After years of complaints, residents near Mona Way felt a sense of relief immediately after San Jose established a temporary tow-away zone last summer on their street to combat problem RVs.
No longer would they have to worry about an RV catching fire, like one did on the morning of March 10, or a vehicle infested with a nest of bees. Gone would be the stench, the animal excrement left on the streets from pets, the impromptu Tai Chi blocking the sidewalk, and the safety concerns over strangers coming and going in their neighborhood — which is near both a school and a park.
But that relief was short-lived.
Instead, the Oversized and Lived-in Vehicle Enforcement program, or OLIVE, only provided a brief respite from the problems on their street that sits on the Campbell border.
While residents say Campbell is quick to respond to parking violations on its side of the thoroughfare, there is a more pronounced sense of hopelessness on the San Jose side of the street because the RVs returned in greater force when the temporary zone expired.
“We’ve been complaining forever and nothing gets done,” resident Charles Adams told The Mercury News. “There’s still more, so it’s not working. It’s a waste of money.”
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San Jose launched the OLIVE program in January last year, intending to set up 30 temporary tow-away zones and potentially 10 permanent ones through the end of the fiscal year, which ended in June. In this year’s budget, the city plans to create 50 new sites as well as a supplemental program to investigate 1,500-2,000 oversized and lived-in vehicles that are not parked in OLIVE sites.
Mayor Matt Mahan said the program by itself was never intended to solve the unsheltered homelessness crisis. He noted it was just one of the many tools the city is using to reset public expectations around public space and people’s beliefs that they can freely choose to camp on right-of-ways.
“If anyone thought that enforcing local parking rules was going to end unsheltered homelessness, they’re going to be deeply disappointed,” Mahan said in an interview. “That has never been my message or claim. I’ve been very clear … we’re going to increase the circulation of all vehicles, particularly oversized vehicles, because we have to provide relief. No one paying taxes living in a home or running a small business should be forced to endure the impacts of permanent encampments.”
San Jose has significantly invested in the expansion of its shelter system, including opening a large safe parking lot last year. It has also rolled out new parking enforcement strategies, including a dedicated team that patrols the city regularly and tickets or tows vehicles with registration that has been expired for more than six months.
Mahan said these policy initiatives are intended to work together to create conditions that encourage homeless residents or those living in their vehicles to accept safe parking or available shelter.
Department of Transportation spokesperson Colin Heyne said at the 62 OLIVE sites the city had completed so far, San Jose had towed 102 vehicles, including 31 oversized or that had people living inside.
At those sites, the city also reported a significant decrease in vehicles 90 days after the cleanups, from 1,902 to 1,225. That included a decrease in RVs and trailers from 416 to 107. Meanwhile, the city has cited 718 vehicles and towed another 728 — including 52 oversized — as part of its enhanced parking enforcement.
Heyne said the program has achieved its greatest successes in areas with nearby safe parking sites, such as Berryessa, but acknowledged that for many RVs, there is no place to go.
While San Jose officials believe the OLIVE program has been largely successful at clearing streets so city crews can collect trash and clean them, some residents disagree about its effectiveness.
The majority of the problems on Chynowyth Avenue — the city’s first OLIVE site launched last year — have largely disappeared.
Before the city cleared the street, there were dozens of RVs and trailers parked there, with residents reporting public health and safety challenges for several years.
“In my opinion, the OLIVE program was a success,” resident Yogi Sahu said. “Occasionally, there are RVs on the side streets, but reporting them on 311 helps remove them. I would not change anything about OLIVE, but rather have the city approve a permanent ban on any lived-in vehicles and 18-wheelers from being parked on residential streets.”
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Meanwhile, other residents have reported that the street clearings have created mini-encampments in other areas, creating a whack-a-mole-like scenario. For example, RVs and trailers that were once near Bering Drive and Brokaw Road had at one point taken over a gym parking lot on Zanker Road, just east of Mineta International Airport. As of Monday afternoon, at least 10 RVs or trailers were parked on the nearby side streets, including a handful on Crane Court.
As for Mona Way, nearby residents believe that the city has exacerbated the problem with “delays, conflicting information and inadequate temporary measures.”
“When environmental teams tag a leaking motor home, it leaves, only to be replaced by a new one within a day or two, or sometimes the same vehicle returns,” resident Maulik Thaker wrote to city officials in mid-December. “This ‘motor home shuffle’ ensures the problem remains unsolved. Why does the Campbell side of Mona Way enforce a ‘No Overnight Camping’ ordinance aggressively, which leads to immediate vehicle removal from their side of the street, but San Jose cannot?”
Mahan acknowledged that the program was not perfect, but affirmed it’s here to stay. As the city heads into budget discussions soon, he anticipated that the city would seek to improve enforcement while taking a measured, balanced approach to avoid evicting people from their vehicles.
“The conclusion is not ‘let’s roll it back and go back to where we were, where people felt they could permanently encamp in a public space,’” Mahan said. “It’s to scale up and make our enforcement of parking rules more consistent and more efficient. I’m not sure we need new rules. I think we need better mechanisms for outreach and enforcement.”
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