For some, parking in San Francisco is a nightmare. For others, it's a livelihood. That is the case for the RV community of families, who for the past several years have called Winston Drive near Stonestown their home. But as of Thursday, street repair and enforced four-hour parking has pushed the group to find a new spot.
Zoo Road, tucked between Skyline Boulevard and the San Francisco Zoo, became an unlikely shelter on Tuesday evening. Overnight, many members of the majority South and Central American community set up their RVs along the road. But they aren’t the only ones there.
The Pomeroy center, a community day care center for children, teens, and adults with developmental disabilities, has it's facilities on Zoo Road. Thursday, the CEO of the Pomeroy Center David Dubinsky had to make an unexpected call. Now with the influx of people inhabiting the road, the food pantry Pomeroy hosts might have a few more mouths to feed.
This isn’t the first time that the street by the center has become a temporary shelter for others. Dubinsky noted that during the pandemic many unhoused people moved into the area saying, "This is a different vibe than that because these people all seem to know each other."
Walking down the street makes that fact clear. Residents gathered in groups, laughing and playing with their children. Beneath one RV was a small herb and strawberry garden. A child’s go-kart was parked beside the loud generator and even louder highway. One thing was for certain — this space was a home.
Jamie Rosales and her two kids moved there RV, which they have lived in for four years, to Zoo Road on Tuesday. Although she has applied for permanent housing through the city, long waitlists have delayed any change. And even when the city has offered support, it is rarely beneficial.
Yessica Hernandez, an organizer with the Coalition on Homelessness said that the city was offering some family’s the first month of rent. But when rent money is already impossible to find, one month is just a drop in the bucket.
For many of the families, high rent is what initially pushed them into the RV’s. Hernandez believes that while more permanent housing is the ideal, moving into temporary housing would prove to be less stable and strip them of their community.
"[Community members would] rather stay in their RV’s where they are surviving, but they are thriving," Hernandez said. "They take care of each other and when something is going down everyone is there to look out for one another."
According to reporting by the San Francisco Standard, the city had put aside six million dollars to establish an official site for the families to park. But they never settled on a location. Dubinsky, referring to the Pomeroy Center as a “compassionate organization,” said that the two communities will need to learn how to coexist. Even so, there has to be a better, more permanent solution.