This week, San Francisco authorities will begin towing vehicles as the city implements its new ban on RVs parked for more than two hours on public streets.
That means potentially hundreds of mobile homes will need to be stored somewhere — and that somewhere, said District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton, is Dogpatch’s Pier 68.
The former Union Iron Works shipyard, now a historic district occasionally used for workforce training, is a swath of largely unoccupied land dotted with a few remaining abandoned industrial buildings.
A large-scale redevelopment project encompassing Pier 68 and Pier 70 has been in progress for years, adding space for retail, restaurants and offices to the waterfront. In the meantime, the pier may be used to store RVs towed by the city.
Walton, who represents the neighborhood, along with Bayview and the rest of District 10, said that neither he nor residents were consulted. The neighborhood, he said, “does not have the capacity” to store RVs at the pier.
Yes, there is space, but Walton said that he has other hopes for the port property that would better serve his district’s residents, like a trucking training program. But he learned during a meeting with the Port of San Francisco on Monday morning that the pier would be used to store RVs indefinitely.
“The Mayor’s Office, the Department of Emergency Management, the Port and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing are once again strong-arming and treating District 10 as a dumping ground for the city’s hardest challenges,” said Walton in a statement and post to his Instagram.
The mayor’s office contends that the move is a temporary one, but did not answer questions as to why Walton was not consulted.
“As families move, empty RVs will be held temporarily at a city-owned lot with available space and then dismantled,” said spokesperson Charles Lutvak, in a statement. “Government has spent years failing to address this issue. We are doing what it takes to do right by San Francisco families.”
Walton has repeatedly criticized the mayor’s lack of transparency in the city’s plans for his district, which is disproportionately low-income and has a larger minority population than the rest of San Francisco.
Earlier this year, the supervisor butted heads with Mayor Daniel Lurie over Jerrold Commons, a shelter proposed by former Mayor London Breed and planned with the supervisor, when Lurie eliminated safe parking spots for RVs and moved tiny cabins to the area for “temporary storage” without Walton’s input.
During July’s budget hearings, Supervisor Walton said Mayor Lurie made a personal promise to consult him and other residents before making decisions that impacted the “already overburdened” neighborhood. Now, Walton said, Mayor Lurie, who spearheaded the decision to ban two-hour parking for RVs throughout the city, has broken that promise.
Walton was one of two San Francisco supervisors, including District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, to vote against the ban. His district has one of the largest populations of RV residents in the city, and many may be displaced once the ban goes into effect this week.
“I don’t think it will be successful,” said Walton, of the ban. “It could potentially be hundreds of vehicles or thousands of vehicles” that could be towed, said Walton. “They don’t have anywhere to put anybody.”
Where else would the City park them but an open lot?
You want to use that for “trucker schooling” ok, but does that program exist and question 2 does this preclude you from making it happen?
I don’t question Walton’s defense of his district, I question his tactics.
Lots of poor people live and work in San Francisco. The RV dwellers are living rent free in neighborhoods where both poor and middle class families don’t want the mess. As for Amazon there’s already a temporary full block size facility on Toland and Oakdale that’s been there for years and there’s no traffic nightmare
I don’t really understand what Walton’s angle is. Pier 68 (usually known as Pier 70) is in the very rapidly developing area south of Crane Cove, replete with fancy office space, apartments, a new brewery and restaurant, etc etc. But way out beyond the fence on the yet-to-be developed pier there are already tons of vehicles (Waymos?) in storage and if you look at Google Street View you can see that in 2010 that area was filled with RVs…occupied or impounded? Not sure.
Anyway…this isn’t a struggling area ‘getting dumped on’ at all and given Walton’s other unhinged rants about other issues (truly bafflingly once calling out JFK pedestrianization as ‘modern-day Jim Crow segregation’) you really should wonder what’s going on here. Kinda smells like a shakedown to me.
They didn’t ask Walton because nothing productive ever comes from engaging with him. But kudos to him for actually defending his district. Jackie meanwhile prioritizing the lives of cats in her district over the human suffering that happens everyday.
I think this is good politics by Walton. Make a stand on an issue that affects the residents in your district…
…and it would be better politics for Walton to trade/soften his stance on this issue in exchange for more services for the bay view. That’s how politics works
That’s mostly what he’s doing.
Or you can dump them in Hunter Point, where they dump everything else like-Nuclear Waste. The R.V problem should have never have gotten to this, if powers that be had enforced the laws in the first place. I remember doing the Whole Earth Fair, at Davis and was parked in a camper with a fellow vendor, we were there less than 10 minutes, when the home owner called, the police on us, and we had to leave. Eventually we found a place to park, at the U.C Davis campus.
I call B.S. I’m sure he knew, but made a back door deal . It’s all a WWE system
This plan just gets better and better. You can really tell they thought this through.
I mean he would not be mayor if he wasn’t really rich, and he wouldn’t be really rich if he wasn’t really really smart, right? That’s how it works, right? Right???
The mayor don’t know Sh*t about living in an RV.
Hey, no more RV’s in the Bayshore! The Mayor and supes have just given the go- ahead for Amazon to build this nightmare. In the Bayview. Supervisor Walton doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. And I’m sure our Mayor has a solution to the traffic nightmare hundreds of delivery vehicles will cause at the Oakdale and Old Bayshore 101 freeway ramp intersection. But, hey- no RV’s.
Huge Package Delivery Hub to Replace Amazon Warehouses Is Up For a Vote https://share.google/byHg8e2LWuPDmqkW7
Such a sick, cruel policy to begin with: take away people’s homes and banish them from the city just to free up another parking space for a techie to drive to Tahoe on the weekend. People need affordable housing, and short-term resources for waste disposal where sanitation is an issue, not banishment.
I’m grateful we have a mayor who wants to enforce parking rules. We cannot have people living in RV’s in residential areas. There are RV parks designated for longer term stays.
SF doesn’t have any, despite having ample empty space for them.
This mayor has resisted filling that need and instead forces people into what is essentially a temporary housing arrangement that in many cases will end back in homelessness on the streets. This is avoidable.
Why would you cite RV parks as a solution when there isn’t even one?
Maybe you can be the change you want to see in the world and invite one to park in front of your house and your neighbors’ houses indefinitely. Aka forever.
There are places in SF that don’t have houses to be obstructed.
You want to pretend that’s not the case for #hatehomeless reasons.
Scott, be real here. This isn’t ‘Nomadland.’ Just ask a doctor or a public-health official about the state of filth that most of these people who live in ‘RV shaped objects’ are facing. Most of these RVs would not pass a smog test if they even run at all. People are dumping their waste in the street or into Lake Merced. This is not humane and it’s also a major environmental hazard not to mention a street-safety hazard. Maybe it’s Tech Bros who make sure anyone who parks one of these things near Lincoln Park gets towed instantly but it’s not fair that Lake Merced, Diamond Heights, Stonestown/SF State and Bayview residents have to put up with them. We need bus lanes and more housing built, not linear RV lots.
Let’s turn on the pressure to Da Mayor to follow through with London Breed’s ‘Cars to Casas’ program and get more tiny homes trucked over to empty lots while we figure out how to get more affordable housing developments in the pipeline.