Health & Fitness
DID YOU KNOW The Housing Situation in the Area is Now So Dire That People are Permanently Car Camping?
Real Craigslist Ad:
I'll be permanently car camping on the peninsula soon. Not looking for a boat to rent or living accommodations. My vehicle is a fine place to sleep.
However, I would like access to showers and laundry facilities. This is where I'll pay you to rent an extra liveaboard pass for a boat you already have moored. I've lived on a boat before (and can provide reference from the owner if you like), so I know how it works. All I'm looking for is a pass and keycard so I can park near the showers or laundry room, freshen up, then return to my vehicle to go to work or find a place to park and sleep. I will never stay in the lot overnight (I know the harbor master guys don't tolerate it).
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Last week I wrote about Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU’s) and house sharing; but for some people that is either still not a realistic option or not a desired option so as in the Craigslist ad above they resort to "permanently car camping." Car camping is one of the things you can do to when your monthly income is less than or just about $1600 per month and market rents for small units are $1600 per month. To state the obvious you still need to eat, dress, pay for gasoline, car insurance and assorted other incidental expenses. Note I didn't even include any recreational or discretionary expenses.
Find out what's happening in Redwood City-Woodsidewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The one thing the sharing economy is doing however is letting car campers find people who have spots for parking available for rent. Just here in San Francisco there is https://www.justpark.com/us/parking/san-francisco/ As their website notes:
“Have you considered renting out your parking space? Car parking near San Francisco is in high demand and many of our parking space owners are earning a significant second income.
Making money from your empty driveway, garage, car park or parking space couldn't be easier and we have thousands of people looking to compare San Francisco parking or search cheap parking to rent all over the country. We have San Francisco parking spaces available to rent today.”
Hard to know however if those parking spots come with access to a local bathroom. The reality is that most car campers like the homeless have a waste disposal problem. Just last week, San Francisco rolled out a portable bathroom program for the homeless to try and contain the amount of human waste on the streets. However in contrast to the last time they tried to roll out the same type of program this time access to the facilities is limited to certain hours during which said facilities will actually be staffed.
The reality of permanent car camping however is that it is a solution to complete homelessness. Unfortunately some local Peninsula cities have tried to ban the practice including Palo Alto that just last year concluded a two year discussion about the subject and ended up banning it. Just last month; however, the United States Court of Appeal For the Ninth Circuit found that in a similar case in Cheyenne Desertrain vs City of Los Angeles car camping suffered from the vagueness doctrine namely “plaintiffs are left guessing as to what behaviour would subject them to citation and arrest by an officer. Is it impermissible to eat food in a vehicle? Is it illegal to keep a sleeping bag? Canned food? Books? What about speaking on a cell phone? Or staying in the car to get out of the rain? These are all actions Plaintiffs were taking when arrested for violation of the ordinance, all of which are otherwise perfectly legal. And despite Plaintiff’s repeated attempts to comply with Section 85.02, there appears to be nothing they can do to avoid violating the statute short of discarding all of their possessions or their vehicles, or leaving Los Angeles entirely. All in all, this cryptic statute criminalizes innocent behaviour, making it impossible for citizens to know how to keep their conduct within the pale.” (https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/06/19/11-56957.pdf
As Palo Alto Councilwoman Gail Price noted last year when Palo Alto approved its ban on the issue of homelessness, "It's not a local issue. It's a regional, county, state and national issue. This is one of the biggest social issues and social-justice issues that our nation faces."
Shouldn’t we instead be creating affordable car camping parks with bathroom and shower facilities? What do you think?
