As noted...Mountain View (population of 80K) has more safe parking spots than ANY other city in Santa Clara County (population 2 MILLION), the Voice conveniently ignores the fact that many refuse to even apply for this program, so the number of spaces is a moot point. The VOICE never reports on the crime, public safety (RV totally engulfed in flames on Pioneer Way, closed a highway, started a brush fire) , public health (no sewage dumping signs), the squalor that grew around some RV's. They also ignore the fact that VC backed startups in commercial areas that spend $$$ refurbishing their buildings are starting to leave MV, their employees keeping late hours do not feel safe in areas congested with RV's.

They've had two years to prepare for this, yet there is "Confusion, Panic, and Fear"?
Methinks the MV Voice, in collusion with Activists, Activist oriented city government are
misrepresenting what is going on here. Or are they disorganized people who can't figure out
how to take advantage of all the resources provided to them *for a long time*

The Activists (including the Activist portion of our City Leadership ??) conveniently overlook the Safe Parking Program. Where they get a Safe Place to park, as well as social services to help them find housing as well as other area where they need help. They also get sewage, water, garbage support. MV is doing more than all the cities around here.

The resources are there to help.

The alternative non- plan of our Activist Lead City Government is unlimited RVs any where in the city. Without sewage, garbage, water support. I guess our city government thinks these items would magically take care of itself. I don't see these RVs leaving for specialized sewage dump stations (not many around in suburban areas). Are they manually dumping sewage and where does it go?

Did our City Leaders propose a budget and a specific number of RVs they would support, as well as budget for support services? Nope. Just unlimited RVs anywhere.

Well, that was clearly voted down by a 57% margin over a year ago. And yet well over a year later they are just implementing. Pretty fishy. I think this is foot dragging by Activist City government who does not represent the the regular working people of this city. They will use the legal challenge as an excuse, but I think they were all collaborating in the foot dragging. Vote out the Activist portion of our city government. They are only interested in their Activist Agenda, and not the interests of regular working people

Have COMPASSION. “There but for the grace of God….”

They've had what, a couple of years to move their vehicles, and it's not enough?

Reading this and some previous articles from Malea Martin is frustrating because there's always this underlying agenda in each story. A higher standard of journalism from the editor of the Voice would require a more rounded discussion from the contributors. We do more than the other towns and there's little discussion of the trash problem or a list of the resources the town provides to help people or the cost to the taxpayers for all this delay.

Remember, the voters passed this ordinance by a landslide a couple of years ago.

Why didn’t the Voice interview people who live in the apartments near Continental Circle and see how they feel? Or business owners who lose customer parking to RVs? Those people also have rights. If it’s true, as the Voice says, that Mountain View provides more RV parking lots than any other city in the County, then at 80,000 population we are doing a disproportionate share of the heavy lifting on this issue compared to San Jose and Sunnyvale. Since many of our housing problems were caused by the tech companies, I’d love to see their parking lots used as RV lots, at least for their own employees.

Another activist propaganda. Years for preparation. Years of tax dollar spent on support services. And the worst: silent city leadership. Where are the success stories, the number of RVs going through the Safe Lots? How many people living on Leghorn? How many Families taken out of inhumane street living conditions? I voted for the current mayor in the last election, not this time. It is pretty clear, You are not behind these tax payer funded support projects. You'd rather have our city turn into a giant campground. The accumulated trash over the last year with some of these RV contradict any claim of displaced MV residents. Apartment dweller do not have collections of dismantled cars and bikes. If we do not enforce the 72 hr rule we are creating giant encampments.

I have friends who live near Continental Circle and they are happy the RVs are gone.Malea Martin is undermining the credibility of the Mountain View Voice by provided a distorted one-sided view of the issue.

Note: Do not re-elect Hicks and Ramirez as they wanted the RVs.

This is ridiculous. How can they think that parking/living on the side of a road is acceptable and something that they can do indefinitely. No property tax paid. It’s about time that the City is enforcing this voter approved mandate. Enough is enough.

This comments section is a horrible view into the worst side of Mountain View. Thankfully, they're just an angry minority of people in this city, but good god they're loud and proud.

You should see the Cuesta park candidates forum where Lucas admitted he would still vote against the ordinance even knowing the voters approved it. On video. So much for listening to the community. Embarrassing.

This is lazy journalism. The title says “homes”. They have their mobile home. The street is not a home. It is a public right of way like Central Park.

I know this will probably get deleted [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

I agree with most MV Residents here. Malea
Martin continues to show how uncreditable Mountain View Voice is. Like others have mentioned:
Why didn’t the Voice interview people who live in the apartments near Continental Circle?
Why didn’t the Voice interview people who live near Crisanto?
What about providing information of crimes near locations where RVS are Parked?
What about providing information on how these RVs are constantly dumping their sewage on the streets?
This has been going on for years, the residents voted for it for a reason.
Just another quick lazy article for clicks to get people to look at it.

Are you all an example of our "civilized society" where you spend time writing screeds about homeless people in our city? If that's "civilized," I'd hate to see what "uncivilized" looks like. The most you point to that Mountain View has done are the safe parking lots, which have no available spots. Where should they go?

Let's remember what the voters supported: A ban on parking oversized vehicles on streets less than 40 feet wide, even streets 39 feet, 11 1/2 inches (Crisanto). The justification was traffic safety. Since passage, the courts told the city that we could enact such a restriction only if the RVs had somewhere else to park.
So the "RVs" have moved to other, primarily commercial streets, where parking oversized vehicles is legal.
The 72-hour rule was enacted to prevent the accumulation of abandoned vehicles, but it is enforced discriminatorily. I used to park a car in front on my house for days on end, before it was smashed by a sleeping motorist. I was never ticketed.
Forcing people in obviously occupied oversized vehicles to move every three days is harassment, and if the rule were enforced on the vehicles of homeowners and renters, there would be an uproar.
I'm wondering if the proponents and opponents of Measure C can come together to support the creation of more off-street parking for vehicle residences. The city could expand "safe parking," but there might also be an opportunity to create an "RV Park," with hook-ups. Many people who live in vehicles on our streets have said that they would be willing to pay a reasonable rent to live in such a lot. If you want to get the RVs off the streets, join me in pursuing this path.

I see there are some haters out there, and that’s pretty normal I guess. To paint a picture of RV dwellers as nasty derelict criminals reveals a deep-seated ignorance based on stereotypes, bias and maintenance of status quo. I say, “Live and let live.” There is zero actual harm being done. Let it go and move on.

RVs are moving into our hood, thanks to MV city council. The RVs are not the problem, it's the people who live in them who pile furniture and crap all around the vehicle, blocking the sidewalk. Looks like a 3rd world country. Great going MV!

Question - where do these people shower, dump their toilet refuse?

MV PD - you know, the public service agency that is supposed to still enforce parking rules. Forget it. They've gone AWOL. This agency has become useless in anything parking related.

Over the last couple of weeks, 5 RVs have parked themselves on the street where my work office is located. IMO, the current number of RVs introduces a tolerable level of nuisance/clutter/waste to the street. However, if another ~20 RVs join them it would significantly impact the quality of experience for people working on the street. IMO, distributing RVs across commercially zoned streets may be the "least bad" option for our city; however, we would really need to cap the number of RVs allowed on any given commercial street.

@Ian, MVPD can only do their job when allowed by our city council. That council basically told them to stand down until this month. And even now, the majority of the current council is not behind the outcome of Measure C, enforcement can only come if residents complain on AskMV.

@LennySiegel2 Building a full hook up RV park in MV is a bad idea. Once the utilities have been installed we might as well add small houses and remove the RVs completely from our streets. The RVs on our streets are in such bad shape, the roofs and windows are likely leaking. Walls are not insulated, they are very hot and very cold. The plumbing most likely is not in working condition anymore and the electrical system dangerous. Why is everybody insisting we need to keep them as housing? The Crestview Hotel should open in 23, getting more people off the streets. We have the Leghorn Village and if we look into Measure A Funds that are sitting around unused, we might be able to create another one like that. Much more humane then buying blue tarps for our dilapidated street dweller.

You people really like your victimhood narratives. Truly, the people that have to see RVs are the real victims here, not the actually homeless people.

You all rewrite the history of, you know, the lawsuit in federal court that the city was facing. Had they decided to keep fighting it and not settle, you would have ended up with a much "worse" outcome by your standards.

After nearly 30 years in MV, we moved to Eugene on Halloween 2017. When we moved there you never saw the police or saw a lot of public camping. Then people started moving there from Portland and telling tales of squalor and aggression.

Then the police were forbidden from prosecuting vandalism and property crimes, and the city's parks began to fill up with campers. We lived across the street from one park with 300-400 campers, daily fires from propane and charcoal burners, gunfights, knife fights, theft, screaming and yelling all night long every night, car breakins, window breakins, and a general feeling of living in some horrid third world slum. All in what used to be a beautiful clean town with not a cigarette butt or a beer can in any street.

Hold the line, folks. Let them call you names, but save your homes. Hold the line.

Katy MacLeod

Hi frank, which RV do you live in? And if you actually do live in a house In Cuesta park, please answer this question, please: Will you open your driveway to an RV? I suspect that you will not answer this question. Just like Lenny.

It's always clear you all have run out of arguments and are being fueled solely by anger at the homeless when you resort to that line. I don't run a school out of my home, but I think our city should be responsible for a free, quality public education for our children. I don't put out fires, but I think our city should have a fire department. Part of being a member of society is working together to look out for the less fortunate.

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Everytime I hear about creating more RV parks, I say to myself, gee, that's nice, I didn't know Mountain View was in the business of using taxpayer dollars to give away land. We have unlimited land....I'm sure that'll help ALL the good people with RVs that need a place to stay! I'm sure no one with a terrible commute to their $20/hr job will ever say to themselves "gee, maybe I should get an RV instead of living in Fresno since Mountain View has lots of extra space. and they're giving away land for RVs." We already did that.

@smith I am proposing that Mountain View work with the owners of currently underutilized land to set up a revenue-generating RV park that requires little or no city funding.

@Lenny Have you ever lived in an RV? Taken it on longer journeys? Spent thousands on upkeep? I cannot believe you consider RV an alternative to the current available small houses that people all over the world are putting up for their less fortunate population. Oregon, Washington, Hawaii have examples of small house villages. Our biggest expense would be the land. I read Measure A funds are less than 50 % used up. Maybe that would help. But please not for a commercial RV park. Putting in a dump station at Fire Station 5 would have helped a long time ago. I suggested that. I learned over the last 7 years that our council is not looking towards other cities with successful handling of RV on city streets. We are between the well organized San Diego projects and the total out of control PNW issues. Where will we go? Measure C was a beginning, but what the city is doing next will determine which way we go. For me more permanent build small housing villages would be ideal. Not a MV KOA.

Polomom, why not tie them together? City won't enforce its RV ban until it's built enough of your tiny homes? The reason I doubt this would be acceptable is that you can see the ban proponents *also* fighting against building enough housing in the city. These things aren't an actual alternative to living in your vehicle if the homes don't exist here, and they're not an alternative to having the vehicle on the street if there are insufficient safe parking lot spots. All of this was the core of the federal lawsuit the city had to settle.

Ban proponents tried to pretend that it was part of some bigger compassionate work (you can see them lying about it here in the Voice comments section in the lead up to the election, look for "Local", or unrelatedly, any quotes from Shari Emling in the articles), but that's been just a fig leaf.

If there is a private individual that thinks they can make more money renting land to RVs vs other uses, go for it. At $12million an acre, sounds like a brilliant business idea. Lol.

If someone wants to do it out of the goodness of their heart…go for it. And no, non-profit land is not allowed to do this. Must be a tax-paying, private landowner.

A reflection of morals is in order for those who like to proselytize to us, who follow the rule of law, while they never actually take an actual stance to offer any real change to their way of life (such as offering up their driveway to help the less fortunate). I would cease to criticize such posts if one of these hypocrites said that they have given their driveway to an RV. All they have in the way of an argument is to criticize and offer an hominem attacks, instead of actually doing anything of real value to help.