People living in RVs along Almaden Expressway are worried they’ll be thrown onto the streets when San Jose begins its tow-away zone program next year.
Under a new pilot program, the city will choose up to 30 temporary tow-away zones and 10 permanent sites to clear RVs for street sweeping and cleanup by the end of this year. It will implement the tow-away zones starting early 2025 in tandem with the opening of the city’s second safe parking site in Berryessa.
City transportation workers have hand-counted more than 1,000 RVs and lived-in vehicles sprinkled throughout San Jose and created a map detailing the locations. These vehicles are concentrated in downtown and East San Jose, along busy streets like Tully Road and residential areas like Las Plumas Avenue.
The $1.5-million pilot Oversized and Lived-In Vehicle Enforcement program is being funded through this fiscal year’s budget. The city expects to establish a temporary tow-away site every week, and restrictions will remain in place until all vehicles are moved and the street is cleaned. Throughout next year, the city will choose up to 10 permanent sites to be analyzed for parking restrictions.
The city will target areas close to schools, waterways, tiny home sites and parks, as well as areas where there are large concentrations of lived-in vehicles.
The Berryessa safe parking site will hold up to 85 vehicles, but people living inside their RVs are worried there won’t be enough room for all of them once the city begins towing.
“I would be devastated (if my RV was towed),” Diamond, 27, who only provided her first name for privacy, told San José Spotlight. “This is our home.”
More than two dozen RVs and cars line Almaden Expressway near San Jose Avenue, including Diamond’s RV. She became homeless when her older brother and his fiancé kicked her out at 18. She’s been staying in her RV for the past year. Before that, she was living in a tent exposed to the elements.
Like other lived-in vehicles parked along the streets, her RV is inoperable. If the city chooses to establish her street as a tow-away zone, she will lose her vehicle and be pushed back to the streets if she can’t find help relocating.
“We don’t have anything or anyone to help us move the RV,” she said.
Safe parking policies
The city already has a policy that allows it to tow large vehicles in areas where parked cars create safety hazards for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. It also prohibits tents or other miscellaneous belongings within 150 feet of San Jose schools.
“We will post signs and place flyers on vehicles before any enforcement action is taken,” City transportation spokesperson Colin Heyne told San José Spotlight. “The law only requires 24 hours of advance notice, but we intend to provide more whenever feasible, up to a week ahead of enforcement. Our hope is that, with ample warning, we will not need to take enforcement actions to get vehicles to move.”
The city has one safe parking site at the Santa Teresa VTA light rail station that opened last year. It started nearly empty but is now full with 45 vehicles. The Berryessa site was supposed to open this year, but faced delays with construction and finding a suitable operator, Councilmember David Cohen, whose district covers the new safe parking site, said.
“(The delay) had been a tremendous frustration for us. But things are on track now and the site will be operating in the near future,” Cohen told San José Spotlight.
Although the Berryessa site is slated to open early next year, it won’t be sufficient when the city enacts restriction zones, advocates said.
“Our cities, county and state are doing things backwards. The results easily show this,” Todd Langton, executive director of Agape Silicon Valley, told San José Spotlight. “We should be first finding a place for our unhoused to live with dignity and safety and then focus on the abatements. Instead our elected leaders focus on abatement first with no place for those who are unhoused to go. This focus will exacerbate the crisis.”
Since the list of sites is still being developed, the city doesn’t know how many vehicles will be impacted, Heyne said.
“This pilot program will address critical quality-of-life issues in a district that has long been requesting assistance,” District 7 Councilmember Bien Doan told San José Spotlight. “Businesses are leaving due to ongoing RV-related problems that make it unsafe for employees to get to work. Residents are frustrated by the pervasive presence of human waste, garbage, blight, graffiti, as well as the associated rise in crime in areas with high concentrations of RVs.”
Doan’s district, where Diamond’s RV is located, has one of the highest number of lived-in vehicles. There are auto repair shops and restaurants located nearby.
Gil Aguilar, owner of Almaden Body and Paint Shop, says the city needs to clean the area, but he sympathizes with the people who might get towed. When he returned to San Jose two years ago after living in Idaho, he was shocked by homelessness in the city.
“When I left, it wasn’t this neglected eight years ago,” Aguilar said.
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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