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Angela Serrano’s home isn’t a house with a backyard or an apartment with a bedroom door that locks. For her, it’s a ramshackle RV parked illegally on a Palo Alto street.

The 58-year-old has lived in the mobile home with her 23-year-old son on El Camino Real for two years now, she said.

But Serrano and the occupants of 50 other RVs parked along the street shaded by eucalyptus trees and bordered by Stanford University’s lush lacrosse fields will be forced to leave the area on Saturday as a parking crackdown commences.

City officials, who have fielded numerous complaints about blight from nearby businesses, say the motor-home dwellers have outstayed their welcome. Police will begin enforcing a 72-hour parking ordinance on the mile-long stretch of state highway between Medical Foundation Drive and Serra Street.

“We’ve been saving up for an apartment, but it’s more than we can afford,” said Serrano, who works at a nearby YMCA, washing and folding laundry in the basement six days a week. “I guess we will pack everything up and try to find a new place.”

Claudia Keith, a spokeswoman for the city of Palo Alto, said the scale and number of RVs up and down the street have increased over the last six months, becoming a nuisance.

“It’s a complex problem, and it’s not just a Palo Alto problem,” Keith said. “We have been working with other cities to figure out what they are doing.”

Violating the parking ordinance, which mandates moving a vehicle at least a half-mile every 72 hours, results in an $86 citation, according to the Palo Alto Police Department. If officers have to tow an RV, the owner could end up paying an additional $385 in city fees, towing and storing charges.

Ostensibly, the mobile homes could still stay on the street, moving a half-mile in either direction every three days.

On one side, El Camino Real borders Stanford University, where students dressed in athletic gear and spandex practice lacrosse and soccer. The smells of grilled meat and fresh-cut grass waft through the air. On the other side are clusters of fast food restaurants and posh gyms. And then there are the RV’s, some of which are broken down, ramshackle and rusting, with old leaves and cigarette butts cluttered underneath. The few homes along the road are each valued at more than $1 million.

Serrano and her son lived in a Redwood City residence until their rent became unaffordable and they were forced to use their RV as a home. At first they found a spot to park in Redwood City, but that soon became expensive, too.

“They towed our car three times,” Serrano said.

One morning earlier this week, she stepped out of the motor home and headed to work at the nearby YMCA, worried where she would move her mobile home next.

“Here, we have only had to move it every three weeks to a month, or for special events on campus,” she said.

Keith said enforcement of the parking rules in the area has been lax, allowing the campers to stay put, a practice that irritates local business owners.

On Thursday, white flyers — warped from nearby sprinklers — were stuck with packing tape to door handles and windshields of motor homes and vans lining the strip. In one Winnebago with a flat tire, blankets ringed the sleeping area and a leaf-shaped car freshener hung from its rearview mirror. In another, an empty cardboard box covered the windows. The flyers remained largely untouched.

For Jose Villa, 47, the camper van he shares with his wife and 19-year-old son is a temporary solution. The Villas own a home in Stockton, where work has been hard to find. Frustrated by the three-hour commute each morning and evening, he bought the RV and moved his family closer to his job as a handyman.

“We’ve been here one year now, and we’ve never gotten a parking ticket,” he said. “It’s bad for the people, like us, who can’t afford rent yet. We are good people, hardworking people. This will make life worse and more miserable than what it already is. We cannot afford anything else in Palo Alto. There is an RV park nearby, but it fills up fast.”

The family misses its dogs: a Chihuahua named Caramel and a golden retriever named Chocolate, and its big backyard, and watching movies on the living room couch.

“It’s not exactly luxury here,” said Gio Villa, standing barefoot on the camper steps, a head taller than his father. “We do it because it’s what we have to do. We’re constantly being told we have to leave, have to go.”

Their neighbor, Frank Aldama, 56, hadn’t yet decided on a plan. He sat in a stained pink armchair in his RV, fiddling with an empty ashtray. Heroin addiction and incarceration had destabilized his life, he said. He’s sober now, and in six months has worked at a restaurant, a lumber mill and a construction cleanup site, he said. but stable housing is hard to find.

“I guess this is part of life,” Aldama said. “There used to be one-fourth the amount of motor homes that there is now. It was always a safe place to go and a friendly area. I can’t stop thinking about what is going to happen. The mayor said we had to move in 72 hours. I don’t know what’s next.”

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn