Santa Cruz’s oversized vehicle ordinance goes into effect Monday. Will it help solve homelessness?

Along the west end of Delaware Avenue on Santa Cruz’s Westside, at least 10 recreational vehicles, campers and other oversized vehicles sit for most hours of the day. 

Newly posted citywide signage lines the street, prohibiting vehicles more than 20 feet long or 7 feet wide and 8 feet high from parking between midnight and 5 a.m. without a permit. 

Beginning Monday, Santa Cruz police will begin ticketing oversized vehicles within that time frame as the city’s divisive and long-delayed oversized vehicle ordinance (OVO) officially goes into effect.

The ordinance endured a tumultuous path to implementation, involving about a decade of debates and arguments over the city’s approach to RVs and campers parked on streets. The California Coastal Commission blocked a previous version of the street-parking ban, and the city has seen local pushback from homeless advocates who say the legislation amounts to criminalizing homelessness, while some Westside residents have said that RVs parked along the neighborhood streets created hazardous conditions and environmental concerns. 

The ordinance is a one-year pilot project that the city hopes will answer questions about the law’s impact before the city decides to extend or revise it.

Lee Butler, the director of planning and community development for the City of Santa Cruz, said that the city withdrew one of the original sections of the ordinance aiming to prevent parking within 100 feet of any intersection, which prompted the Coastal Commission’s initial opposition. In May, the commission voted 9-2 to approve the ordinance as a one-year pilot project, with District 3 County Supervisor Justin Cummings, a former Santa Cruz mayor, among those voting in support.

Officials say the program will start with police issuing warnings for vehicles parked overnight. A second citation will cost $50. Subsequent tickets remain at $50. Butler said the city cannot tow vehicles based only on unpaid parking tickets, but can for other reasons like blocking right-of-ways and expired registration.

City Homelessness Response Manager Larry Imwalle said that the ordinance is not meant to push people out of the city, but to put them in a pipeline toward permanent housing, largely by encouraging them to seek out the services that already exist in the community, such as the city’s overnight safe parking lots. 

“That’s really what drives the effort of our team working on solutions, and having overnight parking programs can help be a first step,” Imwalle said. A 24-hour-access safe parking program run in partnership with Santa Cruz Free Guide, the county’s newest homeless service provider, can assist in that endeavor, too, he added. “It’s an added benefit that people can begin building a relationship with the organization that does that kind of work.”

The city runs a three-tiered safe parking program for residents living in their vehicles. Tier 1 offers three spaces for one-night-only parking; Tier 2 offers 30-day permits, but only for overnight parking; Tier 3 allows long-term, 24-hour-a-day parking with social services aimed at getting people into stable, permanent housing.

But the threat of tickets alone is enough to convince some residents living in RVs and campers to head out of town.

“I’m getting the hell out of here,” said Buster, who declined to give his last name, as he paced the field around the Homeless Garden Project farm on Shaffer Road, where his RV sits adjacent to the farm grounds. “What are you gonna do, sit around here and get tickets?”

Buster, 72, has lived in Santa Cruz County and the nearby area for his entire life, and has lived in his camper for 20-plus years. He said that seeing Santa Cruz evolve from a mostly quiet surf town into a highly desirable real estate market has taken its toll on many, since most people simply don’t make enough money to rent or purchase permanent homes. He gestured to the De Anza Santa Cruz retirement mobile home community, which are small spaces, yet still sell for hundreds of thousands.

“I’m here thinking where do people get this kind of money? And that’s only for a trailer,” he said. “It’s just become an unworkable situation.”

Ed Neibauer, 37, who also lives in a camper along Delaware Avenue with his girlfriend, said the couple plans to move their RV to another community rather than risk getting tickets. “We’re thinking about going up the coast and see if we can find a place to stay up there, but otherwise we don’t know what we’re gonna do,” he said.

Buster said he has considered the city’s safe parking program, but between paying for gas to get to and from the parking lots, the possibility of his vehicle breaking down and concern about a lack of privacy, he decided against it.

“We’ve had a lot of problems with our rig. It’ll run and then it won’t,” said Neibauer, who added that he’s close to trying to sell the camper, but if he does, he wouldn’t want to shelter at the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park, because it does not allow couples. “You gotta leave the safe parking sometimes, so what if you can’t get your vehicle out of there?”

Evan Morrison, executive director of Santa Cruz Free Guide, which oversees the city’s Tier 3, 24-hour-access safe parking program at the armory, acknowledged that paying for gas and vehicles breaking down are major potential drawbacks of the city’s plans. However, he sees the value of the ordinance in getting more people into safe sleeping spaces “if the city figures out those pitfalls.” 

Imwalle said the city’s safe parking program cannot currently help people whose vehicles are unreliable, and addressing those concerns is the biggest challenge the city faces as the ordinance goes into effect. He said that the city outreach team is working to connect unhoused people with support services best suited to their needs, regardless of whether they take up the city’s safe parking option.

“There are a lot of impacts of poverty and marginalization that folks are dealing with,” said Imwalle. “The interest is really trying to connect folks with services, independent of parking, to work with people towards housing solutions and addressing those issues.”

Local officials also acknowledge that there aren’t enough overnight parking spaces for everyone living in RVs and campers in the city and that safe parking programs are often at capacity with a lengthy waiting list.

The city has the capacity for around 60 to 65 safe-parking spaces, though about just 15 to 20 of those are Tier 3 spaces that allow people to keep their vehicles there 24 hours a day. By contrast, the 2023 Santa Cruz County point-in-time count estimated that the county is home to 1,426 unsheltered people, with about 655 of them sleeping in vehicles. (Safe parking spaces can typically hold more than one person since multiple people can live in a vehicle.)

Morrison said the waitlist to get into the program at the armory, which holds the city’s only Tier 3 program, is long. The program has been at capacity essentially since its launch in 2022. Currently, it hosts about 15 households, with another 46 on the waiting list. 

Imwalle said he is already seeing an uptick in enrollment for Tier 2 spaces, which allow overnight parking only. He said the city is looking at opening up two more lots for Tier 2 parking, which would add another six to eight spaces in total, and added that the city could likely bring the total available capacity to around 45 Tier 2 spaces if needed.

Creating more Tier 3 parking is a challenge because it would require allowing people to keep vehicles in the designated lots for 24 hours a day. Since the city is using city-owned lots, many spaces will be taken by members of the public or city employees during the day.

But both Imwalle and Morrison said that the OVO going into effect is only the beginning of trying to address the city’s homeless challenges, and there is more work to be done.

“I’m going into this knowing that no policy is perfect, and I hope that folks are ready to make adjustments that need to be made as we see how this is implemented without assuming bad faith on anyone’s side,” said Morrison. “Applying policies to the entire population of Santa Cruz effectively is a hard thing to do.”

And those fighting to stay on their feet are now struggling to decide whether to give the city programs a shot or start over — away from Santa Cruz.

“I’m doing everything I possibly can, and it’s just really up in the air,” said Neibauer. “Everybody looks down on us big time, like we’re trying to cause problems. We’re just trying to survive.”

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