Parked along industrial streets, behind warehouses and clustered in residential neighborhoods, thousands of Bay Area residents live in one of the only forms of housing they can afford: recreational vehicles.
Across California, the number of people living in vehicles has soared in recent years, as rising rents and a chronic housing shortage push even full-time workers out of traditional homes and into temporary homes on wheels.
Tech wealth booms, and homelessness rates rise
In Santa Clara County — home to Apple, Google and eight of America’s 50 most expensive zip codes — the number of people living in RVs full-time has soared. The percentage of homeless individuals sleeping in vehicles has doubled since the pandemic, from 18% in 2019 to 37% in 2025, county data show.
California accounts for nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless population, though it is home to 12% of its total population, according to federal housing data. Experts say the state is facing a massive housing shortage, with one McKinsey estimate suggesting California needs up to 3.5 million additional homes to meet demand.
Even as officials expand shelter capacity, federal data shows far fewer shelter beds are available than there are people experiencing homelessness, leaving a large percentage of the unhoused population without access to shelter.
“In California, you are more likely to become homeless 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 you do, you are more likely to be homeless on the streets rather than in a shelter than in almost any other state.”
Why RVs?
Advocates say many people turn to recreational vehicles because they offer a degree of independence that shelters and streets don’t.
“The RV was much better,” said Salina Alvarez, who lived in the RV with her boyfriend for a year and a half. Before living in an RV, the couple lived in a car.
“The car is smaller… You can’t cook, you can’t wash dishes, you can’t shower, you can’t go to the bathroom. You have to go somewhere.”
Salina Alvarez is a resident of Berryessa Supportive Parking in San Jose, California. She lived in the RV for a year and a half.
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The RV was much better. The car is smaller… you can’t cook, you can’t wash dishes, you can’t shower, you can’t go to the bathroom. You have to go somewhere.
Salina Alvarez
Resident in an RV
Rise of the “Fan Lords”
As housing options narrow, a new level of crisis has emerged – with even vehicles becoming rental properties.
The shade rental market has taken over throughout the Bay Area, with people renting out old RVs to people who have few other options. Some call them “Fan Masters.”
Tenants pay hundreds of dollars a month to sleep in a car parked on a public street. The arrangements typically come without written leases or tenant protections.
CNBC spoke with one landlord and several tenants. Some of the tenants were immigrants recently arrived in the United States, including a woman and her two children from Mexico, while others said the option was simply less expensive than traditional apartment housing in the Bay Area.
One person told CNBC that he had been living in an RV on a San Francisco street for about a year, sharing it with a friend for a total of $500 a month. They rent from the owner of a group of vehicles in the same building, which they describe as “safe and comfortable,” adding that renting a room in an apartment for $1,000 is very expensive.
But lawmakers consider these arrangements exploitative.
“These are people who are using our public streets to get revenue, making money without any kind of permits or procedures to make sure they’re following any rules about what conditions RVs have to be in, or what rights a person who’s renting has,” said San Jose City Councilman David Cohen, who sponsored legislation to ban the practice. “We’re trying to protect our community and also protect the homeless people.”
But cracking down on truck owners has been difficult, and the underground market continues.
Meanwhile, cities across the Bay Area have stepped up parking enforcement, issuing citations and towing vehicles as RV encampments become more visible.
However, neither approach — banning truck owners or cracking down on parking — has succeeded in reversing the growth in vehicle homelessness.
This left officials looking for alternatives.
Different approach
In an industrial corner of San Jose, just off the freeway and sandwiched between a recycling plant and a concrete distributor, the city of San Jose has transformed an empty parking lot into what it calls a “secure parking site.”
Operated by a local nonprofit and funded by a city grant, the Berryessa Safe Parking Site has space for 86 RVs, making it one of the largest sites of its kind in California, according to WeHope, the homeless organization that runs it. The park opens in 2025, and organizers say it always has a full waiting list. Alvarez, full time at home The care worker is one of its residents.
At the center of the 6-acre plot is a bank of showers, laundry machines and an office, where case workers meet with residents to help them find housing. Dealing with the system — working your way out of RVs and into traditional housing — is one of the requirements of living in the park.
The city expects the site to cost $24 million over five years, including the cost of the services it provides.
Site manager Victoria Garibaldi said she and her team have housed up to 40 people in housing since the site opened.
Victoria Garibaldi, a program manager at WeHOPE, oversees the city’s safe parking site. She says the program has helped more than 40 residents obtain permanent housing.
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“We want them to have their own places,” she said. “This is not a permanent solution to the housing problem.”
The park is San Jose’s second secure parking location. Despite its success, the need far outstrips the supply. San Jose has 128 such spaces across two secure parking sites, but it is estimated that nearly 1,000 people live in vehicles within city limits.
Other cities in the Bay Area have tried similar ideas, but have seen more friction.
San Francisco created a secure parking site in 2022, originally designed to hold up to 150 vehicles. But the program never reached that scale.
At its peak, the site had about 35 vehicles, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Infrastructure challenges — including a lack of electricity at the site — forced the city to rely on diesel generators, drawing complaints from neighbors and sparking a lawsuit.
The city eventually closed the site, citing cost and operational challenges.
Today, what may be the only designated RV parking site in San Francisco is privately operated. Candlestick RV Park, in the city’s industrial southeast corner, once a low-cost option for tourists, is now home to long-term residents, many of whom work but lack the savings or credit to secure a more traditional lease.
“We have gone from mainly a tourist park to a long-term park, mainly due to the effects of the pandemic,” said Tsin Fong, the park’s director, who has worked there since 1993.
The price for the place — which includes water, electricity, sewer hookups and bathrooms — is $2,500 a month. Q The park recently raised its rate for new tenants from $2,000 per month.
“They’re hard-working people, and they’re kind of middle-class, lower-class, working-class,” Fung said. “They work hard, they pay their bills.” He also noted that he has become aware that some renters are renting their recreational vehicles from individuals outside the park, in so-called repossession situations.
“We have gone from primarily a tourist park to a long-term park, mainly due to the effects of the pandemic.”
Tsin Fung
San Francisco RV Park Manager
Rethinking RV parks
But housing construction alone may not close the gap quickly enough, said Covert of the Bay Area Council.
“We’re coming out of 30- or 40-year trends of hostility from local governments across the state — in fact, across the country — toward mobile home parks and RV parks,” Covert said. “They were seen as a blight. But what we’re seeing now is that it’s not just driving low-income people out.”
Instead, he contends that well-managed RV parks should be reconsidered as part of the region’s housing strategy.
“It is unlikely that, in the near term, we will have enough transitional or temporary housing to move everyone home,” he said.
San Jose has designated 128 RV spaces across two parcels, offering residents a free place to stay while they work with case managers to secure permanent housing.
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Until more permanent housing is available, Covert said, cities may have no choice but to treat RVs not as an anomaly, but as part of the residential landscape.
For Alvarez, the secure parking location provides stability while she continues to search for an apartment she and her boyfriend can afford — a place she’d like to move to if they can find one.
“I hope I can,” she said.
