Het verhaal
Palo Alto is considering a new approach to the growing number of RVs in residential neighborhoods: permits for people living in vehicles and designated zones on Embarcadero Road and Coyote Hill Road. The City Council plans to discuss it on August 24, after more than a year of pressure from residents and businesses. Santa Clara County’s point-in-time count found the city’s unhoused population more than doubled between 2023 and 2025. City staff say about 73 percent of them live in a vehicle, versus 53 percent countywide.
In June the city reported that the number of oversized vehicles fell from 191 on January 15 to 133 on May 6. The impact is uneven. Resident Robert Marinaro wrote that a stretch of Fabian Way is “lined back-to-back with oversized vehicles.” “We have been dealing with this situation for far too long and we are near the breaking point.”
City Manager Ed Shikada’s report targets a March 1, 2027 start. Coyote Hill Road, west of Hillview Avenue in Stanford Research Park, would hold about 20 oversized vehicles; another 17 would go on Embarcadero, east of Highway 101 near Palo Alto Airport. Participants would pay $15 a month. Other vehicles would not be allowed to park in the permit zone.
Parking on 13 street segments would also be limited to one side of the street, switching every six months, starting in January 2027. Those zones could hold about 116 oversized vehicles in the first six months and 125 after that. Staff put the two pilots at about $823,000. The plan comes from an ad-hoc committee led by Ed Lauing, with Julie Lythcott-Haims and Keith Reckdahl.