Arroyo Grande explores safe parking sites for unhoused residents living in vehicles
The Arroyo Grande City Council is exploring a new way to keep its unhoused residents safe at night.
The City Council will hear a proposal from the city’s planning division to introduce an application process for safe parking sites, which would allow applicants to operate overnight parking sites for unhoused people living out of their vehicles.
Community Development Director Brian Pedrotti said the draft parking ordinance will provide a “starting point” for how to define the parameters of a safe parking site.
The original inspiration came from a group of local churches, Pedrotti said, including
Saint John’s Lutheran Church, which operated a safe parking pilot program for around a year.
The draft safe parking ordinance will next appear before the Arroyo Grande City Council at Tuesday’s meeting for a study session, Pedrotti said, during which the council will provide their input on the ordinance.
“The City Council meeting that’s happening on Tuesday is intended to be a study session to really dig into (the draft safe parking ordinance) and figure out which direction the city wants to go with with safe parking,” Pedrotti said.
Does your parking lot qualify for a safe parking site?
These sites would operate between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. under the supervision of hosts who have a parking lot.
Pedrotti said under the current draft ordinance, safe parking sites would be allowed in two zoning categories — public facilities and industrial mixed use — with the goal of giving businesses and churches in particular the option to run safe parking sites.
Introducing volunteer safe parking sites would keep “potential environmental hazards” of gas, oil and human waste off the streets, preventing unsanitary conditions and public health risks, the draft safe parking ordinance said.
In order to qualify for the safe parking site program, those interested must fill out an application, pay a fee (which will be determined at a later date) and create a site plan that shows the location of overnight parking spaces, trash and recycling facilities, water, restroom facilities, exterior lighting fixtures and location of and distances to surrounding residential properties, the draft ordinance said.
A maximum of six vehicles could use permitted parking sites, Pedrotti said.
Pedrotti said restricting the parking site to overnight stays only will avoid some of the issues introduced by continuous stays at San Luis Obispo County’s parking site at Oklahoma Avenue, which will end its operations in the coming months.
“There wouldn’t be any sort of camping allowed or outdoor cooking,” Pedrotti said. “There would be limited hours. So some of those things are intended to reduce impacts on neighboring properties, but really, the scope and scale is much different from the Oklahoma Avenue facility.”
The application also requires a written statement from a social service provider “assuring its participation” in the parking site’s operations, along with a management plan addressing the number of spaces allocated, the days and hours of operation, staff training, security, pet policy, site maintenance, prohibition of campfires, procedures for addressing complaints, an anti-discrimination policy and a copy of liability insurance for the property.
A social service provider will screen occupants as they enter the site and offer support services and case management, the draft ordinance said.
The number of parking spaces an applicant can use for safe parking purposes is capped at six, the draft plan said, and can be no closer than 300 feet from neighboring residential buildings.
Recreational vehicles are prohibited, and guests must keep noise to below 50 decibels at all times.
According to the draft site plan, the city’s community development director would approve or deny applications.
Church’s safe parking pilot program influenced city plan
Pedrotti said local churches have been key in developing this sort of program.
“The churches are the ones who have shown the (most) interest,” Pedrotti said, adding that “it’s yet to be seen which churches support actually having a safe parking site on their property.”
Jeff Metcalfe, a member of
Saint John’s and its parking program organizer, said many of the ideas used in the city’s parking plan were inspired by his church’s pilot safe parking program, which operated over a series of three temporary six-month permits starting in late 2020.
Saint John’s program did differ from the city’s ordinance in several ways: Only women and children were permitted to use the parking site, and a portable toilet and electricity were provided.
“We’re not a shelter facility — we don’t have psychologists,” Metcalfe said. “We do have resources and we have compassion, and we discovered a demographic that we could serve.”
Metcalfe said Saint John’s program had a “100% success” rate in placing the women who used the church’s site in permanent living situations during its 18-month run.
The site was run with help from the 5 Cities Homeless Coalition, Metcalfe said, which allowed the site to get children registered with the local school district, get insurance for the parkers’ cars and form relationships with the police in the event of an incident.
In total, just under 20 unhoused people used Saint John’s parking program, which was capable of housing four vehicles at a time on the church parking lot.
“The women in our church were stunned to find women living in their cars for as many as 20 years,” Metcalfe said. “They just could not cotton the fact that these women were forced to live like that, and an outpouring of emotion and material was a nice side effect to what we did.”
Metcalfe said the church’s program ultimately ended when the city told Saint John’s that the program could not continue without a formal process for creating parking sites or by paying a fee.
Though Saint John’s was unwilling to pay the fee to continue its parking site, Metcalfe said he was pleased to see the city take the “novel” approach of looking at their own ordinances to create a formal path for creating safe parking sites.
Requiring fees for potential safe parking site hosts runs counter to the mission of the ordinance, however, Metcalfe said, calling the fees “burdensome” to programs trying to provide aid.
“It’s just another way that government is trying to make an income,” Metcalfe said. “I get that it’s a business and they gotta run it positively, but their intrusions are not helpful.”
Metcalfe said he hopes to continue Saint John’s parking program in some capacity.
“Our church is going to continue to do what it’s going to do, because we feel that it’s the big elephant in the room,” Metcalfe said. “We found a bite we can chew on and we’re gonna keep chewing on it, because it needs to be dealt with. I can’t get rid of the whole elephant, but we’re gonna get rid of part of it.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2023 at 12:58 PM.
