Gilroy
– They’re out of gas and they have no money, but they still have
to move along.
Kathleen Carrington, 50, and her 84-year-old mother, Doris, will
have to pack up their recreational vehicle in coming weeks and find
a new home
– outside the city limits.
Gilroy – They’re out of gas and they have no money, but they still have to move along.
Kathleen Carrington, 50, and her 84-year-old mother, Doris, will have to pack up their recreational vehicle in coming weeks and find a new home – outside the city limits.
Carrington is one of a number of homeless people who migrates from street to street, parking lot to parking lot, often camping out at a single location for weeks at a time.
The city has always frowned on the practice but has lacked the means to crack down. Most often, police have gotten involved in cases where business owners and residents complain about the dumping of trash and human waste in public areas. But beyond issuing citations for trash, police had little enforcement power.
Now, after two years of brainstorming, the police department and city officials believe they have found a way to disperse squatters in a way that remains sensitive to their plight.
City Council on Monday approved a measure that empowers police and owners of private property to call a tow truck to remove vehicles camped out at a single location for extended periods of time.
The new ordinance, scheduled to take effect mid-February, requires police or property owners to give squatters a three-day warning period before towing.
“The purpose of this ordinance isn’t to cite vehicles and tow them,” said Police Capt. Debbie Moore. “We anticipate that they will leave.”
City Administrator Jay Baksa explained that “this isn’t to stop somebody’s uncle from visiting. This is to stop encampments. It gives the police department another tool to work with.”
City ordinance already prohibits living in cars or trucks on public property, but says nothing about RVs and a host of other vehicles used as long-term dwellings. The amendment approved Monday expands the prohibition on “human habitation of motor vehicles” to include “any travel trailer, camper, motor home or trailer, or any camper shell or boat.”
It also empowers owners of private property to tow vehicles without police involvement, according to Moore. She compared the procedure to apartment complexes, where the property owner can tow cars from reserved parking spots if there are properly posted warnings.
Moore said representatives from Wal-Mart and other businesses have expressed support for the ordinance, which grew out of concerns raised two years ago during an annual retreat between City Council and the police department.
“We had a lot of people at the time living in cars out on the street,” Moore explained. “We had people on First Street, people trying to do long-term parking in shopping center parking lots.”
But the city’s biggest headache was on Railroad Avenue, where a “major encampment” of cars, trucks with campers and shells, and RVs took root, according to Moore.
“We had a lot of garbage being dumped on the street, on the vacant lot,” Moore recalled. “And then we started dealing with complaints about human waste being dumped out there.”
It took police six months to break up the encampment, Moore said.
“The whole purpose of this [ordinance] is to allow police to get the people to move on out of the city limits,” she said.
Gilroy police looked to other cities in developing their own enforcement strategy, according to Moore, who said they dismissed the idea of monetary fines.
“The most successful [strategies] seemed to be the ones that had the component of towing the vehicle,” she said. “Citation doesn’t solve the problem because they just move down the street.”
Carrington and her mother have drifted throughout the city since being evicted from their senior-center apartment in July. She said they were kicked out for coming up a hundred dollars short on rent.
She and her mother receive less than $1,100 combined each month in Social Security and her deceased father’s veteran’s pension. She says it is not enough to cover food, rent and other living expenses.
Early on they camped out in the Denny’s parking lot, where they developed a rapport with restaurant workers who gave them food. In the last few days, Carrington and two other RVs have set up camp in a parking lot on Howson Street.
Carrington did not mince words about the ordinance.
“It sucks,” she said. “It’s affecting the people who don’t have the income to find a place.”
Baksa said the city’s “interest is to move them along, not to punish them. Certainly not to tow them.”
City officials would like to see squatters relocate to parks that offer electrical and sanitation hookups.
But Carrington ruled out that option, explaining that camp sites do not allow vehicles made before 1985.
“What do you do if you have a ’68 or older?” asked Carrington, whose RV is a ’73 model. “You’re still stuck on the street.”
Esther Boston, who works at the Garlic Farm RV Park, confirmed the age restriction. She said that while some type of restriction applies at most parks, managers retain the ability to make exceptions.
For her part, Carrington expects to move on to a state park, which allows campers to remain for 14 days at a time.
Other squatters may look to sidestep the ordinance and remain in the city. The new ordinance states that vehicles cannot sit in a single spot for more than three days at a time, and that they may not return to that place more than once every 30 days. Moore acknowledged, however, that the ordinance does not explicitly deal with lot-hopping, or those people who choose to squat for three days or less, pack up before the warning period expires, and then move to a new site. Moore said she does not expect that to be a major problem.
While it appears the city and property owners have gained an effective enforcement tool against squatters, their new edge does not ease a basic moral dilemma.
Danny Maroudas, owner of Longhouse Restaurant, left a note on Carrington’s RV Monday morning asking her to leave. He owns the Howson Street lot behind the restaurant where, in addition to Carrington’s RV, two other campers are parked. He was torn about the situation since he has grown familiar with the faces of the people living outside his restaurant.
“It’s kind of difficult because some of them are customers,” Maroudas said, clearly uncomfortable about the predicament. “If it’s a couple of days, fine. But after that, you’ve got to move on.”
