How RVs became Silicon Valley’s housing safety net

Parked along industrial streets, hidden behind warehouses and clustered in residential neighborhoods, thousands of Bay Area residents live in one of the only types of housing they can afford: RVs.

The number of people living in vehicles across California has increased in recent years as rising rents and a chronic housing shortage have pushed even full-time workers out of traditional homes and into temporary homes on wheels.

Increasing technology wealth, increasing homelessness

In Santa Clara County, home of Apple, Google, and Google Eight of America’s 50 most expensive zip codes — The number of people living full-time in recreational vehicles has increased. District data It shows that the rate of homeless people sleeping in vehicles is increasing more than twice Since the pandemic, it has increased from 18% in 2019 to 37% in 2025.

California accounts for nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless despite being home to 12% of its total population. federal housing data. Experts say the state is facing a problem major housing shortageWith a prediction made by McKinsey He argues that California needs as many as 3.5 million more homes to meet demand.

Although authorities have expanded shelter capacity, federal data It shows that far fewer shelter beds are available for people experiencing homelessness, and that a significant portion of homeless residents lack adequate access to shelter.

“You are more likely to be homeless in California than in other states,” said Adrian Covert, senior vice president for public policy at the Bay Area Council, a nonpartisan think tank. “And when you do that, you are more likely than almost any other state to end up homeless on the streets rather than in shelter.”

Why caravans?

Advocates say many people turn to RVs because they offer an autonomy not available in shelters and on the streets.

“The trailer was so much better,” said Salena Alvarez, who has been living in the trailer with her boyfriend for a year and a half. The couple lived in a car before living in their trailer.

“The car is smaller… you can’t cook, you can’t do your dishes, you can’t shower, you can’t go to the bathroom. You have to go somewhere.”

The rise of the ‘vanlords’

As housing options narrowed, a new phase of the crisis emerged; A phase where even vehicles become rental properties.

A shadow rental market has formed in the Bay Area, where individuals rent aging RVs to people who have no other options. Some call them “vanlords”.

Tenants pay hundreds of dollars a month to sleep in a vehicle parked on a public street. Arrangements are often made without written lease agreements or tenant protections.

CNBC spoke with a van owner and several renters. Some of the tenants, including a woman and her two children from Mexico, were recent immigrants to the United States; others said the option was much more affordable than traditional condos in the Bay Area.

One person told CNBC that he had been living in a trailer on the street in San Francisco for about a year, which he shared with a friend for a total of $500 a month. They described the vehicles they rented from a number of vehicle owners on the same block as “safe and comfortable” and added that $1,000 was too expensive to rent a room in an apartment.

But lawmakers see the regulations as exploitative.

“These are people using our public streets to generate revenue, to make money, without any permit or process to make sure they comply with the rules about what conditions RVs must be in or what rights the renter has,” said San Jose city councilman David Cohen, who sponsored legislation banning the practice. “We’re trying to protect our community and also the people who are homeless.”

But cracking down on van lords has been difficult, and the underground market persists.

Meanwhile, cities in the Bay Area have increased parking enforcement, issuing citations and towing vehicles as RV campgrounds become more visible.

But none of the approaches, such as banning van owners or cracking down on parking, have been able to reverse the increase in homeless people in vehicles.

This situation caused the authorities to look for alternatives.

A different approach

Located in an industrial corner of San Jose, just off the highway and between a recycling plant and concrete distributor, the city of San Jose has transformed an empty parking lot into what it calls a “safe parking area.”

Operated by a local nonprofit and funded by a grant from the city, the Berryessa Safe Parking Area has 86 RV spaces, making it one of the largest sites of its kind in California, according to WeHope, the homeless organization that operates the area. The park opens in 2025, and organizers say there’s a consistently full waiting list. Alvarez is a full-time domestic worker The maintenance worker is one of the residents.

In the middle of the 6-acre lot are showers, washing machines and an office where caseworkers meet with residents to help them find housing. Interacting with the system – moving out of caravans and into traditional housing – is a requirement of living in the park.

The city expects the facility to cost $24 million over a five-year period, including the cost of the services it provides.

Victoria Garibaldi, the site’s manager, said she and her team have placed more than 40 people into housing since the site opened.

“We want them to have their own place. This is not a permanent solution to the housing problem,” he said.

The park is San Jose’s second safe parking area. Despite its success, the need far exceeds the supply. San Jose has 128 such parking spaces in two secure parking areas, but it is estimated that about 1,000 people live in vehicles within city limits.

Other cities in the Bay Area have tried similar ideas but experienced more friction.

San Francisco installed a secure parking area in 2022, initially designed to accommodate up to 150 vehicles. But the program never reached that scale.

At its peak, there were approximately 35 vehicles in the area, according to the report. San Francisco Chronicle. Infrastructure problems, including a lack of on-site electricity, forced the city to rely on diesel generators, prompting complaints from neighbors and lawsuits.

The city ultimately closed the facility due to cost and operational difficulties.

Today, the only designated RV parking area in San Francisco may be privately operated. Once a low-cost option for tourists, Candlestick RV Park in the city’s industrial southeast corner is increasingly home to long-term residents; many of them are working but don’t have the savings or credit to secure a more traditional lease.

“Actually, due to the effects of the pandemic, we basically transitioned from a tourist park to a long-term park,” said Tsin Fung, the park’s manager who has worked there since 1993.

The price for a place with water, electricity, sewer hookups and bathrooms is $2,500 per month. The park recently increased the fee for new tenants from $2,000 per month.

“They’re hard-working people and they’re sort of middle, lower-middle class, working class,” Fung said. “They work hard, they pay their bills.” He also said he learned that some renters were renting their RVs from people outside the park, in so-called vanlording situations.

Rethinking caravan parks

But housing construction alone won’t close the gap fast enough, said the Bay Area Council’s Covert.

“We come from a 30 or 40-year trend of hostility from local governments across the state — actually across the country — toward mobile home parks and trailer parks,” Covert said. “They were seen as a disaster. But what we see now is that it didn’t just eliminate low-income people.”

Instead, he argues, well-managed caravan parks should be reconsidered as part of the region’s housing strategy.

“It’s unlikely we’ll have enough transitional or transitional housing to move everyone home in the short term,” he said.

Until more permanent housing comes online, Covert said, cities may have little choice but to treat RVs as part of the housing environment rather than as an anomaly.

For Alvarez, secure parking provides stability as she and her boyfriend continue to search for an apartment they can afford — a place they’re willing to move into if they can find one.

“I hope I can do it,” he said.