{"id":300724,"date":"2026-05-05T11:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/300724\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:58:13","slug":"bay-area-cities-crack-down-on-rv-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/300724\/","title":{"rendered":"Bay Area cities crack down on RV living"},"content":{"rendered":"

People who live in cars and RVs throughout the Bay Area are moving between cities as crackdowns on street encampments ramp up, a trend that\u00a0pushed Oakland officials to\u00a0adopt a new policy speeding up tows<\/a> over concerns the city is becoming\u00a0a \u201cdestination\u201d for displaced residents.<\/p>\n

Advocates for homeless people and some experts are horrified at the regional crackdown. Margot Kushel, a physician and UC San Francisco researcher who leads the largest study of homelessness in the U.S., said Bay Area cities are competing in a \u201crace to the bottom\u201d to pass stronger restrictions on encampments than their neighbors.<\/p>\n

The consequences are disastrous for those priced out of the housing market, she said. When forced to move repeatedly, residents often lose shelter, critical paperwork and medications.<\/a> Outreach workers can\u2019t find their clients. And doctors lose touch with patients, driving worse health outcomes in a population already at risk.<\/p>\n

\"LauraLaura Eldridge, 61, raises her arms in exasperation while a San Jose Police officer over sees the towing of the trailer she lives in as the city continues to clear homeless encampments in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (Shae Hammond\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would hope there would be some better way to handle this than treating people as something to throw out and push away, as opposed to our neighbors,\u201d Kushel said.<\/p>\n

The scale of homelessness in the Bay Area is massive. The most recent estimates clocked 9,500 homeless people in Alameda County and 10,700 in Santa Clara County, most commonly living in vehicles. It\u2019s also fluid \u2014 one city\u2019s crackdown may push residents across borders.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t act, we risk becoming a destination for displacement from other cities, and that is indeed happening,\u201d Patricia Brooks, chief of staff to council President Kevin Jenkins, said at a council meeting.<\/p>\n

\"AA San Jose Police officer looks inside a trailer that is prepared to be towed in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (Shae Hammond\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brooks said crackdowns in San Jose and San Francisco inspired Oakland\u2019s new policy, which will go into effect this summer. Mountain View led the region, adopting citywide restrictions on RVs in 2020; enforcement began two years later.<\/p>\n

After months of intense debate, the Oakland City Council passed a new policy on April 14 to accelerate the removal of cars and RVs on city streets. In a major change, Oakland will no longer consider vehicles as encampments \u2014 allowing enforcers to tow vehicles with less notice to occupants, who will have weaker rights than people living in tents. Far more homeless people live in vehicles than in tents in the East Bay city.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court paved the way for the regional crackdown with a landmark 2024 decision allowing cities to pass camping bans even without shelters available. That decision is reshaping the rules in California, home to almost half of the nation\u2019s unsheltered homeless people. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pressured cities and counties to clear camps faster and find solutions to homelessness, but without regular state funding.<\/a><\/p>\n

For Newsom and a growing chorus of local officials in the Bay Area, including the Oakland City Council, efforts are long overdue to return public spaces to community uses and better manage public health and safety issues associated with some camps.<\/p>\n

Early adopters<\/p>\n

In San Jose, officials passed rules to cite and arrest homeless people<\/a> who decline offers of shelter and directed workers to aggressively clear camps, including an ongoing operation to dismantle the last major homeless community in the city.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"AnAn RV sits parked on Asbury Street at Columbus Park on July 28, 2025, weeks before the city of San Jose is set to begin clearing the large homeless encampment. (Devan Patel\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mayor Matt Mahan has also overseen efforts to break up congregations of RVs and carve no-parking zones, towing vehicles if occupants don\u2019t move by deadlines. City data shows the vast majority of people move before enforcers seize their vehicle, said Colin Heyne, a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n

The results? Some neighborhoods are getting a break from communities of vehicle-dwellers, but inhabitants have described \u201cnightmare<\/a>\u201d scenarios of forced relocations with no place to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel this approach has balanced the need to clean up locations and provide relief to neighborhoods while respecting the needs of unhoused residents,\u201d Heyne said.<\/p>\n

In San Francisco, officials last fall debuted a two-hour parking limit on oversized vehicles, unless residents can prove they\u2019ve lived in the city for a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had far too many RVs on our streets,\u201d Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a social media post this month. \u201cFamilies living in really terrible conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city has towed more than 350 RVs since November 2025, according to El Tecolote<\/a> newspaper. Most of their occupants were left without housing, the newspaper reported, but some successfully moved indoors through a city program.<\/p>\n

Oakland\u2019s new rules<\/p>\n

Although inspired by other cities\u2019 crackdowns, it\u2019s unclear how much Oakland will enforce its new, tougher policy. Cupid Alexander, the city\u2019s new homelessness policy chief, said in an email that the Oakland Police Department and Department of Transportation are drafting procedures. Alexander took the Oakland job this month after working as San Jose\u2019s deputy housing director.<\/p>\n

The policy keeps some protections for people living in RVs and cars. The city must \u201cattempt to identify\u201d shelter space before towing away someone\u2019s home, Alexander said.<\/p>\n

\"KellyKelly Thompson, who has been homeless for more than seven years, talks about his experience living in his RV at a homeless encampment at 24th and Campbell streets in West Oakland of Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. (Ray Chavez\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI can understand the city wanting to thin out some of the RVs,\u201d said Kelly Thompson, 78, who has lived in a camper for years in Oakland. Many are \u201cjunkers that don\u2019t run\u201d and clog city streets, he said, especially in the West Oakland neighborhood where he lives now, up against an industrial lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they\u2019re shelters for people,\u201d Thompson said.<\/p>\n

In that neighborhood, near Mandela Parkway and 14th Street, dilapidated RVs line whole city blocks. Where people haven\u2019t yet set up camp, businesses block the sides of streets with tree trucks or concrete bollards to keep them away.<\/p>\n

Around the corner from a strip of dozens of RVs, Henry, a retiree who declined to give his last name, worked in the garden of the house where he\u2019s lived for 60 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to see the city just move these folks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"AA biker rides past a line of RVs parked at a homeless encampment on Poplar Street in West Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. (Ray Chavez\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Henry said the RVs attract drug dealing and prostitution, and when thieves steal the copper wires from the street lights in front of his home, he blames camp residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo sanitation, no nothing,\u201d he said. \u201cThey can do almost anything they want, and the cops don\u2019t come. It\u2019s sick that the city is putting off policing the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

As they wait to see what the new policy will mean for Oakland, advocates note the city has already experimented with tougher crackdowns.<\/p>\n

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and her predecessor, former Mayor Sheng Thao, both ramped up sweeps, temporarily clearing streets in some neighborhoods but pushing residents into others. This winter, officials admitted in an interview with this organization that two years of intensive clearings didn\u2019t reduce the number of camps.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Officials describe a city overwhelmed by need. More people become homeless in Oakland each year than those who find homes, and budget issues recently forced officials to close shelters \u2014 including one for 30 residents in RVs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People who live in cars and RVs throughout the Bay Area are moving between cities as crackdowns on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[29736,389,114097,52518,127180,48854,127185,51102,1493,194,143,145,144,127181,2334,127184,88,198,127186,127183,127182],"class_list":["post-300724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-affordability","tag-alameda-county","tag-bay-area-homelessness","tag-bay-area-housing-crisis","tag-california-homelessness","tag-encampment-sweeps","tag-gavin-newsom-homelessness","tag-grants-pass","tag-homelessness","tag-mountain-view","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-rv-crackdown","tag-rv-dwellers","tag-safe-parking-programs","tag-san-jose","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-street-encampments","tag-supreme-court-camping-ban","tag-vanlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}