SLO hits pause on new safe parking program after neighbors object. What’s next?
Plans to let homeless people park overnight at a rotating series of sites in San Luis Obispo are on hold after nearby residents raised objections about one of the proposed locations.
The rotational safe parking program would have replaced the city’s Railroad Square Safe Parking Program, which is scheduled to end operations after Aug. 27.
The city initially looked to establish an interim safe parking site in a residential neighborhood in the 1700 block of Palm Street near the San Luis Obispo Veterans Memorial Building and Grand Avenue.
However, neighbors expressed dissatisfaction with the city’s rollout of the interim location, with Cal Poly teacher Lynn Hamilton calling the move “shocking.”
Now the new safe parking program is “paused until such time an interim location is approved or other permanent rotating locations are established through separate director action,” San Luis Obispo homelessness response manager Daisy Wiberg said in an email to The Tribune.
Why did SLO need an interim safe parking site?
The city started sheltering unhoused residents in their vehicles at Railroad Square in late 2021 under the administration of the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo County, which was also slated to act as program administrator for the rotational safe parking program.
That new program would have replaced the Railroad Square program with a series of monthly rotating parking sites hosted by faith-based organizations and private and public property owners, with CAPSLO running site operations.
However, the rotational program hit a snag when the city was unable to establish a rotation of host locations by the time the Railroad Square site was set to close.
As of Aug. 10, three faith-based organizations were engaged in talks with the city to host parking sites, Wiberg said at the time.
To bridge the gap between the Railroad Square program and the rotating model, the city looked to use a director’s action permit to identify an interim location for the parking program, Wiberg said at the time.
Director action permits allow the operators of an approved program to select locations without first consulting the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission, an important component for a program that would move to a new site each month, Wiberg said.
New San Luis Obispo community development director Timothea Tway referred the director action permit back to the Planning Commission on Aug. 15, meaning the city could not move forward with the director’s action permit for the interim site, Wiberg told The Tribune in an email.
Wiberg said the 1700 block of Palm Street was identified as a potential interim spot for the program because it doesn’t experience as much through traffic as other nearby city streets, and is wide enough to accommodate participating vehicles.
The interim site would have operated for a maximum of four months at Palm Street, though the city was aiming to have an official host site identified by Oct. 1, Wiberg said.
The interim site would have operated similarly to the Railroad Square program, opening from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and would have hosted no more than 20 vehicles in total —split between around 10 vehicles and five recreational vehicles, Wiberg said.
The interim location would have occupied a 200-foot-long stretch of Palm Street between the entrance to the San Luis Obispo Veterans Memorial Building and Grand Avenue.
Hamilton said she was frustrated the city had selected the site without sufficiently notifying neighbors.
“It’s just very disturbing that our public officials can just completely change the nature of your home, and that’s what they’re doing,” Hamilton told The Tribune Aug. 10. “They’re completely changing the nature of the street I live on.”
What’s next for SLO’s safe parking program?
With the rotational safe parking program on pause, the Planning Commission will again review the program and gather community input, Wiberg said.
A public hearing on the program will be held in September at a date yet to be determined, she said.
“We will provide notice of the public hearing 10 days in advance of the hearing date, and community members will be invited to submit comments to the Planning Commission in person, or in writing, in advance of the hearing,” Wiberg said.
This story was originally published August 18, 2023 at 9:53 AM.
