![\"Miranda](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SUT-L-delinquent-debts-006.jpg\")
Miranda Snyder, who lives in an RV, holds some of the tickets she has gotten from parking overnight on a city street. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\nMiranda Snyder is struggling to pay $1,154 for six parking tickets she has incurred since July for leaving her RV \u2014 the only home she can afford \u2014 parked on San Diego city streets and lots overnight.<\/p>\n
The city doubled the fines she owes for four of them because she didn\u2019t pay them on time. She said she has asked the city for weeks for a payment plan. She hasn\u2019t heard back.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s parking citation payment website also tells her that her RV could be towed for five of her citations. So during the 12 hours every day that she\u2019s out working as an accountant, she fears she could come home from work and find her RV gone \u2014 with her dog and three pet rats inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m \u2026 just praying every day that my RV will be there,\u201d Snyder said. \u201cI\u2019ll go through hell to make sure that they\u2019re okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city of San Diego is on track to issue millions more dollars in parking citation fines this year than it has in recent memory, after raising their prices last April for the first time in 21 years to adjust for inflation and to help close the city\u2019s budget deficit.<\/p>\n
In the first 10 months of this year, officers issued more than $33 million in parking citation fines, well above the $29 million issued last year,\u00a0The San Diego Union-Tribune found in its analysis of parking citation data published by the city treasurer.<\/p>\n
But even as the city issues millions more in fines, it doesn\u2019t collect all the money it charges.<\/p>\n
The city is missing out on hundreds of millions in fines,\u00a0fees and other missing payments\u00a0due because people are not paying them, whether by choice, error or \u2014 as is the case with Snyder \u2014 because they say they can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The city treasurer\u2019s Delinquent Accounts program, which handles debt collection for the city, is still trying to recover about $123 million worth of parking citations and penalties from months and years past, according to data from the city treasurer\u2019s office as of early November.<\/p>\n
Altogether, the treasurer is currently trying to recover about $264 million in delinquent fines, fees and missing payments the city is owed.<\/p>\n
Parking citations make up the single largest category of delinquent debts. About a quarter of the nearly half a million parking citations that were issued last fiscal year still have not been fully paid, a city spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Other types of delinquent debts include unpaid ambulance transport fees, which cost patients anywhere between $1,200 and more than $3,100 per ride, as well as water and sewer utility fees, fire inspection fees, \u201ccry wolf\u201d fines for false fire alarms and business taxes, such as residential rental taxes.<\/p>\n
As of early this month, the city had recovered 31% of all delinquent debts in its system, which the city treasurer\u2019s office said is above industry average. That number counts both paid and canceled debts as recovered debts.<\/p>\n
Fines are meant to serve as deterrents of unwanted behaviors, and it\u2019s also common for cities to use them as a revenue generator, said Heidi Goldberg, director of economic opportunity and financial empowerment for the National League of Cities.<\/p>\n
But when fines are imposed on people who can\u2019t afford them, they won\u2019t help cities financially, Goldberg said. At a certain point, it could cost cities more money than they actually get back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re continually issuing fines and fees on people who cannot pay them, then they\u2019re losing money in the end,\u201d Goldberg said.<\/p>\n
It also raises questions of equity, as growing fine debts can plunge people already experiencing poverty and homelessness deeper into financial hardship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe provide multiple opportunities for debtors to resolve their obligations by offering flexible solutions,\u201d a city spokesperson said in an email. \u201cWe strive to balance the need for revenue recovery with fairness and compassion for debtors and their individual circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
When you don\u2019t pay a ticket<\/p>\n
San Diego parking fines rise steeply if you leave them unpaid.<\/p>\n
If the fine goes unpaid for 35 days, the amount owed doubles as a late penalty, except in the rare case that the initial fine was $300 or more.<\/p>\n
By day 56, another $10 late fee is tacked on.<\/p>\n
After day 72, the debt is forwarded to the city treasurer\u2019s Delinquent Accounts program, where the debt will start to accumulate 7%\u00a0annual interest.<\/p>\n
At that point the city also places a hold on your vehicle\u2019s registration at the DMV.<\/p>\n
Miranda Snyder, who lives in an RV, holds some of the tickets she has gotten from parking overnight on a city street. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
Parking ticket debts are not reported to credit agencies, but the city can report other types of debts, including business taxes and transient occupancy taxes. The city also refers some debts to the Franchise Tax Board for intercepting tax refunds.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s goal is to recover as much as possible, officials said. But if a debt goes unpaid long enough, the city will deem it uncollectible and cancel it, as the cost of recovering the debt may be higher than the debt itself.<\/p>\n
The city treasurer\u2019s office has delinquent accounts going back as far as 1983. The office does not yet have a policy or process to determine which debts are uncollectible; it is currently working on one.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean people can get away with no consequences for not paying fines if they just wait long enough.<\/p>\n
For example, the hold on DMV registration means the vehicle can risk getting towed \u2014 the city says it may impound vehicles for expired registration and violations of rules requiring a vehicle be moved every 72 hours.<\/p>\n
For people living in their vehicles, that would mean losing their home.<\/p>\n
More than 1,000 tickets for RVs<\/p>\n
The success of cities\u2019 debt collection efforts often depends on whether the people getting the fines can afford them.<\/p>\n
That issue has garnered attention as the city has ramped up enforcement<\/a> of its rules prohibiting overnight parking of RVs and other oversized vehicles on city streets and lots.<\/p>\n The enforcement, which resumed in July, has especially impacted homeless people living in their RVs, many of whom say the tickets are penalizing them for not being physically or financially able to park their RVs elsewhere.<\/p>\n The city, however, has said that everyone must abide by parking laws regardless of housing status, and that those laws are necessary to uphold quality of life in neighborhoods \u201cheavily impacted by residents and visitors,\u201d especially the city\u2019s beach communities. The city gets hundreds of complaints each year about trash and lack of public parking access resulting from RVs in beach and bay areas.<\/p>\n The city offers\u00a0homeless residents a free parking lot at H Barracks<\/a>, which opened in July, with more than 100 spaces for people to park their RVs during nighttime hours and services to help people climb out of homelessness.<\/p>\n City officers offer people in RVs the chance to move to H Barracks to avoid getting cited. But relatively few people have gone to the lot \u2014 on average, only about 29% of its spaces were used in September.<\/p>\n That\u2019s largely because many say it\u2019s logistically inaccessible to them, since they would have to move their RVs out of the lot every day. Many of their vehicles need repairs or are difficult and expensive to move each day \u2014 they get only about four miles to the gallon.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the case for Veronica Flood, who lives in her RV and has been disabled ever since she got into a severe car accident at 24 years old. Her only income is about $1,300 a month in Social Security.<\/p>\n Flood has several unpaid parking tickets\u00a0for having her RV parked on city streets and lots overnight, but figuring out how to pay them has taken a back burner to figuring out how to keep herself fed.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, I haven\u2019t even thought about it too much. I try not to focus on things out of my control,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n As few take advantage of the H Barracks lot, police officers issued more than 1,100 oversized vehicle citations from July to mid-October.<\/p>\n That\u2019s in addition to 3,000 citations for other parking violations that homeless people living in their RVs also commonly receive, such as violating posted signs that prohibit overnight parking in public lots.<\/p>\n Are fines working?<\/p>\n When evaluating whether a city\u2019s fines and fees are effective and equitable, Goldberg recommends that cities ask themselves some questions:<\/p>\n Are the fines actually working? Are they reducing the behavior the city wants to deter? Who is most affected by the fines? Does trying to collect the debt cost more than it\u2019s worth? Would a lower fine or fee be more likely to get\u00a0paid?<\/p>\n Some cities have changed the way they issue court-ordered fines, such as traffic violations, to consider the person\u2019s ability to pay. Other ways cities can offer help to debtors include offering financial coaching, connections with public benefits like food stamps, payment plans or a sliding scale for fees and fines, Goldberg said.<\/p>\n One main source of help that San Diego offers in paying off parking citations is a payment plan option.<\/p>\n Generally, the plan is only available to low-income people who are either at or below 200% of the federal poverty line \u2014 the federal poverty line is $15,600 a year for a one-person household \u2014 or who receive a government benefit payment, such as food stamps, Social Security or CalWORKs.<\/p>\n![\"Miranda](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SUT-L-delinquent-debts-004.jpg\")
Miranda Snyder has received a number of overnight parking tickets but can\u2019t afford to pay them. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n