Faced with a flood of homeless people living in cars near the beach, San Diego officials said Monday they are pursuing a new law that would restore the city’s ability to prohibit such behavior.

The proposed vehicle habitation law would replace a previous version that the city stopped enforcing last August when a federal judge declared it too vague to pass legal muster. The City Council repealed the old law in February.

This new proposal comes in response to hundreds of complaints about public urination, trash, drug use and other illegal activity on city streets since the 35-year-old law was repealed.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer said the city will also double its number of “safe” parking lots, from two to four, so that unsheltered people forced to live in vehicles have someplace to go at night.


“If you are living out of your vehicle because you have nowhere else to go, we want to help you,” Faulconer said at a news conference in Mission Bay Park.

“At the same time, residents and businesses have a right to clean and safe neighborhoods. We will not allow conduct that takes advantage of San Diego’s generosity and destroys the quality of life in our communities.”

Faulconer said he plans to unveil the new ordinance, which will be based on vehicle habitation ordinances in other cities, at an April 17 meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee.

The mayor characterized his approach as the right balance between helping people who really need it with the additional safe parking lots, while cracking down on illegal and unsafe activity in neighborhoods.


Faulconer said City Attorney Mara Elliott and her staff have been working on the proposed new law for several weeks.

He said the goal is not to criminalize homeless, but to hold people accountable for behavior that is damaging quality of life in city neighborhoods.

He added that many of those living in cars on San Diego streets, particularly near the city’s beaches, are people who travel in their vans from city to city and sleep inside of their vehicles instead of staying in hotels.

“There are some people who are not in need of help, or who don’t even want to have that help in finding a permanent home,” he said. “They are instead using our neighborhoods as a vacation spot, or as stopping points as they travel from city to city. This is not safe, this is not healthy and this is not acceptable.”


Councilwoman Dr. Jennifer Campbell, whose district includes the city’s beach communities, praised the decision to seek a new, enforceable vehicle habitation law.

“I applaud the mayor’s action today, which balances the need to provide more assistance and services to San Diegans living in their vehicles in need of a helping hand with the concerns about health and safety we’ve heard from our beach communities,” Campbell said at the news conference.

She also stressed, however, that the new law and additional safe lots are just one effort toward helping the city cope with homelessness.

“There’s much more that still needs to be done to resolve our homeless crisis, but this is a necessary step,” Campbell said.


Michael McConnell, a local advocate for the homeless and a frequent critic of Faulconer’s handling of the issue, said the mayor’s proposed new law follows a pattern of the city reacting to problems in the absence of a long-term strategy.

“We have to start having some long-term strategies on homelessness, instead of this whack-a-mole, Band-Aid type of response,” McConnell said in an interview. “There’s no focused thinking here. There’s no long-term thinking here.”

McConnell said he supports San Diego having an enforceable vehicle habitation law because the city needs to prevent neighborhoods from becoming recreational vehicle parks.

“I would support a new vehicle habitation law if the law respects that we have this raging crisis on our streets,” he said.


Brian White, president of the Pacific Beach Town Council, said a new law is crucial to restoring quality of life to the city’s beach communities.

“I haven’t heard anyone say they don’t want to help people who find themselves in a situation where they need to live in their car,” White said. “But there is also another group called ‘van-lifers,’ who choose to travel around the country in their van and see beautiful places.”

In addition, White said, people have begun to advertise campers parked on city streets near the beach on websites like Airbnb.

“It’s basically the camper van version of a short-term vacation rental,” he said. “The listings began popping up shortly after the final repeal.”


Police Chief David Nisleit said an enforceable vehicle habitation law would be a crucial tool.

“We’ve seen our calls related to this type of behavior go up exponentially,” he said.

The new ordinance, which would likely take effect in June at the earliest, wouldn’t be enforced until police conduct a public education campaign and alert people living in vehicles to the existence of the city safe lots, he said.

“It is important our officers have the tools they need to do their job more effectively,” Nisleit said. “And it is important for those who are living on our streets to have access to resources and the help they need to get back on their feet again.”


In August, U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia said the city’s previous vehicle habitation law did not indicate specifically what turns a vehicle into a person’s home or “living quarters,” noting that people have gotten tickets under the law for reading a book inside their vehicle.

The injunction ordered by Battaglia came in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of disabled homeless people who prefer to live in vehicles because they don’t function well in traditional homeless shelters.

