This story was originally published by El Tecolote.
San Francisco’s RV permit promised stability. For Miguel Mercado, it delivered the opposite. Last week, after the RV was turned over to the city, Mercado started sleeping on the streets.
For almost three years, the 58-year-old Nicaraguan immigrant had lived inside a friend’s RV without paying rent. In exchange, he helped with repairs, kept it clean and pushed it down the block at midnight each Sunday to avoid street-sweeping tickets.
That fragile arrangement has now unraveled.
Last fall, San Francisco imposed a two-hour parking limit citywide for oversized vehicles in an effort to reduce the number of RVs used as shelters. Residents who could prove they had been living in the city in May 2025 were granted temporary exemptions through the Large Vehicle Refuge Permit Program.
City officials said the program would stabilize vehicle residents while restoring public space.
Mayor Daniel Lurie claims it is producing results. He recently announced that the number of RVs in San Francisco has dropped about 20% since December, falling from 462 vehicles to 374 in February, while 67 vehicle households have moved from RVs into housing or shelter.
But early results show a stark imbalance: since enforcement began in November 2025, the city has towed 159 RVs under the ordinance and another 194 for other reasons — more than five times the number of households placed into housing through the permit program.
Months into enforcement, residents say that while the program offers relief to some, it is pushing others into deeper instability through denials, displacement and mounting fines.
Without the RV, Mercado said, he has nowhere left to sleep.
The RV’s owner, who lives in the vehicle with him, qualified for housing through the LVRP permit and opted into the city’s large vehicle buyback program. Mercado said outreach workers communicated only with the registered owner during the permit rollout, and they never contacted him or offered him housing.
The result: his friend got a studio apartment with his wife. Mercado got the street.
“I don’t know what I can do. That’s the concern of the immigrant,” Mercado said. “I’ll figure it out. I do wish him the best.”
The permit system is largely tied to vehicle registration, meaning assistance often goes to the person who appears on the title, not necessarily the person sleeping inside the RV.
Applicants were required to provide documents such as vehicle registration in their name, insurance, towing records and vehicle purchase, requirements that can exclude secondary occupants like Mercado.
A city official, speaking on background, said permits are intended for the people living in the RV but acknowledged that assistance depends on outreach teams knowing those occupants exist.
“If they’re not known to city outreach teams… that is going to have an effect on them,” the official said. Mercado’s case illustrates this program gap.
The official added that the purpose of the buyback program is to buy RVs that people are living in, “not to buy back RVs from owners who are not living in them.” But without a system to track who actually sleeps inside, that distinction can be lost.
The Department of Emergency Management did not provide data on how many people may be living in vehicles they do not own, nor did they clarify what options exist for secondary occupants once a registered owner exits the program.
For Mercado, the consequence is immediate: he has no roof over his head.
Without the RV, he said, memories of his early days in the U.S. resurface: standing in the rain with only his passport after his belongings were confiscated at the border and sleeping on the streets after exiting the immigration detention center, while battling pneumonia.
Now, as the program has ended for him, he fears reliving it all over again.
“They make it difficult, even when one wants to better oneself and not be a burden,” Mercado said. “The immigrant doesn’t want to be a burden. But they become a burden. Why?”
For now, he sleeps in a broken-down car borrowed from a friend in El Sobrante — in another city and county, another life he didn’t choose.
Katia S., who recently gave birth to her first child, believed the permit program would provide her family with a lasting housing opportunity.
After repeatedly being denied a Large Vehicle Refuge Permit despite submitting documentation, she and her husband were later placed in a hotel for 90 days in December, after El Tecolote’s reporting on allegations that a Homeless Outreach Team worker sold permits for cash.
Katia said an outreach worker named Alejandra made her a clear promise: stay at the hotel, and then you will qualify for an apartment. “When two or three months pass, we’re going to place you in a permanent place,” she recalled.
Katia said she was also told that giving up the RV would help her qualify for permanent housing through the LVRP program and its buyback option. Instead, the same day they moved into the hotel — Dec. 19 — the vehicle was towed. The family has since been unable to locate it and retrieve all their personal belongings.
Three days later, on Dec. 23, Katia gave birth to her son via emergency C-section. “The baby was tangled in the cord,” she said.
On Feb. 19, Katia, her husband and their newborn were moved into another shelter run by Compass, where they could remain for another 90 days.
When Katia recently asked her social worker about transitioning to permanent housing, the answer was bleak. She was told that permanent placements are now largely reserved for people with disabilities, serious illnesses, or addictions. For her family, a permanent home was “very unlikely.”
The contrast with other RV families is stark. Katia said she knows of another family who, through the program, had their RV paid off and were placed in a home for two years.
“Why not us?” she asked.
The answer, she was told, lies in the scam she never asked to be part of. When Katia pressed for more help from the city, her outreach worker told her they no longer qualified for certain programs because they had obtained an “illegal sticker.”
And the scams continue. The Coalition on Homelessness said it recently received another call from an RV resident, reporting that a permit was offered to him for cash. While the Homeless Outreach Team worker was fired, it appears concerns about fraud persist.
In a statement, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing acknowledged the allegation against the HOT outreach worker and said it is “committed to maintaining the utmost integrity” of the permitting process. However, the department did not respond to questions about the most recent scam report.
For Katia’s family, reporting the fraud changed nothing. They remain in limbo, caught in the fallout of the alleged scam, still waiting for the stability that they were promised.
“I asked to at least return the RV, or help me find something stable,” Katia said to her outreach worker. “I’m thinking, ‘do we have to leave San Francisco?’”
Her family’s case highlights one of the key tensions in the rollout: while the permit program is designed to transition residents out of vehicular homelessness, some families say they have instead cycled through temporary placements without securing long-term stability.
City officials stress that the permit program is not the only gateway to assistance. “The permit is not a prerequisite to receive services,” said Jackie Thornhill, communications manager for the Department of Emergency Management. Anyone experiencing homelessness is “still eligible to engage with city outreach workers,” receive problem-solving assistance, and potentially shelter or housing placement.
But as El Tecolote’s reporting has documented, eligibility is far from a guarantee. According to city data, from July 2024 to May 2025, 1,826 families were assessed for rental support. Only 30 — less than 1.6% — were placed into housing.
For Katia’s family, that math means the promise of stability remains just out of reach.
For residents who remain outside the permit system, the two-hour rule has translated into mounting fines and repeated towing.
Bob Kauffman, 70, vividly remembers a parking control officer telling him, “We’re going to come get you tomorrow.”
The next day, his RV was towed, requiring two trucks to haul it away.
Kauffman has three vehicles: two RVs and a shuttle bus. All have mechanical issues except the bus, but all are registered under his name and paid off, he said. Thieves have repeatedly tried breaking into the vehicles, damaging ignition systems.
Since enforcement began, Kauffman said he spent roughly $4,000 on impound and towing fees. Even with a low-income waiver, he pays just over $100 per impound, plus approximately $700 to transport the vehicle back to its parking spot.
Citywide, the two-hour ordinance has generated 599 citations at $108 each, which is worth $64,692, according to the public dashboard. But that figure captures only one slice of enforcement.
From November to Feb. 12, San Francisco towed 194 RVs for expired registration and violation of the 72-hour rule. Nearly 40% of all tows were for registration issues alone, paving another way for the city to clear RVs from its streets.
Kauffman said he was only able to secure one permit sticker. Because the city issues one permit per vehicle and does not allow multiple permits for one person, his friend, an 80-year-old mechanic with memory issues, was displaced from one of the unpermitted RVs.
“He’s sleeping in his car now,” Kauffman said. “He’s old — very old.”
In response, DEM’s Jackie Thornhill said, ”One individual cannot occupy multiple vehicles, and therefore should not be issued multiple permits.” Thornhill did not comment on how the city addresses situations where vehicles are used as shared shelter among friends or relatives.
In the meantime, the 70-year-old has adapted to enforcement by changing his strategy on where he parks his other RV. In early February, someone smashed the windows and ransacked the RV. He then had it towed across the city line to Daly City, hoping to avoid more problems.
He implores the city to reform the LVRP rules so more people can be met where they are.
“How has anything changed since that program? We’re just paying the costs,” Kauffman said.
Kauffman is not the only one. The Coalition on Homelessness often hears from people getting towed.
Jennifer Friedenbach, the coalition’s director, described one recent case: an in-home care worker who was at his job — caring for someone else’s home — when his own home was towed away. His dog was inside.
“The dog didn’t get hurt, but that’s very dangerous because all the stuff falls down,” she said.
The man, who had $60 to his name, needed $107 to get his RV back. He asked the Coalition about shelter options, but with shelter waitlists stretching months long, there was nothing they could offer.
José Arámbula, 48, experienced a similar loss.
On March 18, the trailer he had been sleeping in was towed in the Mission District. He had been visiting a friend nearby when neighbors called to warn him that a tow truck had arrived. Arámbula said he rushed over.
“When I got there, it was gone,” he said.
His beloved pitbull, Kira, had been inside the vehicle.
“Every time they take one, they take everything,” Arámbula said. “They give you a phone number to recover your things, but nobody ever answers.”
He said losing documents during previous tows has made it difficult to replace his identification or recover his belongings.
“My IDs were in there. My clothes. Everything,” he said. “You lose it all.”
Arámbula said he was able to retrieve Kira, but not his belongings. He now has only the clothes he was wearing and is sleeping in his small car with his dog. He said he plans to sell the vehicle in hopes of saving enough money to buy another RV.
“They promise help when everything is happening,” he said. “But once things calm down, they forget about the people.”
Friedenbach also noted that despite the program budgeting funds for parking signage, many warning signs have yet to appear.
The ordinance states the city intended to install 400 signs warning drivers of the new enforcement zones. But parking control officers no longer chalk tires to warn residents of time limits, she said, meaning many people don’t know they’re at risk of being towed until it’s too late.
“This idea that they needed to hammer people and scare them in order to push them into housing is silly,” she said. “There’s nothing positive about the rest of the program.”
LVRP permits are set to expire by April, but could be extended for up to six additional months for eligible residents.
“The city is currently making arrangements for extensions for those vehicles and will work directly with permitted occupants on the process,” wrote DEM’s Jackie Thornhill in an email.
Advocates say that’s not enough.
The Coalition on Homelessness is calling on the city to follow the Large Vehicle legislation’s requirement for “automatic renewal” without a new application process — and to keep renewing permits every six months until residents secure housing.
They also want the city to reopen the permit process for people who were left out and people who have become homeless after the qualifying date.
“Our affordability crisis is going nowhere,” Friedenbach said. “We’re going to continue having folks who rely on RVs to shelter themselves. The city needs to plan for that.”
For Latino residents, she said, additional barriers compounded the problem: few Spanish-speaking outreach workers, schedules that conflicted with work, and heightened fear of Immigration Customs Enforcement after recent federal raids. “Folks are nervous about answering their doors,” she said.
As permits begin to expire this spring, the uneven outcomes of the rollout are likely to become more visible.
For Mercado, the stakes could not be higher. His asylum case hangs in the balance. He is required to check in with ICE in June, but with no stable place to live and no money for a lawyer, he doesn’t know how he will manage it. One misstep could mean deportation to a country he fled.
“There is no one who advocates for the immigrants who are on the streets, who are surviving — not at the government’s expense,” he said. “But through their own survival.”
Erika Carlos contributed to this report.
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