RV residents, many disabled, who are suing the City to end its policy of ticketing and impounding their vehicles, have won a partial victory in court.
\nAt issue are two existing City ordinances: (SD Muni. Code \u00a7 86.0139(a)0, prohibiting parking an RV anywhere on City streets and lots between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.; and (SD Muni. Code \u00a7 86.0137(f)), prohibiting vehicle habitation.
\nU.S. District Judge Anthony J. Battaglia ruled Aug. 21 that the vehicle habitation ordinance “is both vague on its face and is being arbitrarily and discriminatorily applied.”\u00a0
\nBattaglia granted plaintiffs\u2019 request for a preliminary injunction. That means RV residents are now exempted from being ticketed, or paying fines for outstanding tickets or having their vehicles impounded, until their lawsuit against the City is settled.
\nHowever, Battaglia did not grant plaintiffs\u2019 request on the “Nighttime RV Ordinance” barring RVs from City streets and parking lots between 2 and 6 a.m. “Plaintiffs have not shown a likelihood of success on their claim that the ordinance is vague or is being arbitrarily applied,” Battaglia ruled.
\n“It\u2019s good that there was a victory, at least half a victory,” said Valerie Grischy, one of the suit\u2019s plaintiffs. “It shows that there\u2019s progress.”\u00a0
\nBut Grischy, a successful chiropractor now dependent on Supplemental Security Income since a 2009 car accident, noted the goal of RV owners\u2019 challenging City policies is now only half finished.
\n“This prevents people living in their RVs from being ticketed during the day \u2014 at least it stops that,” she said. “But that still makes us sitting ducks for tickets between 2 and 6 a.m.”
\nFines RV owners are subjected to range from $50 for violation of signs while parking at odd hours to $112.50 for vehicle habitation. The cost of reclaiming a towed vehicle is substantially higher.
\nGrischy said people living out of their cars are not impacted by the Nighttime RV Ordinance, but added RV residents aren\u2019t so lucky.
\n“You can get 72 days worth of parking passes to park on the streets if you have an address,” Grischy said. “But that\u2019s discrimination because those passes are not available to us because we don\u2019t have a physical address.”
\nDisability Rights California, Fish & Richardson, and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty filed a class-action lawsuit, Bloom et al. vs. City of San Diego, in U.S. District Court in November 2017. The suit challenges the City\u2019s ticketing and impoundment policies on grounds that they are unconstitutional and discriminate against people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
\nDisability rights attorney\u00a0Ann\u00a0Menasche representing RV residents labelled as “unfortunate” the judge\u2019s decision not to rule in their favor on the Nighttime RV Ordinance. But, she added, “He denied it without prejudice, did not close the door on it.”
\n\u00a0Added Menasche, “We are prepared to move full steam ahead with the litigation.”
\nMenasche noted the ultimate objective is for “for people to not get punished or criminalized, or have to pay fines or have their RVs impounded, simply because they have no other alternative \u2014 and they really do not.”
\nThe attorney pointed out many RV residents are disabled, on fixed incomes, or are not working full-time and therefore can\u2019t afford San Diego\u2019s costly housing.
\n“Many of these people were born here and they\u2019ve contributed to the community all of their lives,” Menasche pointed out. “They should be treated as human beings and be allowed to live. City policy criminalizes them and makes it harder for them. It\u2019s just very short-sighted. It needs to end.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RV residents, many disabled, who are suing the City to end its policy of ticketing and impounding their vehicles, have won a partial victory in court. At issue are two existing City ordinances: (SD Muni. Code \u00a7 86.0139(a)0, prohibiting parking an RV anywhere on City streets and lots between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.; and […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":258783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"RV residents win partial victory in court on parking tickets","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}