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A NEW parking ban has people living in RVs scrambling as they protest their impending eviction.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has reinstated an old law that prevents overnight parking along Bernal Heights Boulevard along Bernal Heights Park.
Two neighborhood residents, Armando Martinez, who lives in an RV, and Flo Kelly, who lives in a traditional home, gathered others who park their RVs along the park to take a stance at The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board meeting, according to 48 Hills.
The RV dwellers told the board how enforcing a parking ban would impact them.
Martinez and Kelly claimed that they only found out about the newly enforced ban from the news, but later saw that the city installed signs about the law.
Kelly said that according to Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s office, those who live in their RV in the area would have a grace period until March 28 before their homes would be ticketed or towed.
However, Martinez countered that statement and told the board that parking control officers and police had started issuing tickets despite the promised grace period.
“Yesterday [March 4] around 11 pm, an MTA person came and gave everyone tickets for $108 because [we] were parked after 10 pm,” he claimed, according to the outlet.
“I spoke with him, and he agreed not to give the RVs tickets, but he ticketed all of the cars [owned by RV residents].
“Subsequently, at five in the morning, a policeman who has been visiting us frequently and harassing me and others arrived and gave everybody a ticket on behalf of the police department.”
AT A LOSS
To many residents, this park is their home and where they have found community.
One resident, who did not give her name, claimed that police had visited earlier on March 5 and attempted to intimidate her into leaving.
“We don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said in Spanish, which Martinez translated.
“We rented before and we had to leave and ended up [in an RV]. We like it there because it is a peaceful place. … Because we have dogs we find it difficult to find another place to rent.”
Kelly believes that the root of the ban may be from complaints from neighbors who live in traditional housing around the RV community.
Martinez said he was surprised by “how easy it is for one neighbor to set in motion [the displacement] by complaining.”
However, not all residents feel this way.
Kelly collected about 30 letters of support from neighbors who live in traditional houses in favor of the RVs staying in the neighborhood.
“The only thing we can tell you is that we … take care of the property and vehicles,” another RV dweller, Darwin Pena said to the board. He spoke in Spanish which Martinez translated.
“There are other people who park late at night who throw garbage and leave the garbage. We pick up that garbage. We say hello to all the passersby. We clean the park; we clean up after everyone, not just us.”
BIG CHANGES
New parking restrictions have been emerging across San Francisco.
“Recently [there have been] attempts to restrict legal parking [with a] shift to four-hour parking, angled parking [or] finding existing laws … narrowing the areas where parking is allowed,” said Eleana Binder, policy manager at Glide and an organizer with the End Poverty Tows Coalition, according to the outlet.
This also reflects the new signage that was posted around the perimeter of Bernal Heights Park stating “No parking between 10 pm and 6 am.”
It has been suggested that the RV residents move into the vehicle triage center at Candlestick Park, about 10 minutes from Bernal Heights.
I’m not sure there is anywhere to go
Armando Martinez
However, Martinez claimed that the rules of the center were “extremely restrictive.”
After hearing the complaints at the board meeting, RV residents asked Martinez, “If they “don’t want us here, how can we stay here?”
Some people have already left as they wait to figure out where the community can move to.
However, Martinez has expressed his pressing concern.
“I’m not sure there is anywhere to go,” he said.
MORE PARKING WOES
A homeowner in Ocoee, Florida’s Wesmere subdivision, just outside of Orlando, is frustrated after her HOA decided to reinstate a long-forgotten parking rule.
In the 22 years since she lived in Wesmere, residents had parked along the street with no issue, but things began to change in 2019.
The ban had been in the bylaws for years, but no one followed it because it wasn’t enforced.
New leadership on the HOA board in 2017 began warning residents that they were going to enforce the street parking ban.
“You can’t go from allowing it, or there is no enforcement, to suddenly no exceptions,” Denise Harrison told local CBS news affiliate WKMG.
To try and have their voices heard by the board, Harrison and hundreds of other residents filed lawsuits against the board.
According to Rick Leone, both a resident and a lawyer, 315 out of 565 residents signed an amendment to change the policy to allow street parking, but the HOA refused to recognize it.
Leone reported that the HOA continued to tow cars parked on the street despite the amendment revoking the ban.
“This is a violation of owners’ property rights,” Leone said.
The U.S. Sun could not retrieve the outcome of either outcome filed against Wesmere.
