With more than 100 people living for years in RVs and cars near San Francisco State University, SF homeless officials said in 2021 they would find a safe site for those people on the city’s west side. That search has come to nothing. Yesterday, pressure came from an unlikely source: the city’s streets and transit agency.
The SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors unanimously approved Tuesday a four-hour limit on weekday parking on Winston Drive between Lake Merced Boulevard and Buckingham Way. Winston, which connects Lake Merced and the Stonestown mall, is where many of the neighborhood’s RVs have permanently parked for years. Many of the residents are working families and Spanish-speaking.
The restriction will force the RV inhabitants to find new places to park and live. But the SFMTA board also sees the move as a call to action.
By delaying the enforcement for three months, the board gave the city’s Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department (HSH) time to find the vehicular residents homes — either in buildings or at a protected site where they can remain in their vehicles. SFMTA board member Manny Yekutiel said the decision should “put a fire” under HSH.
The vote came after many public commenters argued that ticketing and towing the vehicles would make matters worse. “We were sweating that 120 households were going to be evicted immediately,” Coalition on Homelessness director Jennifer Friedenbach — who opposed the original resolution — told The Frisc. (According to HSH, there are roughly 120 people, not households, living in vehicles in the immediate area.)
The proposal to enforce a parking limit was based on the need for safer streets, according to SFMTA. Lake Merced Drive, which Winston meets at its western end, is by all accounts dangerous. It’s on the city’s high-injury network — the 12 percent of SF streets where 68 percent of collisions happen, and it borders not just SF State but Lowell High and Lakeshore Elementary.
The drive invites speeding, and the city wants to pump the brakes using a “quick-build” project that slows traffic and improves pedestrian and cyclist safety. (Three pedestrians have been killed and others injured by cars along Lake Merced in the past two years.)
But a street and transit advocate pointed out at Tuesday’s meeting that parking restrictions on the block of Winston that stretches east to Stonestown had nothing to do with improved safety on Lake Merced Drive. “Winston Drive is unrelated to the quick build,” said Cyrus Hall, who volunteers with SF Transit Riders.
Hall also noted that moving people from RVs is different from moving people living in tents — or worse — on the streets. He cited a 2021 study by the Benioff Homelessness Health Initiative which found the majority of 48 people living in RVs at an Oakland safe parking site were reluctant to trade their vehicles for a non-permanent exit from homelessness, including congregate shelters and “rapid rehousing” subsidies that expire.
Fruitless search
Sup. Myrna Melgar, whose District 7 includes the blocks in question, appeared before the SFMTA board meeting to push for the Winston parking changes. Melgar invoked student safety and also expressed frustration that the city has been “unable to get finality” on a location for the RV residents.
Two years ago, as The Frisc reported, HSH and Melgar were optimistic about finding a nearby site that could be outfitted with electricity, sewage, and other necessities to create a transitional space for off-street parking. HSH had set aside dedicated funds.
The optimism soon faded. Officials said no site could match the necessary criteria. One potential site was pulled off the table earlier this year when it became SF State’s next spot for campus housing.
Then in June, Mayor London Breed shifted the dedicated money to shelter beds that were losing state funding. At Tuesday’s meeting, HSH spokeswoman Emily Cohen reiterated that the agency has looked at dozens of sites. She said a couple still had potential, but she declined to give locations (for fear of sparking neighborhood opposition) or timelines for new vehicle sites. (None of the locations in play could accommodate all 120 people currently living in RVs in the area, Cohen said.)
As SFMTA board members pushed for more specifics, Cohen said the HSH outreach team had been knocking on doors, putting up fliers, and holding events nearby to get the RV residents into the queue for housing, which is the city’s priority.
Cohen said 70 of the 120 people had registered for the city’s housing system for homeless people — known as coordinated entry — but the other 50 had not been responsive. “People don’t have to accept the outreach — it’s all entirely voluntary,” said Cohen.
Of the 70 enrolled, Cohen told The Frisc after the meeting that 20 had received housing vouchers — some long-term and others short-term, meaning the subsidy expires after two years. All recipients will receive support services as needed.
It’s unclear what will happen to those who decline to enter coordinated entry once the parking restrictions start. Meanwhile, SFMTA can move ahead with construction of the safety measures for pedestrians and cyclists along Lake Merced Boulevard. But clearing dozens of RVs from Winston Drive, long one of the city’s largest and most visible homeless clusters, will have to wait at least another three months.