By Jared Brey.
People are living everywhere in California, setting up camp amid a statewide housing shortage on sidewalks and in parking lots and even designated Superfund sites.
Los Angeles has established a “safe parking” program for the more than 12,000 people living in their vehicles in L.A. county. The city is also helping homeowners pay to construct granny flats on their property to house formerly homeless people. Orange County is gearing up to spend $70 million on new homeless shelters.
Anaheim is one of the few cities in Orange County that has not had a ban on parking oversized vehicles on its streets, according to Michael Lyster, chief communications officer for the city. But that’s about to change.
Earlier this year, the city overhauled its residential permit-parking policy to create new parking districts and streamline the permit application process. It also passed ordinances outlawing parking oversized vehicles and cars-for-sale on city streets. This week, the city council is expected to vote on a set of penalties for violations of those ordinances. And the impending crackdown has caused concern among a community of people living in RVs on Anaheim streets, as the Voice of Orange County highlighted in a recent story.
“First and foremost this is about space,” says Lyster. “It’s about a precious commodity … All of it is the same goal, which is to preserve a scarce commodity in our city, which is parking on our streets.”
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