How RVs became Silicon Valley’s housing safety net

Thousands of Bay Area residents live in RVs, parked along industrial roads, hidden behind warehouses and crowded into residential neighborhoods, one of the only forms of housing they can afford.

Across California, the number of people living in their cars has soared in recent years, as soaring rents and chronic housing shortages force even full-time workers out of traditional homes and into temporary housing on wheels.

Proliferation of high-tech assets, rise in homelessness

Santa Clara County, home to Apple, Google and eight of the nation’s 50 most expensive zip codes, is seeing a surge in the number of people living full-time in RVs. The percentage of homeless people sleeping in their cars has more than doubled since the pandemic, from 18% in 2019 to 37% in 2025, according to county data.

According to federal housing data, California accounts for nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless residents, despite being home to 12% of the total population. Experts say California faces a massive housing shortage, with one McKinsey estimate suggesting California needs as many as 3.5 million more homes to meet demand.

And even as officials expand shelter capacity, federal data shows there are far fewer shelter beds available than people experiencing homelessness, leaving a significant portion of the unhoused population without access to adequate shelter.

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

Why an RV?

Advocates say many people rely on RVs because they offer a degree of autonomy not found in shelters or on the road.

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

“The car is smaller…I can’t cook, I can’t wash the dishes, I can’t take a shower, I can’t go to the bathroom. I have to go somewhere.”

Rise of “Vanroad”

A new phase of the crisis has emerged as housing options narrow. This is the stage where even cars become rental properties.

A shadow rental market is well established in the Bay Area, where individuals rent out their aging RVs to people with few other options. Some call them “vanlords.”

Renters pay hundreds of dollars a month to sleep in cars parked on public streets. This arrangement typically does not include a written lease or tenant protections.

CNBC spoke with Vanlord and several tenants. Some of the tenants were new immigrants to the United States, including a woman from Mexico and her two children, and some simply found the option more affordable than traditional apartment housing in the Bay Area.

One person told CNBC that he had been living in an RV on the streets of San Francisco for about a year, splitting a total of $500 a month with a friend. They rent from a series of vehicle owners on the same block, calling it “safe and comfortable,” adding that $1,000 is too expensive to rent a room in an apartment.

But lawmakers consider the arrangement exploitative.

“These are people who are using our public roads to make money without any permits or procedures to make sure they follow the rules about what conditions RVs have to be in or what rights people who rent them have,” said San Jose City Councilman David Cohen, who sponsored a bill to ban the practice. “We’re not just trying to protect our community, we’re trying to protect people who have lost their homes.”

However, cracking down on vanlords is difficult, and an underground market still exists.

Meanwhile, cities across the Bay Area have ramped up parking enforcement, issuing citations and towing vehicles as RV camps become more visible.

But neither banning vanloads nor cracking down on parking has been able to reverse the rise in vehicular homelessness.

So authorities are looking for alternatives.

another approach

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

The Berryessa Secure Parking Lot, run by a local nonprofit and funded by a grant from the city, has space for 86 RVs, making it one of the largest of its kind in California, according to We Hope, the homeless advocacy group that operates it. The park opened in 2025, but organizers say there is always a full waiting list. Alvarez, a full-time home caregiver, is one of those residents.

The center of the six-acre property includes showers, laundry machines and an office, where caseworkers meet with residents and help them find housing. Participating in this system, moving from an RV to traditional housing, is a requirement for living in the park.

The city expects construction of the site to cost $24 million over five years, including the cost of the services it will provide.

Victoria Garibaldi, the site’s administrator, said she and her team have housed more than 40 people since the site opened.

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

This park is the second safest parking lot in San Jose. Despite success, demand far exceeds supply. Although San Jose has 128 such secure parking spots in two locations, it is estimated that nearly 1,000 people live in their cars within the city limits.

Other Bay Area cities have tried similar ideas, but have run into additional friction.

The City of San Francisco installed secure parking in 2022. It was originally designed to accommodate up to 150 vehicles. However, the program never reached that scale.

At its peak, the site held about 35 vehicles, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Infrastructure issues, including a lack of on-site power, forced the city to rely on diesel generators, prompting complaints from neighbors and a lawsuit.

The city ultimately shut down the site, citing cost and operational issues.

Currently, San Francisco’s only designated RV parking lot is privately operated. Once a low-cost option for tourists, Candlestick RV Park, located in a corner of an industrial area southeast of the city, is attracting more and more long-term residents. Many are working but don’t have the savings or credit to take out a traditional rental agreement.

“Mainly due to the pandemic, we basically transitioned from a tourist park to a long-term park,” said Tsing Fung, the park’s manager who has worked at the park since 1993.

Spot costs (including water, electricity, sewer connections, and bathrooms) are $2,500 per month. The park recently raised fees for new tenants from $2,000 a month.

“These are hard-working people, middle class, lower middle class, working class,” Huang said. “They work hard and pay their bills.” He also noted that he has noticed so-called vanloading situations, where some tenants rent RVs from individuals outside the park.

Rethinking RV Parks

But housing construction alone may not close the gap quickly enough, said Covert of the Bay Area Council.

“We’re emerging from a 30 to 40-year trend of hostility toward mobile home parks and RV parks by local governments across the state and actually across the country,” Covert said. “They’ve been seen as an epidemic. But what we’re seeing now is that it doesn’t just exclude low-income people.”

Instead, he argues, properly managed RV parks should be reconsidered as part of local housing strategies.

“In the short term, it’s unlikely we’ll have enough transitional or transitional housing to move everyone indoors,” he said.

Covert said that until more permanent housing becomes viable, cities may have little choice but to treat RVs as part of the housing environment rather than as an anomaly.

For Alvarez, safe parking provides stability while she and her boyfriend continue to search for an apartment they can afford. It’s a place I’d be happy to move to once I find an apartment.

“I hope we can,” she said.