Six weeks into San Diego’s crackdown on motor homes that have taken up semi-permanent residence in Mission Bay Park, police officials are telling residents not to expect dramatic changes any time soon.
Police say they are steadily reducing the number of recreational vehicles parked on city streets but that enforcement has been hampered by a shortage of officers and limited by court rulings.
One challenge is figuring out which RVs belong to homeless San Diegans, which ones belong to homeless transients and which are being used by people vacationing on city streets instead of in campgrounds or RV parks.
Last year the city settled a lawsuit that accused it of targeting homeless people living in their vehicles. Among other things, the city agreed not to enforce its bans on living in vehicles and parking RVs on streets overnight if people have nowhere else to go.
Now, police say helping homeless RV owners find needed social services could lead to more permanent solutions.
“The goal is to chip away one at a time and make a difference,” Capt. Steve Shebloski told dozens of beach area residents at a Thursday night forum in Liberty Station. “It’s a little slower, but I think it’s going to have more permanent results than living in a constant whac-a-mole world.”
Shebloski also said mass towing — which would be difficult legally — would likely prompt RV owners to relocate to city streets within residential neighborhoods.
“I don’t want to just move a problem from Pacific Beach to Mission Bay to La Jolla to Clairemont to Tierrasanta,” he said.
Mission Bay Park is seen on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in San Diego. (Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Since the city’s Mission Bay Park crackdown was launched July 2, police have issued nearly 1,485 citations, persuaded 96 people to move their RVs into city-sponsored safe parking lots and gotten 28 people to seek social services help.
“Nearly 1,500 citations and many successful referrals into safe parking — it’s only been six weeks,” said Shebloski, who leads the department’s Neighborhood Policing Division.
Cracking down at all only became possible this spring when San Diego opened the H Barracks safe parking lot, where 25 of the 180 slots are reserved for motor homes or other large recreational vehicles.
In last year’s settlement, San Diego agreed not to tow oversized vehicles unless enough safe parking lot spots were available for them to relocate. Before H Barracks, the city didn’t have enough of those slots.
Between when the lawsuit settlement was finalized and the opening of H Barracks, the number of RVs in Mission Bay Park and some other hotspots exploded because the city couldn’t tow them away.
In the settlement of the case, Bloom v. San Diego, the city agreed not to enforce its oversized vehicle ordinance or its vehicle habitation ordinance unless slots are available in safe parking lots.
The city also agreed not to enforce a previous rule that motor homes would be towed after getting five citations under the oversized vehicle ordinance, which bans parking large vehicles on most city streets between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
A large vehicle is defined as being either more than 27 feet long or more than 7 feet high. A rule against parking such vehicles within 50 feet of an intersection remains in place and enforceable, police said.
The H Barracks lot near San Diego International Airport has 190 spots for homeless people who live in their vehicles. (Howard Lipin)
Even though San Diego now has the power to tow, Shebloski said officials still have chosen to take a less aggressive approach.
“We didn’t want to ambush or carpet-bomb people with tickets,” he said. “We wanted to do it in a compassionate way.”
Shebloski said that doesn’t mean the police don’t sympathize with residents and other users of Mission Bay Park who are bothered by the RVs.
“Mission Bay Park is a great example of an area that become a de facto RV park with no services, no dump stations, no trash receptacles and no enforcement,” he said,
Sgt. Mike Wallace, who is leading the city’s crackdown, provided more detailed insight into why mass towing doesn’t make sense.
“Towing a vehicle is a 20-minute to 1-hour ordeal,” said Wallace, explaining that towing the first one or two vehicles his team comes across each morning would prevent them from citing hundreds of others.
Wallace said his team typically begins their efforts about 1:30 a.m. While they usually focus on East Mission Bay Drive, they sometimes shift to Fiesta Island, Quivira Basin, Ski Beach or other locations.
Wallace echoed Shebloski’s suggestion that slow and steady is the proper strategy.
“We’re adapting to the obstacles that we’re facing through continuous contacts and continuous enforcement,” he said. “We are getting compliance — I know it doesn’t seem that way.”
Wallace called the process “fluid” and described it as a sort of trial-and-error approach. But he insisted police are making steady progress.
He also said police are exploring new strategies but didn’t disclose them. “We are looking at other areas of stepping up our enforcement and our outreach,” he said.
Originally Published: August 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM PDT