Quick Take
The California Coastal Commission scuttled the City of Santa Cruz's plans to extend its controversial oversized vehicle ordinance to a five-year program. County Supervisor Justin Cummings, who sits on the commission, successfully pushed for a two-year extension instead to assess the OVO’s effects on coastal access during the peak tourist season.
The City of Santa Cruz tried and failed Thursday to get state approval to formalize its contested oversized vehicle ordinance from a one-year pilot into a more firm five-year program.
The California Coastal Commission, the powerful agency overseeing land-use and permitting decisions along the state’s coastline, said the city was premature in its request to solidify the controversial prohibition against overnight street parking for recreational vehicles. Instead of a five-year extension, the commission voted 8-1 to allow the city to continue the program for two more years, saying Santa Cruz did not yet have enough data to determine whether it had been a success.
Critics of the parking ban say it targets unhoused people who live in their vehicles. After years of lawsuits and back and forth, the Coastal Commission last May granted the city a one-year coastal permit so the city could pilot the new ordinance.
The city began enforcing the new rule on Dec. 4. After only two months, the city in February sought and received a five-year extension of the program from the Santa Cruz Planning Commission. The city did not need Coastal Commission approval for the extension. However, in March, local unhoused advocacy organization Santa Cruz Cares, with the American Civil Liberties Union, and nonprofit Disability Rights Advocates unsuccessfully appealed the planning commission’s decision to the Santa Cruz City Council, before appealing to the Coastal Commission for a final determination.
The Coastal Commission is charged largely with protecting access to the coast. Commissioner Justin Cummings, a former Santa Cruz mayor and current county supervisor who has long opposed the oversized vehicle ordinance, argued that five years was too long of an extension for a program the city and the Coastal Commission could not yet fully understand.
Although the city’s one-year coastal permit was about to expire, the ordinance hadn’t yet been in effect for six months, leaving out the tourism rush of the late spring, summer and fall. Neither the city nor the commission could know how the parking ban would affect coastal access for visitors during the busiest times of the year.
“We don’t have any data on how this program will impact people who want to visit the coast in the summer,” Cummings said. He said he was concerned about granting such a lengthy extension with only half a year’s data.
As the ordinance is set, a visitor with an oversized vehicle can park on the street only if the vehicle’s owner has a disability exemption, or they receive a 72-hour parking permit through a Santa Cruz resident with a fixed address. Santa Cruz residents, however, are allowed only six 72-hour guest parking passes per year, and guests must park within 400 feet of the resident’s address.
Cummings pushed instead for a two-year extension, which would allow the city to better understand how the parking ban affects coastal access for Santa Cruz visitors during the busiest times of the year. Coastal Commission Chair Caryl Hart said Cummings raised valid points. Vice Chair Linda Escalante said she was at first ambivalent about the extension but that Cummings had turned her “completely around.”
“Once you build a program like this it is hard to unbuild,” Escalante said.
Commission Paloma Aguirre said she agreed with Cummings. “It’s about coastal access for all,” Aguirre said. “I have concerns.”
Commissioner Mike Wilson, a Humboldt County supervisor, acknowledged the “significant amount of anxiety around the issue” over the years among both the public and commissioners. Wilson said he’s heard rumblings of a similar kind of ordinance in Humboldt County and that he has urged county leaders to pay attention to the conversations happening in Santa Cruz to help guide the discussion in Northern California.
“When you’re the head of the spear on issues like this, this is what happens,” Wilson said of the scrutiny, before saying he has appreciated Santa Cruz and the commission’s work in solidifying this ordinance.
The Coastal Commission directed the City of Santa Cruz to come back in 2025 for an update on how the program has progressed. Initially, the commission toyed with allowing its executive director, currently Kate Huckelbridge, to make an administrative call on whether to extend the program beyond five years. However, Huckelbridge, having absorbed the debate, said she no longer felt comfortable making a unilateral decision on the program. After two years, the City of Santa Cruz will need to come back before the Coastal Commission for any further extensions.
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