On Wednesday afternoon, the city gave Mario Herrera a $205 parking ticket.
For most San Francisco residents, this would be an annoyance. But for the 54-year-old grandfather, it was one more step toward losing the motor home where he lives with his wife, Eusevia Rosales, and their children and nephews. Herrera and his family, six in all, moved here from El Salvador almost two years ago. For the last six months, he has been searching for work.
“If I could work and afford rent — apartments are very expensive — I could look for a place to live,” Herrera said in Spanish. “It’d be better for the kids.”
Herrera is one of about 100 people in a community of 50 motor homes and trailers parked on Winston Drive, a leafy two-block street between Lake Merced and Stonestown Galleria. This week the community began to collapse. New parking restrictions and a repaving project scheduled for September mean everyone has to be gone by Aug. 1.
Many of Herrera’s neighbors are families with small children, the majority from Central and South America. Some are undocumented. Others are new to living on the street, evicted from apartments and between jobs. But they’ve built a community even as some come and go. They care for the place and one another. Some share child-care responsibilities. The vast majority can’t afford the high cost of housing in the Bay Area.
For about five years, Winston Drive, with its loose parking restrictions, served as a de facto shelter for the precariously housed, where city agencies and nonprofit service providers worked with residents to secure housing and address other needs for the undocumented and working poor. During that time, the residents and homelessness advocate groups urged the city to establish an “official” site — a parking lot away from traffic, with waste, power and water services. The city set aside $6 million but never settled on a site.
One possible spot that had been considered was a nearby parking lot leased by the San Francisco Zoo. Late Monday night, with the Aug. 1 deadline looming, some of the Winston Drive RV residents decided to take matters into their own hands.
At around 9 p.m., a caravan of about 30 vehicles drove the two miles to the zoo’s parking lot. They cut through the lock on the gate; once everyone was in, they locked it behind them. Zoo security alerted Taraval Station police, who, along with park rangers, escorted the group out of the parking lot to the nearby Zoo Road. No one was arrested, but by 2 a.m., the occupation was over.
Like the others living in vehicles, Herrera and his family find themselves in a strange drama where things keep happening but nothing really changes. “They told us they would find a parking spot for our home, but so far, nothing has happened,” Herrera said. “We don’t know if they will move us or not.”
Of the 50 vehicles once parked on Winston Drive, nine were still there as of Wednesday afternoon, waiting out the clock until the city forces them to move. Two dozen are now on Zoo Road, and others have left for parts unknown. How long they will stay in the area is an open question — as is what plans, if any, the city has for a long-term solution.
‘Solve this problem’
The end of the RV community’s stay on Winston Drive coincides with San Francisco’s pursuit of “very aggressive” homeless encampment clearing, spurred by a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The upheaval is a typical experience for the estimated 1,400 people living in 700 vehicles on city streets — one-third of San Francisco’s unsheltered homeless population.
As the vehicle dwellers’ numbers tick up and complaints by neighbors grow, questions linger about the city’s strategy to help them. Homelessness advocates see this ongoing, slow-motion chase as pointless.
“There’s no reason why this community of families — immigrant families with children — should be displaced, with the threat of their vehicles, aka their homes, being dispossessed,” said Lukas Illa, an organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness, which has done outreach work with the community over the years.
Supervisor Myrna Melgar has been trying to find a solution for vehicular homelessness since she took office in 2021. Melgar, who represents the city’s southwest side, has had dozens of meetings with RV residents and homelessness advocates over the years — and her office has handled numerous complaints from constituents. But, she said, there’s only so much she can do.
“It is high time that we all work together to solve this problem, not just push it around,” Melgar told The Standard. “I am hoping that the administration will put some concerted effort into a safe parking site.”
As a legislator, her efforts to establish a safe parking site depend on agencies directed by the mayor’s office: the police, transportation and homelessness departments. She says she wants the game of musical chairs playing out around Winston Drive to end. “I have asked and asked repeatedly. We have the money in the budget.”
The mayor’s office sees it differently. “It’s not as easy as some would have everyone believe to find a site,” said Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed. Cretan anticipates that the mayor’s Safer Families proposal, which is funded in the latest budget and supported by Melgar, will provide emergency shelter and rapid rehousing for families.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing says it has been working with the Winston Drive community for years.
“These households have been offered an abundance of resources, and many have exited homelessness through our programs,” a spokesperson said. “For those that continue to decline the range of resources offered, HSH will conduct additional outreach to them today. ”
As of July, the department had moved 23 families out of vehicles and into permanent housing, it said.
But for Melgar, the goal, at least in the short term, is to create a semi-permanent, sanctioned place for those living in vehicles to reside.
In the coming months, she plans to introduce legislation to force the city to create a safe parking site. It’s a move supported by many in the RV community and the Coalition on Homelessness alike. Melgar believes one of the city’s numerous departments has land to spare — and should step up, since, after all, the problem isn’t just on Winston Drive.
“I’m one supervisor out of 11 districts, and each one has issues with people living in their vehicles right now,” Melgar said.
For Herrera and his family, now parked on Zoo Road, the anxiety about another displacement is already building. He and his wife are talking with neighbors, trying to make plans.
“The area is all right, and we won’t move until they make us,” he said. “Let’s hope they let us stay here, God willing.”