UPDATE: Displaced Winston Drive RV community hit with tickets, towing
Three days before the city’s August 1 deadline to clear Winston Drive, the tight-knit community of RV residents that has been long established along the street decided to take a major risk to fight displacement: take over an empty private lot.
A community of primarily Latinx families and children, the RV residents organized a caravan of approximately 50 RVs to drive two miles to an empty lot at the San Francisco Zoo off the Great Highway on July 29 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.”
The caravan was joined by a group of advocates who cut through the lock of the lot’s chain-link gate using a chainsaw, propping it open for the line of incoming RVs that assembled one by one into parking spaces. All RVs and vehicles were inside the lot within an hour.
The move followed several notices from the city to clear Winston Drive ahead of a planned repavement project. Despite the deadline being repeatedly pushed back, RV residents said District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar made it clear the 4-hour parking limit posted along the street would be enforced starting August 1.
“They told us we definitely had to go,” said Eusevia Rosales, 48, who lives in an RV with her husband, children, and grandchildren. Like many RV residents along Winston Drive, Rosales expressed frustration with Melgar’s “broken promise” of helping them find a secure, alternative parking site before the deadline.
Without a city-backed parking site or affordable housing options, RV residents feared displacement from Winston Drive would force their families to live on the streets — a risk they say is far more dangerous than trespassing and occupying an empty lot.
But the SF Zoo lot was not without anxieties as well. “We’re not safe. We don’t know if the police will arrive. They could take us away,” said Rosales hours before the move. “They can even take our RVs from us … we don’t know where [else] to go, so we are risking it.”
According to RV residents, San Francisco police arrived at the private lot late at night, forcing them to move to another nearby street. El Tecolote will not publish the exact location of the RV residents in an attempt to protect their privacy.
“We got [to the new location] at 2 a.m. We did not rest,” said Rosales, whose RV and vehicle were damaged during the move. “It didn’t go well, but here we are.”
Every vehicle that was part of the Winston Drive RV community, including RVs that were not part of the initial caravan, was ultimately able to find a spot to park at the new location, residents said.
“I think we’re much better here,” said Yorman Roa, 30, who lives in his RV with his wife and two daughters. “Cars aren’t passing by at high velocities. Not that many people pass either … The place is, I think, a little safer and quieter.”
Yet now the RV residents are once again fighting to stay put, in what has become an all-too-familiar position. “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 Supervisor Myrna Melgar on August 1. “[We will] do our part and keep the space clean. Not come here and cause chaos, damage or any of that.”
On Tuesday, August 6, city workers used chalk to mark the location of RV wheels on the street. At the new location, RV residents face a 72-hour parking rule. On Winston Drive, residents only needed to move their RVs once a week on Tuesdays for street cleaning. Exhausted, RV residents brace for another saga of looming deadlines and threats to their fragile housing situation.
“If we’re a community, then we have to pull everyone together,” said Rosales. “Wherever we go, we go together … we move forward, all together.”
