The Sebastopol City Council is moving toward approval for an ordinance to limit recreational vehicle parking and the growth of establishments like Morris Street’s RV encampment, opting not to create a permitting process as of its Jan. 18 meeting.
Meanwhile, the recently approved RV Safe Parking Village is underway for a number of homeless people from Morris Street to move into. Sonoma Applied Village Services (SAVS) will manage the one-year pilot program located at 845 Gravenstein Highway North.
Councilmember Una Glass said she expects the village to host 20 RVs, but Vice Mayor Neysa Hinton noted the otherwise unsheltered RV population has more than doubled in the city since the village announcement.
The council reached a consensus on the proposed parking ordinance after roughly five hours of discussion. Unanimously, they voted to introduce and waive further reading for the ordinance with no permits required, adding Chapter 10.76 Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance and amending Chapter 10.36 of the city’s municipal code.
Additionally, the vote made subtle grammar corrections and revised a 10.76.050 section’s paragraph on exceptions to read “recreational vehicles parked or left standing on any public street in the city that is zoned residential, so as to allow the use of a homeowner, tenant, or out of town visitor for a period not to exceed 72 hours.”
Mayor Patrick Slayter said the cost of carrying out the proposed parking ordinance will be discussed sometime in the future.
Parking policy basics and how they may show up
The proposed ordinance first defines a recreational vehicle, or RV, as a motorhome, truck camper, travel trailer, camping trailer or another vehicle or trailer that was modified or made “for human habitation for recreational, emergency, or other human occupancy,” whether it has motive power or not. Further definitions per California Health and Safety Code and California Vehicle Code are listed in the draft here.
According to Sebastopol Police Chief Kevin Kilgore, people who live in RVs could park overnight in commercial, industrial and community facility zoned areas from 10 p.m. to 7:30 a.m., at which point they’d be required to move. He said these areas are mostly around the Barlow, Gravenstein Highway North and elsewhere in the city.
The ordinance emphasizes it to be against the law for anyone to park or leave a recreational vehicle standing on any public street zoned as commercial, industrial or community facility between 7:30 a.m. and 10 p.m.
Meanwhile, parking or leaving a recreational vehicle standing on any residentially-zoned public street in the city would also be against the law, per Kilgore’s staff report.
Neither may anyone park or leave the vehicle standing on any park, alley or square at any time under the ordinance, nor in a city-owned parking lot unless they’re conducting city business somewhere that parking lot is assigned to during business hours.
Councilmember Una Glass asked the police chief where people who live in their cars and RVs can go during the day. Kilgore first answered that they could head somewhere else in Sonoma County, “as many of them do when they go to various locations to meet with others, go to work, whatever it may be, but they would have to leave the area.”
In other words, Glass said, the City of Sebastopol would not be accommodating another location for people to go.
For Councilmembers Una Glass, the parking regulations raised the question of how the city can allow for RV-dwelling tourists to visit Sebastopol and also allow people who park overnight to sleep in the area to come downtown for the library and business, too.
The ordinance does state people living in RVs cannot park in commercial areas during the day, but Kilgore clarified that “city-owned parking lots can be utilized if someone is there for the purpose of the business-related matter.” He added that the rules are to keep people from parking in city-owned lots overnight.
Glass asked Kilgore to clarify if the Sebastopol Police Department (SPD) assumes homeless people living in vehicles are therefore lawbreakers. Kilgore responded that his department assumes nothing and treats all people equitably.
“Whether they are unhoused or have any other either visible or non-visible characteristic that is associated with them does not play into our decision-making on anything,” he said. “What plays into our decision-making is whether or not someone is in violation or an ordinance that is set by the city or a law that is set by the state or the government in any manner.”
Glass said she wanted to raise that discussion “because I know that’s who you are.” She said the city has unmanageable issues at play. “We don’t have a place for people to go, but it is not the assumption of our police department that everybody unhoused is a lawbreaker.” Glass concurred with Slayter that “unlawful behavior is unlawful behavior, but being homeless is not unlawful.”
During public comment, attendee Kyle Falbo countered that the regulations do criminalize homelessness. “Nothing about what has been proposed tonight changes that ordinances of this nature are laws against poverty. RV bans come down to a lack of support and a true understanding of who RV-dwellers are to begin with,” he said, and that Sebastopol’s scarcity of affordable housing and growth has priced much of his generation out of the area.
Kilgore stated at the meeting that over the nine months since he arrived, he and SPD strove for leniency toward people living in vehicles around Morris Street and Palm Avenue, giving them the time to collaborate with advocates toward behavioral changes for better interactions.
Enforcing ordinance calls for more staffing and resources, police chief says
The police chief shared his requests to address parking issues and some cost estimates regarding staffing and signage. Without a permitting process, Kilgore said the ordinance calls for boosting one of the department’s employees up to a full-time position and hiring either another full-time employee or two part-time workers to enforce citations, warnings and other restrictions. Further, he stated SPD needed another vehicle to do the job.
Without more staffing and resources, he said enforcing the ordinance may be difficult because the Sebastopol Police Department already lacks 24-7 parking coverage. One employee spends 30 hours a week on the task and while other officers can issue parking tickets, they have little time to do so when prioritizing calls and other duties, Kilgore said.
He estimated personnel costs at $150,000 or more, plus $350 per parking sign to announce time limits for recreational vehicles in areas zoned for commercial, industrial and community facility uses across the city, like Gravenstein Highway North.
Kilgore said he did not know how many signs are needed, but he projected at least 20 signs were needed in the Morris Street and Laguna Park Way area. He agreed with the mayor that 50 to 100 signs could easily be needed.
The conversation turned at one point to whether the city can legally lay down the ordinance if the RV Safe Parking Village is delayed. City Manager-Attorney Larry McLaughlin said the parking restrictions can be enacted if they are introduced, pass a subsequent reading and other aspects even if the village has such a setback.
As for exceptions revised in the 10.76.050 section, the passage originally stated that the prohibitions don’t apply to RVs parked or left on public streets zoned residential “so as to allow the performance of a homeowner, tenant, or out-of-town visitor to load/unload the vehicle for a period not to exceed 48 hours.”
Community divides on approaches to homelessness and RV parking
Many community members voiced support for the proposed ordinance, although differences remained in how they viewed homelessness-related issues in the city.
Kate Haug said in public comment that taxpayers have paid for portable toilets, public works and police time and more while some have died living in their vehicles and fires have been lit in the area, “This is exactly the ordinance we need right now.”
She said public comments in the past two months show “transients are impacting our school campuses, our local businesses, our streets, our cultural institutions and our communities.” Haug added, “There is no record of any transients moving into permanent housing or getting jobs by living for free on our streets and draining our public resources.”
Haug stated she supported reassigning roughly $70,000 funds for the city’s homeless outreach coordinator towards the ordinance, as well as the $86,000 for a consultant to “relaunch” Sebastopol. “It’s outrageous that we’re being asked to support more transients when we permanently lost a hotel in our downtown area,” she said, referring to Elderberry Commons, the former Sebastopol Inn that now provides supportive housing for unsheltered, COVID-vulnerable people.
Ludmilla Bade weighed into the discussion having lived in a small utility trailer for nearly three years. She said her biggest concern was having police or community members towing or tampering with her vehicle, so she used to park outside the house where she worked as an in-home support provider in Sebastopol.
This she found to be illegal under the original proposed ordinance. “So, supposedly, I would need to park out of town and hire an Uber to come in and work for fifteen dollars an hour as a home supporter? It would put an undue burden on people who don’t have enough income,” she said.
Bade supported the idea of a county or citywide permitting process where people in RVs and trailers could apply to park in the area and make it clear that “I’m not an unknown, I’m not here to steal your children” or do anything absurd.
Others shared concerns about the potential for “spillover,” considering restricted parking in commercial and industrial areas could lead to more homeless people seeking a place to stay put in residential neighborhoods and areas.
