This is an Airbnb van rented” for $70 per night and can sit five visitors.
Plus an Historical Caution about South Shores Parking Lot
A week ago on March 25 Mayor Kevin Faulconer and District 2 Councilwoman Jen Campbell held a press conference in Mission Bay to announce their proposal to bring back the city’s ban on vehicle living coupled with an expanded Safe Parking Lot program.
Flanked by a bevy of local beach leaders, including OB’s own Mark Winkie, President of the OB Town Council, Faulconer took the lead in pushing the reinstatement of the former ordinance – a longstanding vehicle habitation ban enacted in 1983 but ruled too vague to legally enforce by a Federal court. The City Council unanimously repealed it in February backed in a corner by the court ruling.
Over the last several weeks, however, both the Mayor’s and Campbell’s offices have been inundated with complaints from residents about people living in vans on their streets and leaving their waste. Many of the complaints appear to come from residents in the more upscale neighborhoods near the beach – but not all. And clearly this proposal is Faulconer’s response to the avalanche of anger his staffers have suffered. Given we’re entering the campaign season, he had to act fast.
Importantly and significantly, the return of the ban is supposed to be coupled with the expansion of the city’s Safe Parking program. The program provides nighttime parking for people living in their vehicles.
Faulconer said he wants to add three new lots, one news source reported while others stated he plans to double the number of “safe” parking lots, from two to four.
The expansion allows more than 100 new parking spaces for people living in their vehicles. According to the mayor’s office, the goal is to provide temporary places for the homeless while they search for jobs and housing. Currently, the program serves more than 200 adults and children and has helped more than 30 families transition to permanent housing.
Faulconer’s proposed ordinance will be brought to the April 17 meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee.
It was in August, 2018, when U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia – sitting here in San Diego – ruled the city’s previous vehicle habitation law didn’t indicate specifically how a vehicle became a person’s home or “living quarters,” while commenting people have received tickets for reading a book inside their vehicle. Battaglia declared the ordinance “was both vague on its face and being arbitrarily and discriminatorily applied.”
The Court’s injunction was in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of disabled homeless people who prefer to live in vehicles because they don’t function well in traditional homeless shelters.
While the locations for the new parking lots have not yet been finalized, Councilwoman Campbell has offered the South Shores parking lot for one of the sites. She said:
“The South Shores parking lot on South Shores Park Drive is an appropriate location for safe parking expansion with more than 200 spaces and bathroom facilities onsite. South Shores could be rapidly transitioned into a safe overnight parking location with space for cars and oversized vehicles.”
Approximate boundaries of old Mission Bay landfill.
Just an historical and cautionary note on the the South Shores parking lot – it’s the former site of the old Mission Bay Landfill. As the OB Rag has reported in previous posts:
In turns out the City ran an domestic and industrial landfill from 1952 through 1959 right there on the southern edge of Mission Bay, the largest aquatic park on the West Coast.
The City, the Navy, and the aerospace industry all poured their waste or dumped barrels of toxins into unlined sand pits at the site, located between what’s now I-5, south to the San Diego River, north to the water of the Bay, and west into land now occupied by parking lots and … SeaWorld.
And as we warned:
This is why SeaWorld cannot build a 3 story hotel and resort, as it wants to, next to Perez Cove. There’s an old toxic landfill within yards away.
Sources:
San Diego Community News Group
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Proposing the expansion of safe parking lots is a step in the right direction. However, to prevent our streets becoming campgrounds, the ordinance must include a ban on overnight parking for vans such as the van air bnbs previously described in this article as well as campers, trailers with boats people can sleep in as well as RVs and so on. Signage on residential beach area streets with fees posted would be most helpful. Finally, the larger concern lies with enforcement, something the city routinely fails to do.
It’s going to be an interesting summer.
They will ultimately fail in their Perverted attempt at selective discrimination of lower income and perverted attempt at selective discrimination of lower income and disabled and mentally ill people and the only way they can legally do anything about it if they build housing and get housing to all the homeless people otherwise they are infringing on constitutional rights which will cost the city a lot of money in the end and lawsuits and they will be entangled for years this was a Bohemian lifestyle area long before the copies came in and there is a simple constitutional right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness if you take away their liberty and take away their basic function of sleep you are in violation of constitutional rights protected by the amendments in the Constitution .
So, where is the 14 million dollars the mayor received to help the homeless? There are no less people, no more housing than before, no new programs, the e money is…. in in someone’s possession, but not where the FEDERAL GIVT INTENDED.
Where is the money ? Whahat has he spent the money on?
Please remember, one persons right ends….where the next persons begins..
Perhaps it is time for a changing of the guards, s I to say,
A fresh look and a resolve to end homelessness was, not discriminate the disabled and gleefully change sides to appease the wealthy folks with no gods to pray to at night.
It is time to help the problem or continue the terrorizing discrimination on homeless and d disabled, simply to save money and get tt the wealthy godless vote.
All veterans, ALL. DISABLED, AALL HOMELESS WILL VITE, and the wrath of the gods will see this mayor moving on to something else, like the private sector or, where it is less likely to affect human lives anand the greed and selfish, godless Endeavors.
This being said, perhaps it is time for a mayor for a
S
If these wealthy