Care to get hung up on a philosophical argument? Are “homeless” people who live in recreation vehicles (RVs) and assorted other mobile contraptions actually homeless at all?
In this age of housing crisis, there are more practical issues at hand. Homeless or not, are they part of the housing problem? Or do they offer a housing solution? The City of Sebastopol, California, has opted to open its eyes to both the problem and RV possibilities, at least in the short term.
Why can’t RV owners (who plague city streets and annoy firmly housed neighbours) find a trailer park somewhere in the far boonies, out of sight and out of mind? One answer is that they not only have a quasi-home, but often a job as well. Which makes them almost fine, upstanding citizens . . . if only they have a supported place to park within reasonable distance of their work.
Too much hassle for a city to handle? There’s always the “nuisance” recourse recently employed by the city of Vancouver, British Columbia: respond by unleashing the parking by-law enforcers to chase RVs endlessly from street to street around the city, cutting into owner self-sufficiency income with parking fines, or by real disaster: towing recovery fees1.
Sebastopol, on the other hand, plans to take a hands-on ownership of the problem by not only providing a parking solution for “homeless” RV’s but doing so downtown, not on the edge of town.
Read more in the Press Democrat2: Sebastopol takes first step toward overnight parking program for homeless people in RVs
Footnotes
- Try: Grand Theft Auto: Authorities Steal Mobile Shelter & Job Access
- The Press Democrat is paywalled, but allows one or two free reads.
