Speaking in Spanish in entrance of Mountain View Town Corridor at a information conference previously this thirty day period, resident Celerina Navarro patiently described why she and her loved ones are worthy of a place to continue to be. Navarro lives with her family members in a massive recreational motor vehicle parked in approved town parking loads.
“Mountain Look at is my town, way too, I have a local community below,” claimed Navarro, whose remarks were being translated by the Legislation Basis of Silicon Valley’s J.D. advocate Maricela Lechuga. “I want the metropolis to supply long term cost-effective housing choices for myself and all Mountain Look at inhabitants.”
The Regulation Basis of Silicon Valley has sued the Town of Mountain Watch around the city’s new ordinance that bans recreational vehicles from metropolis streets, which RV citizens say leaves them sensation unsafe.
Navarro and other RV residents are named as plaintiffs in the course motion grievance, filed in the United States District Courtroom Northern District of California. The Regulation Foundation is suing along with the ACLU of Northern California and Berkeley-dependent Incapacity Rights Advocates. Hewlett Packard Business and the international law agency King & Spalding are pro bono companions in the fit.
The Regulation Basis is asking the courtroom to declare that Mountain View’s RV ban is discriminatory in opposition to citizens with disabilities and is searching for a preliminary and long lasting injunction avoiding the metropolis from implementing its ban.
The City of Mountain Watch adopted its RV ban as ballot Measure C in November, prohibiting RVs from staying parked on streets considered too slim. The Narrow Streets Ordinance, as the legislation is named, designates streets significantly less than 40 toes huge to be “narrow.” Far more than 80% of the city’s streets qualify as narrow, in accordance to a metropolis news release.
The city did not start out implementing the ban right until this month, when it commenced erecting “No Parking” signals on the so-called narrow streets. The metropolis ideas to install thousands of indications across 1,035 blocks about the upcoming 6 months, commencing with the Monta Loma, Farley and Rock Street parts.
Navarro life with her a few children—two minors and 1 adult—in an RV. She’s been living in an RV for six yrs since she dropped her condominium following a hire raise.
She participates in the city’s Safe and sound Parking system, which provides RV residents a put to park their cars for 24 several hours a working day, 7 times a week. The town enacted the program in 2019, but the Risk-free Parking plenty did not open till early 2020. There are at present two Safe and sound Parking loads open to RVs in the town, which alongside one another host 67 motor vehicles. There have been 191 RV households in the metropolis as of July 2020, in accordance to a Metropolis of Mountain Perspective examine.
The new ban does not explicitly affect the operation of the Safe and sound Parking heaps. Even so, Navarro explained even though she parks in the city-sanctioned loads, she continue to feels unsafe. She’s listened to that some of the new protected parking residents have been issued month-to-month contracts, meaning their leases can be ended at any time.
“We test to be (as peaceful) as feasible, due to the fact I do not want them to kick me out,” she stated. “They’re extremely demanding 1 time one of the application managers… arrived and demanded that I transfer a person of my shopping carts, and was pretty insistent.”
Navarro said she’s anxious that now that the RV ban is in result, her position in the risk-free parking method is in peril.
“We experience poor, for the reason that it is a large amount of force each working day, and (the RV ban) provides to the pressure,” Navarro mentioned. She reported she wants to hold out for the result of the lawsuit to talk to her young children about the ban.
Michael Trujillo, housing employees legal professional with the Legislation Basis, said the metropolis is paying income on enforcing its RV ban, when it really should be paying revenue on serving to RV citizens locate properties.
“The town declared previous calendar year that the signals essential to implement the RV ban would on your own price in excess of a million bucks,” Trujillo mentioned. “We’re urging that city resources and attempts be used to work with RV people to uncover extended-term housing methods.”
Trujillo mentioned the Legislation Basis experienced labored with RV residents to get ready the lawsuit since Spring of 2019, when the city first declared it would go after an RV ban.
“We’re hoping that the city will in fact do the job with us and locate choice answers in this article,” Trujillo mentioned. “But we are well prepared to look for injunctive relief if which is required to protect against the ban from getting result.” This injunctive reduction would cease the town, at the very least temporarily, from imposing the ban.
Nadia Aziz, the Legislation Foundation’s Housing Directing Attorney, stated the Law Foundation was happy to protect the rights of RV residents to park in the metropolis.
“Housing and shelter is a essential human proper: a suitable for anyone, irrespective of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity and disability,” Aziz stated.
Navarro mentioned she doesn’t know what she and her spouse and children will do if she could no for a longer time park her RV in Mountain Perspective. She claimed residents have to have to proceed to manage to prevent the RV ban from sweeping across the metropolis.
“Continue obtaining collectively, no make a difference how many periods it usually takes,” Navarro reported.