Parked alongside industrial streets, tucked behind warehouses and clustered in residential neighborhoods, hundreds of Bay Space residents reside in one of many solely types of housing they’ll afford: RVs.
Throughout California, the variety of individuals dwelling in autos has surged in recent times, as hovering rents and a persistent housing scarcity have pushed even full-time staff out of conventional properties and into makeshift ones on wheels.
Booming tech wealth, hovering homelessness
In Santa Clara County — house to Apple, Google and eight of America’s 50 most costly ZIP codes — the variety of individuals dwelling in leisure autos full time has surged. County knowledge reveals that the portion of homeless people sleeping in autos has greater than doubled for the reason that pandemic, from 18% in 2019 to 37% in 2025.
California accounts for practically 1 / 4 of the nation’s homeless residents, regardless of being house to 12% of its complete inhabitants, in response to federal housing knowledge. Specialists say the state faces a huge housing scarcity, with one estimate by McKinsey suggesting California wants as many as 3.5 million extra properties to fulfill demand.
And whilst officers have expanded shelter capability, federal knowledge reveals far fewer shelter beds accessible than individuals experiencing homelessness, leaving a major share of unhoused residents with out sufficient entry to shelter.
“In California, you are extra prone to turn into homeless than nearly another state,” mentioned Adrian Covert, senior vp of public coverage for the Bay Space Council, a nonpartisan suppose tank. “And while you do, you are extra prone to turn into homeless on the streets relatively than within the shelter than nearly another state.”
Why RVs?
Advocates say many individuals flip to RVs as a result of they provide a level of autonomy that shelters and the road don’t.
“The RV was quite a bit higher,” mentioned Salena Alvarez, who has lived in an RV together with her boyfriend for a 12 months and a half. Earlier than dwelling of their RV, the couple lived in a automobile.
“The automobile is smaller … you may’t cook dinner, you may’t wash your dishes, you may’t take a bathe, you may’t go to the toilet. You have to go someplace.”
Salena Alvarez is a resident on the Berryessa Supportive Parking web site in San Jose, California. She’s lived in an RV for a 12 months and a half.
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The RV was quite a bit higher. The automobile is smaller … you may’t cook dinner, you may’t wash your dishes, you may’t take a bathe, you may’t go to the toilet. You have to go someplace.
Salena Alvarez
RV resident
The rise of ‘vanlords’
As housing choices slim, a brand new tier of the disaster has emerged — one the place even autos have turn into rental properties.
A shadow rental market has taken maintain throughout the Bay Space, the place people lease out getting older RVs to individuals with few different choices. Some name them “vanlords.”
Renters pay a whole bunch of {dollars} monthly to sleep in a automobile parked on a public avenue. The preparations sometimes come with out written leases or tenant protections.
CNBC spoke with one vanlord and several other tenants. Some tenants had been immigrants, newly arrived within the U.S., together with one lady and her two youngsters from Mexico, whereas others mentioned the choice was merely extra inexpensive than conventional condominium housing within the Bay Space.
One particular person advised CNBC he’d been dwelling in an RV on the road in San Francisco for a couple of 12 months, splitting it with a good friend for a complete of $500 a month. They lease from the proprietor of a stretch of autos on the identical block, calling it “protected and cozy,” including that $1,000 to lease a room in an condominium was too costly.
However lawmakers see the preparations as exploitative.
“These are people who’re utilizing our public streets for income, to become profitable with none form of allowing or course of to make it possible for they’re following any guidelines about what situations the RVs should be in, or what rights the individual has who rents has,” mentioned David Cohen, a metropolis councilmember in San Jose, who sponsored laws to ban the observe. “We’re making an attempt to guard our neighborhood in addition to defend the people who find themselves unhoused.”
However cracking down on vanlords has been troublesome, and the underground market persists.
In the meantime, cities throughout the Bay Space have ramped up parking enforcement, issuing citations and towing autos as RV encampments have turn into extra seen.
But neither strategy — banning vanlords nor cracking down on parking — has reversed the expansion of car homelessness.
That is left officers trying to find options.
A unique strategy
In an industrial nook of San Jose, simply off the freeway and nestled between a recycling plant and a concrete distributor, town of San Jose has transformed an empty car parking zone into what it calls a “protected parking web site.”
Operated by a neighborhood nonprofit and funded by a grant from town, the Berryessa Protected Parking Web site has house for 86 RVs, making it one of many largest websites of its type in California, in response to WeHope, the homelessness group that operates it. The park opened in 2025, and organizers say it constantly has a full ready record. Alvarez, a full-time in-home care employee, is considered one of its residents.
Within the heart of the 6-acre lot sits a financial institution of showers, laundry machines and an workplace, the place case staff meet with residents to assist them discover housing. Participating with the system – working to maneuver out of RVs and into conventional housing – is a requirement to reside on the park.
The town expects the location will price $24 million over a five-year interval, together with the price of the companies it supplies.
The location’s supervisor, Victoria Garibaldi, mentioned she and her workforce have positioned upward of 40 individuals in housing for the reason that web site opened.
Victoria Garibaldi, a program supervisor with WeHOPE, oversees town’s safe-parking web site. She says this system has helped greater than 40 residents safe everlasting housing.
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“We wish them to have their very own locations. This is not a everlasting answer to the housing downside,” she mentioned.
The park is San Jose’s second protected parking web site. Regardless of its success, the necessity far outweighs the availability. San Jose has 128 spots like these throughout two protected parking websites, however estimates that just about 1,000 individuals reside in autos inside its metropolis limits.
Different cities within the Bay Space have tried related concepts, however skilled extra friction.
San Francisco established a protected parking web site in 2022, initially designed to accommodate as much as 150 autos. However this system by no means reached that scale.
At its peak, the location housed roughly 35 autos, in response to the San Francisco Chronicle. Infrastructure challenges — together with an absence of on-site electrical energy — compelled town to depend on diesel turbines, drawing complaints from neighbors and sparking a lawsuit.
The town in the end shut the location down, citing price and operational challenges.
At the moment, what would be the solely designated RV parking web site in San Francisco is privately operated. As soon as a low-cost choice for vacationers, Candlestick RV Park, within the metropolis’s industrial southeast nook, has more and more turn into house to long-term residents, a lot of whom work however lack the financial savings or credit score to safe a extra conventional lease.
“We have transitioned from principally a vacationer park to a long-term park, primarily because of the results of the pandemic,” mentioned Tsin Fung, the park’s supervisor, who has labored there since 1993.
The worth for a spot — which incorporates water, electrical energy, sewage hookups and loos — is $2,500 monthly. The park not too long ago raised the speed for brand new tenants from $2,000 monthly.
“They’re hard-working individuals, they usually’re type of middle-, lower-middle class, working class,” Fung mentioned. “They work laborious, they pay their payments.” He additionally famous that he is turn into conscious of some tenants renting their RVs from people outdoors the park, in so-called vanlording conditions.
“We have transitioned from principally a vacationer park to a long-term park, primarily because of the results of the pandemic.”
Tsin Fung
RV park supervisor in San Francisco
Rethinking RV parks
However housing building alone could not shut the hole rapidly sufficient, mentioned Covert of the Bay Space Council.
“We’re coming off of 30- or 40-year tendencies of hostility from native governments throughout the state — actually, throughout the nation — towards cellular house parks and RV parks,” Covert mentioned. “They have been seen as a blight. However what we’re seeing now’s that does not simply make low-income individuals go away.”
As a substitute, he contends, well-managed RV parks needs to be reconsidered as a part of the area’s housing technique.
“We aren’t probably, within the close to time period, to have sufficient transitional or interim housing to maneuver everyone indoors,” he mentioned.
San Jose has put aside 128 RV areas throughout two tons, providing residents a rent-free place to remain whereas they work with case managers to safe everlasting housing.
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Till extra everlasting housing comes on-line, Covert mentioned, cities could have little alternative however to deal with RVs not as an anomaly, however as a part of the housing panorama.
For Alvarez, the protected parking web site supplies stability whereas she continues trying to find an condominium she and her boyfriend can afford — a spot she’s keen to maneuver into if they’ll discover one.
“I am hoping I can,” she mentioned.
