Sign/call before noon Friday: NO on AB 630, don’t take people’s RV’s!

Orange Juice readers! Please sign on HERE, before noon today (Friday) – if we can get you to quickly agree with us – and signing on is so easy, you should also call Senator Caballero, head of the Senate Appropriations Committee (OC doesn’t have anyone on that committee) and ask her to please stop AB 630 which they’re voting on today at noon! (916) 651-4014.

AB 630 is a NIMBY-Dem bill making it easier to take away RV’s from folks who are living in them. It seems to be mainly coming out of LA, written by LA assemblyman Mark Gonzalez and strongly backed by the LA Mayor Karen Bass (who we like seeing standing up to Trump and ICE, but not picking on the homeless or taking their RVs.) We’ll take a look at their nonsense in a bit to be fair, but what the Orange Juice Blog is asking you to sign onto is THIS statement. BY NOON!

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Sign-on in OPPOSITION to AB 630 (González) by 12:00 Noon on Friday, August 22 

EVERYONE DESERVES EQUAL RIGHTS. Join the Equal Rights for Every Neighbor Coalition in opposing AB 630 (González) by signing on to our opposition letter. 

STOP the removal, impoundment, and destruction of vehicles used as housing! 

Read the letter here. 

Currently, cities are unable to send towed vehicles to scrap yards if they are worth more than $500, including RVs. However, AB 630 would increase the threshold for RVs by eightfold to $4000 even though, for many people, their RV is their home. Specifically, this bill would allow localities to tow and dispose of RVs that fall under an expansive new $4,000 threshold if the RV is inoperable and the owner has not retrieved the RV and paid all towing fees within 15 days.

RVs and cars are often housing of last resort for people displaced from their homes by the failure of governments at every level to meet the affordable housing needs of our communities. Displacing people and removing their access to the vehicles on which they depend for housing, transportation, and safety is cruel and the wrong approach. Instead, the state and local jurisdictions should be focused on meeting the human needs of every neighbor, including through investments in deeply affordable housing at scale. 

Join a diverse coalition of civil rights and disability advocates, homeless and housing champions, homeless services and housing experts, and people with lived experience in opposing AB 630. 

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And for more detail, here is the letter:

Dear Chair Caballero:

The undersigned organizations urge California to address houselessness through humane, dignified, and proven practices. In the midst of California’s unprecedented housing affordability and houselessness crisis, we must oppose AB 630 (González)–a bill that will harm vehicularly housed Californians by expanding the criteria under which local governments may remove and destroy their housing of last resort.

The intent of AB 630 is to enable the disposal of abandoned RVs. Unfortunately, RVs that are being used as housing of last resort are often wrongly towed as “abandoned.” By lowering the due process requirements for disposing of abandoned vehicles, AB 630 will incentivize deeming an RV abandoned, even when there is no reasonable basis to conclude it is. Towing and disposing of people’s temporary homes will not improve the houselessness crisis in California; it will only exacerbate it, harming many Californians in the process. 

Importantly, as noted in the Senate Committee on Appropriations fiscal analysis, the bill has potentially broad fiscal impact, including significant costs to the state funded trial court system, state and local law enforcement agencies, and workload cost pressures to the Department of Motor Vehicles – all to implement a policy that will increase unsheltered houselessness and the multitude of associated costs – financial, social, and moral – to our state. Sean Geary, who became unsheltered when he lost his RV, stated in a CalMatters opinion piece, “for many Californians, RVs are their only remaining refuge. Removing these mobile homes directly threatens their personal health and safety.”

Currently, cities are unable to send towed vehicles to scrap yards if they are worth more than $500, including RVs. However, AB 630 would increase the threshold for RVs by eightfold to $4000 even though, for many people, their RV is their home. Specifically, this bill would allow localities to tow and dispose of RVs that fall under an expansive new $4,000 threshold if the RV is inoperable and the owner has not retrieved the RV and paid all towing fees within 15 days.

The $4,000 estimated value to dispose of an RV would significantly expand the number of RVs that can be scrapped after just 15 days and possibly include the vast majority of RVs that function as housing of last resort for people experiencing houselessness. If someone experiencing houselessness is hospitalized, visiting family, or is arrested for being unhoused, they may return to their RV to find that their home has been designated as “abandoned” and has been towed and scrapped, leaving them with no alternative but to live directly on the street. This reality leaves people at much greater risk of victimization, arrest, worsening health, and death.

Under AB 630, RV owners have 15 days to claim their vehicle and pay their towing and storage fees. Without the payment of these fees, RVs can be scrapped, even if the RV has been wrongfully towed for being inoperable or a hazard to public health. Due to compounding fees, it can cost owners hundreds or even thousands of dollars for owners to retrieve their RV from a tow yard, money that individuals living in their vehicles likely do not have. This places people in challenging financial situations where they must find money to pay for wrongful towing and storage fees – money that could have gone towards securing permanent housing – or they must lose their housing of last resort and enter unsheltered houselessness because they cannot pay the towing fees. 

Some proponents of the bill argue that destroying last resort housing provides an opportunity to connect RV dwellers to permanent homes. But subsidized affordable housing is mostly unavailable to even the most vulnerable Californians. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, California has a shortage of almost 1 million rental homes affordable and available for extremely low income renters. Of the almost 5000 people who have entered Los Angeles’ interim motel room program “Inside Safe,” only 15.5% have transitioned to subsidized permanent housing while 37% have transitioned back to houselessness. 

Overall, AB 630 would set back California’s efforts to effectively and humanely address the housing and houselessness crisis by wasting state and local resources that could otherwise be invested in the real solution to the housing and houselessness crisis: permanent, subsidized homes. It would also cause unjustified suffering for Californians living in RVs as housing of last resort.  

For these reasons, we urge you to vote NO on AB 630.

Sincerely…

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To be fair and complete, here is the propaganda justifying the bill. I love their phrase that taking away the RV’s from folks living in them will “ACCELERATE HOUSING SOLUTIONS” for the homeless. Yes, I’m sure. Taking away the place they live in will PUSH THEM RIGHT ALONG, to where the authorities want them. Well what are you waiting for? Look at the time. Call and sign on if you haven’t!