Seattle’s City Council just voted to spend $5 million helping people who live in vehicles—while ultimately banning RVs overnight from the city and making it harder for people to keep these homes. On October 20, Councilmember Dan Strauss’s Vehicle Resident Assistance Program (VRAP) passed as a legislative package. VRAP now moves to Mayor Katie Wilson to accept, veto, or ignore.
These are separate policies, and should be considered separately. Mayor Wilson should sign CB 121282 to support outreach and assistance, veto CB 121283’s punitive parking rules, and veto CB 121280 unless its redefinition of junk-vehicles protects lived-in homes. Seattle can fund help without making another community homeless.
The number of vehicle residents who called Seattle home has been increasing for decades, from 544 people in 2006 to 3,372 by 2018. A 2026 UW report showed that the number of people in smaller vehicles has nearly tripled since 2022, while those in larger vehicles have reduced dramatically.
I began working with vehicle residents in 2009, coordinating a community meal under the Ballard Bridge and advocating with others to establish Seattle’s first safe parking program. From 2013 to 2015, I was employed by that program as the city’s only designated outreach worker to vehicle residents. I met shipwrights, fishing crews, construction workers, retirees, and families who bought older RVs because rent was out of reach. They parked near work, medical care, food, bathrooms, family, and friends.
Our safe parking program offered space on a list for our consistently full lots in churches across North Seattle. We helped people maintain their position on housing waitlists for years. I delivered water, snacks, and warnings from the police of impending ticketing, tows, and impounds. I saw entire city blocks of overnight parking restriction signs and concrete “ecoblocks” installed in the immediate aftermath of these sweeps. I watched homes disappear, often with medicine, paperwork, photographs, and heirlooms inside. Some were auctioned cheaply; others scrapped.
For decades, Seattle’s vehicle residents have navigated a legal landscape that determines when they can park their homes. A 1979 city law required oversized vehicles to park overnight on industrial streets. “No Parking 2-5 AM” signs were installed throughout those industrial zones, increasing the density of RVs on the remaining streets with overnight parking.
As parking options narrowed, residents gathered together for security, repairs, and mutual aid. They formed communities on industrial streets, areas with few toilets, water taps, or trash cans and where rodents chewed engine wires and hoses.
Encampments grew during the pandemic when an RV offered room to isolate while much of the city sheltered indoors. Businesses and public buildings closed, bathrooms and shelter access became more difficult, and service providers pulled their outreach teams from the streets to protect frontline workers.
RV residents clustered in the few remaining legal spaces for safety and mutual support. They shared resources, watched over each other’s possessions, helped repair vehicles, and created communities. Many congregated in growing encampments because they had no other choice.
When businesses reopened, the sweeps resumed, pushing people from familiar parking places into existing RV clusters, then displacing them to fewer and fewer remaining streets. The resulting overcrowding—often without basic sanitation—became justification for still more removals.
After years of pushing RV residents into increasingly crowded and underserved spaces, Seattle now proposes to eliminate the few places they have left.
Some of the VRAP funding is welcome. But the proposed rules will effectively ban RVs from Seattle. By packaging these together, Strauss’ proposal was supported by those it would fund. Meanwhile, it has been denounced by lived experience advocacy groups across the region and country.
Under CB 121283, only registered vehicle owners identified in a one-time citywide census could apply for RV parking permits. Someone who moves into an RV afterward—or visits Seattle to work, see family, or seek medical care—would have no route to a permit. Unpermitted motorhomes and travel trailers could park on public streets for only two hours, and not at all between midnight and 6 a.m.
Permitted residents could park overnight only in assigned industrial areas; daytime parking would remain subject to posted restrictions. They would have to stay engaged with city-approved caseworkers and on waitlists for safe parking, shelter, vehicle storage, or housing. Six refusals of “appropriate shelter” could cost them the permit, though the bill leaves that term for an implementation workgroup to define. Calling someone service resistant doesn’t make the offered service appropriate. Coercion is not compassion.
While the proposed $5 million investment from existing city funds could make a meaningful difference, there are no plans to provide alternative parking for RVs that meets the scale of need. The parking restrictions are scheduled for April 30, 2027, with enforcement beginning July 31 if enacted.
VRAP’s carrot and stick approach reflects a broader shift toward displacing vehicle residents rather than accommodating their homes. Seattle is joining a crackdown on RVs throughout the Western States. In 2025, San Francisco imposed a similar two-hour limit on large vehicles, with one-time offered permits. Santa Cruz and San Diego have similar Oversized Vehicle Ordinances that ban RVs overnight from the majority of their streets.
Kirkland restricted wide RVs on city streets this fall. On the day of the Seattle VRAP vote, King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn proposed a motion seeking new parking restrictions on unincorporated roads, including proposals for booting vehicles with repeated unpaid citations.
Every jurisdiction that closes its streets shifts the pressure to the next, further limiting where people can live.
“I’m not homeless, this is my home.” I’ve heard those words more times than I can remember. People use RVs as emergency shelter, transitional housing, and long-term homes. An RV occupied for years can be more stable than an overnight shelter bed. Many emergency shelters separate people from their partners, pets, possessions, and privacy. People rely on RVs as housing in Seattle because more permanent options that meet these needs are inaccessible.
They include seasonal workers, seniors on fixed incomes, veterans staying near VA care, and families keeping children in school. Some identify as homeless; many do not. Many use RVs as stop-gap housing, and many more have chosen a mobile life. Their reasons differ, but a vehicle may preserve work, health care, family ties, and a measure of control.
Stripping away people’s assets will not end homelessness.
Seattle should address fire hazards, waste, and sanitation. But the answer to missing toilets and water is providing toilets and water—not taking away the roof over someone’s head. Fund safe overnight lots, 24-hour RV parking with services, and longer-term sites with utilities, all designed with residents and offered voluntarily.
Seattle cannot tow its way out of a housing crisis.
Dr. Graham Pruss is a University of Washington-trained anthropologist, former Seattle safe-parking outreach worker, and executive director of the National Vehicle Residency Coalition.
