By Mark Noack, Mountain View Voice, May 13, 2019
“Mountain View’s proposed ban on large vehicles has provoked a stern warning from civil rights attorneys who say it would discriminate against the city’s homeless.
“In a [nine-page, footnoted] letter to the city, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley both urged Mountain View officials not to move forward with plans to prohibit large vehicles over six feet tall from street parking.
“In March, the City Council gave initial approval to the citywide parking ban as a way to curtail the surging numbers of people living in vehicles on city streets, [saying] the city would be following other cities that have enacted similar restrictions. A formal ordinance with specific details is expected to be brought back to the City Council [in June].
“About 290 inhabited vehicles park on Mountain View streets, of [which] two-thirds are large RVs or trailers that would be impacted by an oversized vehicle ban.
[Among other reasons,] “the attorneys also argued that the proposal seemed designed to discriminate against the homeless, but almost anyone else who owns a large vehicle would get special consideration. The city’s March staff report noted that a future ordinance would carve out special exemptions for business owners, residents, government officials, and other groups to continue parking their oversized vehicles on the street.”