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RV owners without homes prepare for day in court

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Holding signs that read “Stop the ticketing,” “Housing not handcuffs, “Disability is not a crime” and other slogans, about 20 people participated in a demonstration in Mission Bay on Monday to call attention to a class-action lawsuit seeking an end to the city’s ban on people living in recreational vehicles.

“We were woken at 6 o’clock in the morning and told we didn’t have a choice,” said Anna Stark, one of 11 plaintiffs named in the suit, as she recalled the morning her RV was impounded.

“They said a tow truck had already been called and we had to get what we could take, and they set us out on the street,” she said.

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The couple were told they had seven tickets against them for violating city laws about RVs, and the city can impound vehicles after five tickets. Stark said she thought she and her husband Gerald, also a plaintiff, had only four tickets.

The class action suit alleges city policies violate civil rights and was filed in federal court in November by Disability Rights California, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Dreher Law Firm and other legal groups.

A Freedom of Information Act request filed from the attorneys revealed there had been 5,039 citations against people violating the city’s restriction on parking large vehicles and RVs on the street between September 2014 and August 2017. Average fines were $112.50 and amounted to $832,754 in fines and fees. Of that, $365,822 had been collected.

An additional 1,212 tickets had been issued for violating the city’s ban on living in vehicles between January 2014 and August 2017. Most fines were $52, and tickets amounted to $104,837 in fines. Of that, $40,633 had been collected.

Ann Menasche, senior attorney with Disability Rights California, said the suit argues that the city’s law prohibiting people from living in vehicles is unconstitutional because its definition of whether somebody is living inside is vague.

In 2014, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Los Angeles ordinance prohibiting people from living in vehicles as unconstitutionally vague. Menasche said the case was similar to the one filed in San Diego.

Another part of the suit that challenges the city’s ban on parking RVs on city streets between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. is unique to San Diego, she said. Menasche said the 2014 city rule is being challenged as discriminatory against disabled people who have no other place to live.

The law allows RV owners to park near their homes with permits. Menasche said that while the city has claimed the law is neutral, she said it has a greater effect on the elderly and disabled, and there should be accommodations for them.

At the time, the city enacted the RV parking restriction as a way to increase safety, aesthetics and parking availability, especially near the beach, by preventing tourists with large campers from sleeping inside their vehicles to avoid paying for hotels or other accommodations.

But Menasche said the law had unintended consequences, resulting in some people who can’t afford rent to lose the only home they had when their RVs were impounded.

The mayor’s office did not respond for a request to comment on the pending lawsuit following the Monday demonstration.

Another demonstration is planned Thursday before Menasche appears before a federal judge to ask for an injunction on RV citations until the case is decided.

“We are here today to demand that the city immediately instruct its police to stop issuing these tickets, stop the impounding of RVs, stop throwing people onto the sidewalk, and that the city end this callous injustice now,” she said at the Monday press conference held at the South Shore boat launching area near Sea World, where many RVs park. “Let me make clear that the city’s policies created this housing and homeless crisis we are facing, and its affecting more and more San Diego residents each and every day.”

Recalling the morning their RV was impounded, Stark said she and her 77-year-old husband Gerald, also a plaintiff, had no place to go and rode their bicycles to look for a place to rest.

“We’d sleep in an alley,” she said. “An alley isn’t a place for a 77-year-old man who has worked his whole life.”

Plaintiff David Wilson, an actor who said his credits includes a part in “Taxi Driver,” said he has been living on about $900 a month in disability payments following a 1990 accident.

Holding a cardboard box loaded with legal payments during the demonstration, Wilson said he has about 880 citations from living in an RV. He’s avoided having his vehicle impounded about 10 times by selling each one as tickets piled up, then buying another.

Plaintiff Valerie Grischy also lives in an RV and said she is a licensed chiropractor but has been unable to work since being injured in a 2009 accident.

Living on about $900 a month, she said she had to make a choice between paying rent and surviving, so she decided to live in an RV.

“It’s an awful sinking feeling to wake up to a ticket on my windshield in the morning,” she said. “Paying it takes away what little I have to survive.”

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gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

760-529-4939

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