San Jose New RV Parking Site Thriving

Just 48 miles south of San Francisco, however, San Jose is taking a different approach. While also issuing restrictions on RVs, the city has, in turn, opened two safe parking sites with a combined 128 parking spots one in 2023, and the other in March of this year at a fraction of the cost of the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center.

San Jose has fewer homeless residents; nearly 6,000 to San Francisco’s 8,300. But the number of San Jose residents living in their vehicles rivals that of San Francisco. A 2023 Point in Time survey counted approximately 1,250 vehicularly homeless people in San Jose.

But Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, told Mission Local that his office estimates that number is much higher closer to 2,000.

San Jose’s experiment in providing a few of them with safe parking spaces, Mahan added, has been surprisingly affordable. “It’s not that expensive to run an RV park,” Mahan said as he strolled through the Santa Teresa supportive parking site in the south of San Jose.

The site is on a small, dirt road lot dotted with trees a stone’s throw from the Santa Teresa VTA light rail station. “You just need a willingness to think more creatively.

For more information please visit- https://missionlocal.org/2025/07/s-f-closed-its-parking-lots-and-banned-rvs-san-jose-chose-a-different-approach/