Seattle City Council Passes Draconian Effective RV Ban

Last night, the Seattle City Council passed the most comprehensive reform of large vehicle regulations in a generation to make it harder for homeless people to live in RVs and trailers. The six ordinances sponsored by Councilmember Dan Strauss will require people living in large vehicles to obtain a permit to park for more than two hours. Even with a permit, they’ll still have to move every 72 hours.

The legislative package aims to assuage longstanding complaints about sanitation and livability issues caused by RV residents in industrial neighborhoods while increasing outreach and services to the historically overlooked segment of Seattle’s homeless population.

However, many RV residents and homelessness advocates say the permitting system is a ban in disguise, and will just further hurt people already living on the margins, forcing them to either leave the city or get rid of what little property they still own.

The two most controversial bills in the legislative package, including the new permitting system, passed 6 to 3 at last night’s meeting, cleanly following the council’s ideological faultline. Mayor Katie Wilson hasn’t taken an official stance on the legislation, but expressed concerns about the costs of rolling out the new permitting system. If she chose to veto the bills, the council would have the votes to override it.

The Seattle bills mirror legislation recently passed by other municipalities like San Francisco, part of a nationwide crackdown on unsheltered homelessness in the wake of the 2024 Grants Pass decision.

While Strauss’s legislation is framed as a permitting system, it amounts to nothing less than a wholesale ban on RV living in Seattle, says Graham Pruss, executive director of the National Vehicle Residency Coalition.

The permitting system will only be available to people included in a one-time survey of vehicle residents. To obtain the permit, they’ll also have to maintain a valid vehicle registration—a significant hurdle for many—and ensure their RV or trailer is of habitable condition. Many homeless Seattleites live in dilapidated or rusty vehicles legally considered “junk” and ineligible for a permit.

Moreover, the permit won’t create a permanent legal status for RV dwellers; it can be revoked after six refusals of “appropriate” offers of shelter.

Strauss told The Stranger the phase out mechanism of the permitting system is by design—he doesn’t want Seattle to be seen as a destination for vehicle residents.

“If we were to leave the census open perpetually or forever, my fear is that we would have RVs coming from all of the Pacific Northwest, from Idaho to Oregon,” Strauss says.

In a letter to the council, the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness criticized the new permitting program and called on it to reject four out of the six bills. It said the funding for eight new staffers to enforce the permits was a bad use of taxpayer money and should instead go to direct outreach.

The coalition did support several aspects of Strauss’s proposal, including additional funding for outreach and the establishment of dedicated city-managed parking for RVs and trailers so that homeless residents entering shelter won’t have to get rid of their vehicles.

While a majority of homelessness service providers and advocates opposed the permitting system, the UHeights Vehicle Residency Outreach (VRO) came out in support of the legislation. VRO did not respond to a request for comment. Other supporters of the legislation, including a member of the Ballard Alliance and a representative of the North Lake neighbors group, testified in support of the legislation.

Pruss said that Strauss used promises of funding have been used as a “tool” to divide service providers and make the effective RV ban politically palatable. “For that funding, the rest of the folks who live in RVs in perpetuity are being banished from Seattle and the larger region of the Puget Sound,” he says.

Pruss warned that Seattle’s legislation will set off a wave of bans as RV residents get displaced outside city limits. That phenomenon has been playing out in the Bay Area, where a third of RV residents have already moved outside San Francisco since it passed its ban last summer.

Adding to the concerns is the lack of an active safe lot for vehicle residents within Seattle. The Low Income Housing Institute’s (LIHI) Salmon Bay safe lot was forced to close in May 2025 (it was turned into a pickleball facility). Safe lots make living in RVs easier, allowing residents to connect to power and sewage and be part of a stable community without the fear of being swept. LIHI plans to open its new Glassyard Commons site, serving 72 vehicles and 20 tiny houses, next month.

In her budget proposal, Wilson allocated funding for a second safe lot. Strauss says he is sponsoring a budget amendment to ensure that funding is included.

Even if both safe lots are operational, they won’t be able to serve all of Seattle’s RV residents. In this year’s Point-in-Time Count, UW researchers found that on any given night nearly 4,000 people are living in their vehicles across King County, including more than 600 in large vehicles such as RVs.

LIHI boasts that 60 percent of the 87 people who lived in the Salmon Bay safe lot eventually got permanent housing.

But for Tiffany Taylor, who is one of the 40 percent who didn’t end up with a home, Salmon Bay ended with bitter disappointment. While she appreciated the accommodations during her time in the safe lot, including the ability to keep her trailer, she had to get rid of it when Salmon Bay suddenly closed.

Instead of housing, LIHI offered her a place in one of its tiny houses. Taylor estimates that the trailer was worth about $9,000 when she moved into the safe lot. She says she was okay with the tradeoff as long as she ended up getting placed in an apartment.

However, earlier this summer, she got kicked out of her tiny house for having an unauthorized AC system, leaving her completely homeless once again. Taylor says that in order for the new RV permitting system to work, it will need to ensure people like her don’t fall through the cracks

“They need to do a better job of making sure that people are really taken care of and not just cycled out and left with nothing,” Taylor said. “Like now I’m just out there trying to figure it out all from ground zero.”