelter beds — a steep downgrade from the autonomy, privacy and security their RVs provide.
“None of this is for publication”: Miscommunication spreads confusion
As tensions mounted, Thornley asked Public Works spokesperson Benjamin Peterson for an update on the repaving schedule. Winston Drive, it turned out, was just one of 38 streets included in a citywide repaving contract.
“[The contractor] probably doesn’t care about the order and would be fine with dealing with Winston later,” Thornley wrote in a June 11 email to SFMTA staff.
He added, “None of this is for publication,” noting he planned to speak with Public Works about delaying the repaving to give RV residents more time. “Extra time hasn’t brought better answers so far,” he wrote, “but it’s preferable to our current path.”
Then on June 14, SFMTA staff were blindsided when the city’s Healthy Streets Operations Center (HSOC) — the task force responsible for clearing encampments — posted notices on Winston Drive announcing an “encampment resolution” scheduled for June 18, nearly two weeks before the rumored eviction date.
“Apparently HSOC posted notices on Friday. I only found out a couple hours ago,” Thornley wrote to the Public Works spokesperson, calling the situation “pretty confusing and confused.”
Residents were confused, too. Many feared the city was retaliating for their protest.
“If we went on strike it was so that we would be heard,” said Gio, an RV resident who declined to share his last name. “At no time did we want to damage private property or anything like that. We are respectful of the law… Just because we live in an RV, people have this bad concept.”
On June 18, Peterson confirmed to Thornley that repaving likely wouldn’t start until September or October. “We are willing to work with our contractor to provide as much time as is needed,” he wrote.
Thornley responded that the four-hour parking rule had become “a coincidental change that could move at the same time [as repaving], but it’s “more haphazard and stumbled-into than helpful.”
That same day, SFMTA’s Hank Wilson emailed colleagues that the city “shouldn’t push back the repaving project any further,” suggesting it would help motivate the homeless department to find safe parking sites.
Meanwhile, Peterson, seemingly unaware of the political stakes, confirmed to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition that repaving wouldn’t begin until fall — a message that quickly spread among advocacy groups and eventually reached Melgar’s office.
Expressing frustration, on June 24 Melgar wrote to Public Works and SFMTA staff: “This is a difficult situation politically and it bums me out that information is being shared with the public that has not been shared with me.”
Melgar’s RV crackdown expands beyond Winston Drive
On July 2, 2024, in a closed-door meeting, Melgar, SFMTA’s Ramos and other city department heads gave the green light for Winston Drive’s four-hour parking restriction to begin August 1.
“Bear in mind that this enforcement will not result in towing,” Ramos wrote to SFMTA Director Tumlin. “It is the Supervisor’s hope that the threat and/or issuance of parking citations alone will result in people moving the RVs.”
That day, RV residents braced for eviction again. Many had taken the day off work. When officials didn’t show up, they returned to their uncertain limbo.
“Now, one can sleep a little more peacefully,” said Veronica, who had been told incorrectly by advocates that enforcement would not begin until September. “But we are always in the same place… when that period runs out, where are we going to go then?”
That evening, Ramos emailed SFMTA staff: Melgar now wanted to advance the long-stalled Lake Merced Blvd Quick Build (LMBQB) project — a bike lane plan that would eliminate parking spaces currently used by RV residents parked along Buckingham Way, Vidal Drive and Lake Merced Boulevard.
The project had been on pause pending a safe parking site. But Ramos confirmed that Melgar now sought to maintain “consistency across these informal RV parking sites” amid the Winston eviction.
The impact would be sweeping: the plan to clear Winston Drive — along with three nearby streets in the LMBQB project — would displace more than 120 RV residents. This time, with even fewer options for where to park.
Another eviction hits, faster and harsher
Just weeks after RV residents were evicted from Winston Drive and nearby streets, they were displaced again — this time from Zoo Road, a site the city had once considered a safe parking location. Families endured a chaotic cycle of ticketing, towing and desperation.
On July 29, three days before the city’s deadline to clear Winston Drive, RV residents took a major risk: they took over an empty private lot.
That night, in a last-ditch effort, RV residents organized a caravan of more than 20 RVs to drive two miles to an empty lot at the San Francisco Zoo at 8 p.m.
“I have a gigantic uncertainty in my heart because we don’t know what can happen,” said Carlos Felipe, 40, who joined the RV caravan. “We’re kind of exerting some pressure to see if [the city] can find us a permanent location … we ask all the authorities to support us, because there are a lot of families here.”
Advocates from the Coalition on Homelessness joined the caravan, who helped RV families assemble their vehicles one by one into parking spaces.
“They told us we definitely had to go [from Winston],” said Eusebia, citing a recent visit from Melgar and city staff. According to residents, park rangers and police arrived at the lot later that night and directed them to Zoo Road, near the Pomeroy Center.
By morning, only 10 RVs remained on Winston Drive. Around 20 had relocated to Zoo Road while the rest scattered to nearby streets.
Zoo Road: The city’s discarded solution
Zoo Road had been floated as a possible safe parking site as early as 2022, with one proposal accommodating up to 50 RVs.
In a written response, Supervisor Melgar said: “We are a resource-rich city, but access is controlled by the Mayor’s departments.”
Melgar said she secured $10 million in the 2022–2023 budget for a safe parking site, but lacked the authority to get it done. “Despite my staff and I pushing for several sites, including the parking lot at the zoo, this is not something an individual Supervisor has the power to do,” she wrote. “We needed the Department (the Mayor) to do it.”
At the time, Thornley cautioned that the site was “well-suited and -sited but politically impossible.” The location borders the Pomeroy Center, which serves people with developmental disabilities.
Pomeroy CEO David Dubinsky told El Tecolote that he contacted Supervisor Melgar and the mayor’s office, urging them to relocate the RV community.
“This isn’t a convenient place. I look at the families and the people in those RVs who have not really caused any trouble here, they’re like pawns in a political game” Dubinsky said. “Somebody is moving these people around for political reasons and not humanitarian reasons.”
On July 31, internal emails revealed that city staff had shifted from considering Zoo Road as a potential site to discussing how to clear it entirely. At the time, aside from routine street cleaning, there were no formal restrictions in place.
“From here on out there will probably be a lot more SFPD (and HSOC) coordination and engagement,” Thornley wrote to SFMTA staff the next day. “We need a bigger answer, a lot of partial solutions only make us all work harder for poorer outcomes, but I’m pretty pessimistic.”
A citywide 72-hour parking rule becomes tool for eviction
Just days after being relocated, many RV residents hoped Zoo Road might serve as a temporary refuge.
“I think we’re much better here,” said Yorman Roa, 30, who lived in his RV with his wife and two daughters. “Cars aren’t passing by at high velocities… The place is, I think, a little safer and quieter.”
Roa said city workers visited and asked about registration and services. “No individuals were hostile,” SFMTA parking control officer Trevor Adams wrote in an August 1 email. “All expressed their appreciation for our transparency.”
“The city told us we can stay here temporarily, while they see if they can find an alternate site,” said Roa, citing a visit from Melgar. “We will do our part and keep the space clean. Not come here and cause chaos.”
RV residents’ hopes were dashed four days later. On August 6, SFMTA workers marked RV tires with chalk to enforce the citywide 72-hour parking rule.
Internal emails questioned the legitimacy of using the rule to move RVs. “The purpose of [the] 72-hour rule is to ensure vehicles are not abandoned,” wrote SFMTA’s Chadwick Lee. “I do not believe it’s applicable in this case.”
The rule becomes unenforceable “if there is any perceptible movement,” Scott Edwards, Director of Parking Enforcement, wrote in an August 5 email to SFMTA staff. “If a vehicle moves an inch, then it cannot be cited or towed.”
Yet enforcement moved forward. “We have a lot of families frantically contacting us from zoo road saying MTA is out there with tow trucks and enforcing [the] three day limit,” wrote Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness in an August 6 email to Thornley. “These are families with kids, working and so forth who were instructed to move there.”
For RV residents, the 72-hour rule marked a shift from Winston Drive, where RVs only had to move for weekly street cleaning. Now, the constant pressure of moving came with consequences — both logistically and emotionally.
In Eusebia’s case, her RV home was damaged in the move from Winston Drive to Zoo Road. “It’s not easy moving up and down the streets, risking ourselves and our kids,” she said.
Another construction project results in displacement
On August 7, 2024, SFMTA signed a work order for curb painting and re-striping on Zoo Road — with the same repaving contract used to clear RVs from Winston Drive.
The next day, SFMTA and police began citing and towing RVs.
“We did great work today!” SFMTA’s Trevor Adams wrote to his colleagues the following day. He reported that 20 vehicles had been marked under the 72-hour rule, and two were towed for expired registration.
One of the RVs towed belonged to Jamilet Calderon, 43.
“I’m not going to go get it… it’s gone,” said Calderon, who scrambled to retrieve as many belongings as possible from the vehicle. “We bought that RV because we all can’t fit in mine. I’m left with a headache and trauma now. I haven’t slept well.” The RV housed her two kids, who were at work while city officials were citing and towing RVs.
“They took us out,” said Gio, the RV resident who prefers to be identified only by his first name. “The police came to say they don’t want us here anymore. They don’t want to see us here by Monday [August 12].”
By August 11, city workers posted “No Stopping” signs, citing striping and street cleaning.
Advocates questioned whether the work had already been completed. “Families who did not qualify for housing who were promised safe parking for 3 years by [the] city are being evicted again,” read an Instagram post by the CoH on August 12. “We spoke to workers who confirmed the [restriping] work has been completed so why exactly does the city require them to move?”
Though initially described as temporary, the restrictions soon became permanent.
Normally, major parking changes require a public hearing, a 10-day notice and SFMTA board approval. But on August 13, Thornley wrote to colleagues that staff had used an “emergency/urgency” justification to bypass that process.
On September 6, SFMTA’s Directive Order No. 6800 formally established a permanent Tow-Away No Stopping zone on key sections of Zoo Road. The order explicitly targeted RV residents, citing concerns about “unsanitary dumping of human and household waste causing a public health problem” and curb access for the Pomeroy Center.
By invoking an emergency directive instead of following public hearing and Board approval processes, city officials shut down Zoo Road as a parking option, despite once considering it a viable site.
RV residents on Zoo Road get rushed into city-subsidized housing
Ahead of the August 14 deadline to clear Zoo Road, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) said in an email that it contacted the 22 families parked there. Twenty agreed to enroll in housing programs, and eight families with young children signed rapid rehousing leases.
But even those who secured housing said the city made RV living so hostile they had no real choice.
“The city has us at the brink of the abyss,” said Angela Arostegui. “First on Winston, they gave us 4-hour parking rules. Then on Zoo Road, there wasn’t a day without a ticket or a knock on the door.”
Angela said city officials offered three options: a temporary shelter, one month of free rent or a one-way ticket out of San Francisco.
“They asked, ‘Do you have family in another state? What’s keeping you here?’” she recalled. Angela answered: her daughter’s school.
“I felt it was grotesque,” she said. “Like they just wanted to get rid of the problem.”
Even families who accepted housing had nowhere to go in the meantime.
“They told us we had to move that day,” said Eusebia. “We left Zoo Road, parked by the ocean, and by 2 a.m., police arrived. We had to move again. We were exhausted.”
Those rehoused in Parkmerced under the city’s rapid rehousing program were told to pay 30% of their income — with rent increasing over time.
Angela feared she wouldn’t be able to keep up. “They said rent would start at 40% of our income, then go up monthly until we paid it all,” she said.
Eusebia receives $840 a month in disability benefits and said her rent will soon rise to $674 — for an apartment that typically rents for $3,500.
In a written response, Supervisor Melgar defended the program’s limits:
“The subsidies have a time limit, and I think that’s okay — they will allow these families time to find a better situation,” she wrote. “The families on Winston Drive had asked for a safe parking place for two years — the temporary housing vouchers cover three years, with the possibility to extend to five if the family still needs it.”
Yet others were simply left behind.
“The city did nothing for us,” said Marcivon Oliveira, a 46-year-old Uber and Lyft driver. He said more than a dozen RV residents forced out of Winston had to leave San Francisco altogether, now struggling to find parking in Palo Alto.
Displacement spreads — and becomes city policy
What began as localized enforcement on Winston Drive quickly evolved into a citywide playbook for removing RV residents. As families scattered across San Francisco in search of stability, officials leaned on construction schedules, the 72-hour parking rule and complaint-driven enforcement.
Although Supervisor Melgar had requested enforcement on Winston Drive and surrounding streets, internal emails show the city held off on Lake Merced Boulevard to avoid “a large amount of RVs suddenly descending on other parts of the city all at once.”
Amid mass displacement, Mayor London Breed fast-tracked a citywide RV ban in August 2024, similar to her approach to street encampments. Under the proposed policy, RVs could be towed if the people living inside declined a shelter offer.
“We’re going to get a lot more calls about this from impacted neighborhoods,” SFMTA’s Hank Wilson wrote to colleagues on August 12, adding that neighbors were likely to say, “hey the Mayor says she’s cracking down, can we get a crackdown here?” or “hey your crackdown in other neighborhoods is leading to an uptick in RV parking in our part of town.”
On September 12, El Tecolote published a leaked draft of the proposal, which aimed to revise the city’s traffic code to make overnight parking violations towable — in addition to the standard $108 citation. The measure would have expanded both the number of restricted streets and SFMTA’s enforcement powers.
The backlash was swift. “Mayor Breed’s inclusion of ‘service offers’ as a means to force people to give up their homes for a temporary shelter bed is nonsensical and counterintuitive,” the Coalition on Homelessness said in a statement. “Our city’s shelter waitlist is 12 days long. By compelling the 90% of unsheltered homeless families who live in vehicles into temporary shelter and dispossessing them of their homes, the Mayor is forcing families into further instability and keeping those on the waitlist unsheltered for longer.”
Behind the scenes, internal communications revealed that key SFMTA staff were also deeply conflicted, raising concerns about limited towing capacity, strained outreach teams and ethical questions about targeting inhabited vehicles.
In a “privileged and confidential” risk memo, SFMTA staff said Mayor Breed’s messaging around offering shelter before towing could be “problematic” in practice. The memo advised the Mayor to “continue to push for more affordable housing without making [the current policy] towable and declaring it will be implemented citywide.”
The final policy, approved on October 1, 2024 was a retreat from the original plan. It preserved the city’s piecemeal, block-by-block approach, but gave officials new power to tow RVs if a shelter offer was declined, even as shelter options remained limited and temporary.
Described by advocates as the “mass criminalization of the working poor,” the policy collapsed under scrutiny. On October 29, the End Poverty Tows Coalition filed an appeal, pausing its implementation until the Board of Supervisors could vote on it.
By November, voters ousted Mayor Breed in favor of Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie. Melgar was reelected to the Board. On December 10, the Board of Supervisors — including Melgar, who had previously pushed for RV enforcement — voted to overturn the policy.
“You don’t do the punitive measures first and then figure out a system,” Melgar said during the hearing. “Eventually, I will support the parking restrictions when we have a plan to deal with them, which I don’t think we have today.”
Mass displacement leads to predictable consequences
Displacing more than a hundred RVs from the Lake Merced area without a long-term solution had predictable consequences.
“As many predicted, displacing these vehicles from Winston Drive has merely moved the problem to other areas,” wrote an anonymous constituent to District 4 Supervisor Joe Engardio on August 9, 2024. “Each day more and more RVs, vans, trailers, and trucks are showing up in front of Rolph Nicol Park and around the Merced Manor Reservoir.”
Another constituent wrote on August 14: “Is the City’s plan to declare victory by moving RVs off Winston Drive and Lake Merced Blvd, when the problem has merely been transferred to an even more residential area?”
In response, Supervisor Engardio asked SFMTA staff to curb RV parking in his district by turning unrestricted sites into Residential Parking Permit zones or imposing hourly limits like the four-hour restrictions used on Winston Drive, using the same tactics that displaced RV residents before.
The strategy appeared effective — at least on the surface. By August 18, SFMTA parking control officer Trevor Adams reported that “many of the RVs and trailers relocated to John Muir [Drive] and Vidal [Drive],” just a mile or two from where they had been displaced. “Winston remains clear,” he added in an email to SFMTA’s Scott Edwards.
But the displacement simply shifted the problem elsewhere. Some RV residents relocated to the Bayview, another San Francisco neighborhood that has long borne the burden of displacement. “We obviously need a bigger citywide plan and process,” wrote Thornley on August 21, responding to a complaint on Phelps Street. “Or we’ll just keep pushing large vehicles around from neighborhood to neighborhood — not good for anyone.”
Internally, SFMTA began strategizing which areas to prioritize. “We don’t have the resources to enforce the parking laws all the time on every street in San Francisco,” wrote SFMTA’s Leanne Nhan on August 16. “So we focus first on areas with traffic safety concerns. After that, we prioritize where there are complaints from neighbors.”
One of those recurring complaints came from San Francisco State University. Even after top school officials pushed to clear Winston Drive, RVs simply moved to the other side of campus.
“The RVs have moved out [from Winston Drive] but some of them are parking on 19th Avenue next to our housing and academic buildings,” wrote SFSU broker Hamid Ghaemmaghami to Thornley on September 18. “Again trash is being thrown down on the sidewalk, they do not move, and we are receiving complaints. What can be done?”
Supervisor Melgar says the Winston Drive crackdown offers hard lessons — not just about enforcement, but about the system’s failure to meet the needs of families living in vehicles.
“An offer of temporary shelter is not an alternative to living in a vehicle,” she wrote. “The alternative is affordable, safe housing.”
She also emphasized the need for parking restrictions to prevent exploitation of “free” public space, but cautioned against punitive tactics: “towing should be the last resort, not the first, and people, especially families need supports to be successfully housed.”
Melgar acknowledged that the city’s departments “lack a common goal, vision, system” and “data tracking mechanism to ensure housing success” for addressing vehicular homelessness. “We must build this system, and it must have staff who are knowledgeable, have language capacity and cultural competence.”
She stressed that immigrant families — who made up much of the Winston Drive community — require services that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing isn’t equipped to provide.
“Newcomers to our country need a totally different set of services than those offered most frequently by HSH. They need newcomer services — not mental health, and substance abuse services.” While she praised community nonprofits for stepping in, she said the city must do more: “the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs needs to add this service to their workplan.”
Meanwhile, the displacement fractured what little stability RV families had left.
“Currently, RVs are scattered across different streets in search of stability,” wrote Coalition on Homelessness’ Yessica Hernandez to SFMTA staff that same day. “On Lake Merced, residents are being harassed under the 72-hour rule, even though they are moving their vehicles regularly for street sweeping … It breaks my heart to see children and families struggling without the stability they deserve, especially as the school year begins.”
By December, 19th Avenue, a high-traffic corridor bordering SFSU, had become the next target for RV displacement.
“I took a look yesterday and observed about a dozen likely shelter vehicles parked on that stretch of 19th Ave,” wrote Thornley to HSH staff on December 10. A week later, on December 17, the SFMTA Board approved a proposal from SFSU to implement four-hour parking limits along the corridor.
“Question might be how will we handle enforcement,” wrote SFMTA’s Director of Streets Viktoriya Wise to Thornley. “My plan is to say we would handle it similar to Winston. Do you agree?”
Thornley replied with a now-refined strategy: legislate the restriction, coordinate sign installation, post multilingual flyers, allow a two-week grace period and begin enforcement — while looping the homeless department and other agencies to manage fallout.
He added that while Winston Drive and Buckingham Way remained clear since the new 4-hour parking rules took effect, Vidal Drive — which already had long-standing 4-hour time limits — was now “more parked-up with RVs and other large vehicles and trailers than it’s ever been.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with Vidal,” Thornley wrote, noting he’d flyered the street in July and coordinated enforcement at Supervisor Melgar’s request. “… but it’s a stark illustration of our limitations, to put it mildly.”
A uniquely Latinx RV community, destroyed
Today, the Lake Merced Quick-Build project is stalled. Winston Drive is still not repaved. In the neighborhood, RVs still park on Lake Merced Boulevard, Vidal Drive, and have spread to streets like 19th Avenue and John Muir Drive. Yet, RVs have vanished from Winston Drive and Zoo Road.
El Tecolote has been tracking where displaced families ended up — and how much harder survival has become.
For the Arostegui family, the outcome has been relatively positive. Arlen, Angela and their two daughters now live in Parkmerced through a city subsidy program. “Gracias a Dios, estamos tranquilos,” Angela said. While the rent is income-based and manageable for now, the subsidy only lasts three years. “Time flies,” she said. “We’re already trying to find a more permanent option.”
The rest of the Arostegui family is scattered. Arlen’s cousin Marlon is still living in an RV, parking near Parkmerced. Lisandro Arostegui, Arlen’s nephew, now rents a room in Las Vegas, far from the support of his family. His RV, hitched to a broken-down truck, became immobile just as the city was preparing to clear Winston Drive. He managed to sell it a day before the eviction. With nowhere else to go, he and his wife left San Francisco and spent weeks sleeping in their car while searching for safe places to park across Bakersfield and other cities.
“It wasn’t the plan — it was more like an adventure we didn’t choose,” he said. “We had to leave everything behind.” They’re more stable now, but Lisandro still hopes to return to San Francisco. “At least in Winston, I had my family close,” he said. “We were helping each other. That made it easier.”
Others, like the Rosales family, are struggling under the weight of promises that didn’t pan out.
“They tell you one thing and then another,” said Verónica, who now lives in Parkmerced through the same subsidy program. Her caseworker recently told her the family must begin paying full rent by next year, despite initial promises of a 24-month subsidy. With no stable jobs and little guidance, she’s unsure how they’ll manage. “They demand so much from you that you start to feel incapable.”
Her mother, Eusebia Rosales, is also under pressure. Though she receives disability income, her caseworker has pushed her to find work or prepare to leave. She said the rent could soon rise to 70% of market rate — far beyond what she brings in each month.
“They want us to save money,” she said. “But how can we save if we need to eat?”
Now, Verónica and Eusebia are trying to plan for what comes next. The city offered to buy their RVs for $1,500 each, but they refused. Instead of selling, they parked them in South San Francisco, just in case. “If they kick us out, we’ll return to our RVs again,” Eusebia said.
“Living in the trailer was hard, especially for the kids,” Verónica said. “But at least you didn’t have all this stress. Yes, there was always the fear of being forced off the street, but at least it was ours.”
In its rush to fix optics, San Francisco dismantled a rare kind of stability — one that working-class immigrant families had built themselves, without the city’s help.
In the end, the city removed the RVs, but left the deeper issues unresolved.
And now, the crisis is worse.
This story is part one of a two-part series.