Richmond backs off safe parking program for RV dwellers

RICHMOND — The City Council has reversed course on its decision to open a small site where people without homes can live in their cars and RVs.

The program, which would have provided security guards and services such as water and restrooms at a designated parking lot for those who live in RV trailers and cars, has been a source of controversy for weeks in Richmond, as city officials tried to figure out the best place to put it.

City Councilmembers had first decided in early February to launch the program at the near-vacant Hilltop Mall, but after intense opposition from the shopping center’s neighbors, the council backed off its decision and voted later in the month to designate the Civic Plaza parking lot at 25th Street and Barrett Avenue as the site for what was intended to be a year-long pilot program.

It would have used $260,000 of grant money from Contra Costa County, plus $300,000 from the city’s affordable housing program to run the pilot.

But in a meeting this Tuesday, the City Council voted to nix that plan entirely and instead form an “emergency ad hoc committee” comprised of three councilmembers to work with the county on using those funds toward providing services at existing RV encampments in Richmond and develop a long-term plan to help the residents transition to more stable housing.

Currently, city officials estimate that there are more than 80 RVs and vehicles in encampments throughout Richmond.

One of the larger RV encampments sits along Rydin Road, near the Point Isabel Regional Shoreline. While grassroots groups have tried to help organize the community and provide services like trash pickup, some city leaders had hoped to move the bulk of the camps to a city-sanctioned location that could be managed by a nonprofit.

But with such intense opposition from neighbors near the proposed sites for that program, the city will now look to other solutions.

“This acknowledges that the council’s action to create a safe RV park does not remove all the RVs currently on Rydin Road and currently on Castro Street,” Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia told the Richmond City Council Tuesday. “The Civic Center site is relatively small and would handle just a portion of the RVs that are at the other two sites.”

If it moved ahead with the program it approved last month, the city would have to deal with two remaining unsanctioned sites in addition to the sanctioned one through the program, he pointed out.

Councilmembers Claudia Jimenez and Eduardo Martinez had brought Gioia into the discussion to help figure out a solution between the county and city.

Under the new plan approved by the council, the city and county will direct the funds toward the Housing Consortium of the East Bay to help manage the existing RV site at Rydin Road and provide sanitation services and security for existing residents, as well as work with residents to get them into other housing options.

That will be easier to do with some recent changes to the county’s homeless infrastructure, he said. The county’s homeless shelter in North Richmond will reopen in the summer, after closing during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The county is extending its lease with the Hilltop Marriott hotel to provide shelter, and Gioia said there could be an opportunity to extend its lease at a motel at the corner of Canal and Cutting Boulevards that it has used to house COVID-19 positive people and homeless residents.

At the same time, the Bay Area Rescue Mission will also be opening its shelter this summer as more people are vaccinated for COVID-19, and the city of San Pablo is using federal money to build 60 units of transitional housing for previously unhoused people.

“There will be substantially more (housing) opportunities for those who live on the street and in RVs,” Gioia said.

Some councilmembers, however, expressed concerns.

District 5 Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin said she was supportive of the plan but had concerns about leaving the Rydin Road camp in place.

“These are very crowded conditions,” McLaughlin said. “More and more vehicles keep coming. The Rydin Road site in particular is not conducive to laying out services.”

She suggested an amendment to bring forward a safe parking program later on, if the council could figure out an appropriate site for it. Other councilmembers said that conversation would already be part of the ad hoc committee’s process to find solutions for alleviating homelessness in the city.

Mayor Tom Butt said the solution didn’t really help solve the problem for which the safe parking program was intended.

The encampments on Rydin Road and Castro Street pose some dangers, he argued. The Castro Street side is close to the train tracks, where train operators have worried about someone getting hit. The Rydin Road camp has had safety and trash issues in the past, although its residents have worked to improve conditions there.

The idea with the safe parking program was to move those to a safer, secure site, since there was not enough capacity for people in shelters or other housing options, Butt said — he was a fan of the Hilltop site. “Now we are returning to a narrative where we are not really going to move anybody. We’re just going to hope that some of them will go away.”

Butt was the lone “no” vote, while the rest of the council voted to move forward with the plan to provide some services to existing camps and have the ad hoc committee develop other ideas.

Councilmember Melvin Willis supported it but urged the committee and the council to not let the effort to find long-term solutions wane.

“This is the first time there has been so much intensity in this conversation. I’m happy we are having a more intentional conversation about this because we’ve been talking about this for three years,” Willis said. “I hope the intention and intensity behind this conversation continues so we can effectively deal with the homelessness crisis that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic.”