Eight out of 10 people living in cars and RVs in San Francisco don’t appear interested in moving into permanent housing, and only half of the car campers want help from city programs, according to a survey by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

“Half of the people in the cars and RVs don’t want our services,” said city homeless czar Jeff Kositsky.

And therein lies one of the biggest challenges facing San Francisco and other cities dealing with a growing number of curbside campers.

“This is not the same group that we find living in tents,” Kositsky said. “Not that either are good, but living in an RV is not nearly as bad living in a tent under a freeway.”

The citywide survey, taken in October, found 432 vehicles — 313 RVs and 119 cars — serving as homes. Most of the campers were concentrated in the Bayview, Mission and Taraval police districts.

Car campers have been a fact of life on city streets for decades. Until recently, however, the problem was limited mostly to warehouse areas in the southern part of the city.

In recent years, however, the mobile homeless have spread into residential neighborhoods, prompting calls for more bans on overnight parking — and that’s something the city has been reluctant to do because it just pushes the problem down the street.

The October count also included a survey of 43 vehicle campers to try to find out what the city could do to help get them off the street.

Basically it found three types of vehicle campers:

• People who are highly vulnerable and in need of homeless assistance. These people tend to be in vehicles that are unregistered, uninsured and in disrepair.

• People who are homeless but prefer their vehicle to shelters.

• And people who have other housing options or even live elsewhere but choose to sleep in their vehicles out of convenience.

Some, Kositsky said, are “reluctant commuters,” workers who drive in from the Central Valley and choose to sleep in their cars to avoid long commutes every day.

As a group, the street campers also appear to be independent, with only 1 out of 3 receiving public benefits.

They are also highly mobile with all 43 of those surveyed saying they had moved to their present location within the month.

Overall as a group, they do not appear interested in getting out of their cars and RVs, with 82 percent saying they weren’t interested in undergoing a housing assessment to see what may be open to them.

Supervisor Vallie Brown, who along with Supervisor Ahsha Safaí has been pushing for a “triage center” that would include a lot where campers could park while the city works to get them housing and services, says their initial resistance to leaving their cars is understandable.

“They don’t feel homeless; they feel like they have something,” Brown said. “When you give them a choice between staying where they are or going into a shelter for the night, what would you do?

“It’s not going to happen. They need time to build up trust” with the system, Brown said.

Safaí, who also pushed for an overnight parking ban on one of his district’s streets after neighborhood complaints, agreed with Brown.

“We believe providing a safe parking triage lot to assess folks and provide services is a big step in the right direction,” he said.

After some convincing, Mayor London Breed has agreed to spend $1 million to set up a parking lot for the vehicles to use while they get permanent housing sorted out.

Kositsky, however, said the center being proposed is only part of the solution, especially for those who are comfortable with curbside living.

“In those cases, we need more enforcement by police and the (Municipal Transportation Agency), Kositsky said.

In the meantime, the problem shows little sign of going away.

“There are a lot more than 119 people living in their cars in the city,” Brown said. “I can walk around and point out 30 to 35 in the Haight alone.”

And, according to the report, 15 more are hitting the streets each week.

Raiders return? The Oakland Raiders have returned to the table and are in talks with the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum Authority about playing their final Bay Area season in Oakland.

“Raiders President Marc Badain and I have spoken,” Coliseum CEO Scott Mckibben said. “I can’t tell you where it is all headed, but we have spoken and the meetings have been productive.

“We will see in the coming days what the result is,” Mckibben said.

The Raiders walked away from a final, one-year, $7.5 million lease extension at the Coliseum in December, after the city of Oakland joined a lawsuit seeking millions in damages for team’s move to Las Vegas.

“That is still the deal on the table,” Mckibben said.

Since denouncing Oakland, the Raiders have been in talks with the 49ers about playing in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara and with the San Francisco Giants about playing in Oracle Park. The Raiders did not return a call for comment.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phillip Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier