Just a question, but if people are homeless how can they register and license their cars? Do the license plates refer to previous addresses? Is it legal to drive a car with a former address of which you have no present connection?

I was under the impression that the license plate should be a means of tracing the owner. Is that not the case?

Bystander, the DMV has a form called a "statement of fact" (REG 256) attesting to being unhoused. They can receive mail at a post office that accepts general delivery, or any address that will accept mail for the person.

BTW, the REG 256 has several other uses, not just for homeless people. I wish more people were aware of the form, because without ID, life is very limiting these days. I keep forgetting to go to the recycling center with a poster about it. Especially with so many people unhoused. DMV does not advertise this, and I know it works because I used it once myself. Google "REG 256" "DMV".

My concern is that churches usually want to assign their safe parking spots in the far reaches of their parking lots, out of the way of evening or early morning church activities. In Palo Alto this tends to be close to housing just on the other side of the fence.

When a church adjacent to our neighborhood considered having a Safe Parking Program, they wanted to locate the guest porta potty and garbage bins as well as the 4 parking spaces in the far corner of their large lot adjacent to a fence separating the church from residences. Neighbors were concerned about idling cars, among other things. Emily Foley, Associate Planner of the Planning and Development Services Department, told us this: "Program participants will not leave vehicle engines running longer than 30 continuous minutes per hour. Additional idling is allowed if necessary to provide heat to an occupied vehicle if the outside ambient temperature is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, or idling is necessary to provide cooling to an occupied vehicle if the outside temperature is more than 85 degrees Fahrenheit. This is allowed under PAMC 10.62.030 and required for the safety and comfort of the guests on-site."

It's not good for people to be living so close to multiple cars idling for hours during the night, even if it's only for 1/2 hr per hour, and no one is available to enforce that rule anyway. It's not good for the people living in those cars either, but it's supposed to be a temporary situation. We can't idle cars in front of schools because it's a danger to the children. I hope that if the city is planning to expand the program, they will require churches to situate parking spaces in areas of their lots that are far enough from homes to protect families from vehicle exhaust.

Local residents could report unsavory people walking along Louis Road, urinating on Louis and N California near First Congregational, seeing them look into yards for interesting opportunities. But why bother to complain? In the neighborhood meeting with First Congregational, when concerns were brought up, the staff proudly said they did not need the neighborhood approval to do this. So who has judged the trial as being a success?

We live in a very nice area and I am not familiar with Palo Alto residents that have hit hard times and need a helping hand. Pressure is being artificially placed on this area with this church program, RVs that park all around dumping sewage and garbage and are not removed and military age men coming through our open southern border with unknown whereabouts.

Hooray for expanding this program. Thank you to the churches and congregations that are supporting it.

If there are so many people living in their cars in Midtown, as Christopher Kan suggests, why would we not give preference to Palo Alto folks?

This program does not make sense.
People should register and make use of official social services including the shelter on El Camino Real and others.

Re preferences: The program operator (Move Mountain View) already applies some preferences, the people using the program tend to sort themselves geographically anyway, and the program is so lightly used that adding a bunch of mandatory preferences would slow down placement without making a significant difference in service. There's also a pretty good argument that when it comes to setting preferences the congregations who are providing the space should have priority over the City (which provides neither space nor funding for this program).

Re social services: One of the nice features of this program is that Move Mountain View provides a case worker who connects the users to official social services.

One reason there are no community complaints about the Highway Church site is that no one uses the program.

The Highway Church parking lot borders my back yard. We can hear everything that goes on in the lot. I walk my dog past the lot every morning around 7:00 a.m. The neighborhood supported the establishment of the lot - the first safe parking lot in the City - and worked hard with the Highway Church and the City to put in place a set of rules that made the program work for the Church and our neighborhood.

There is NO WAY that they have had 41.8% occupancy.

Here's the math: 42% occupancy means that two of the four spots are occupied five days a week and one spot is occupied on the other two nights. If there have been 21 clients served that means that average client stayed 72 nights. That's just fiction. Most nights the lot is empty, occasionally there is one car, and very rarely two cars. At the community's meeting with Move Mountain View and the City when their license was extended, MMV admitted that they were having difficulty finding clients for the lot, so the idea that now the occupancy is reported as 42 is ludicrous. The Highway Church is also aware that the lot is underused.

If anyone is actually using the program then Move Mountain View is in violation of the rules they agreed to. The portable toilet has been moved to a spot that is closer to a neighbor's fence than permitted under the rules. The designated parking spots have been moved to the back of the lot, also closer to the fence line than permitted under the rules. The twice nightly security visits that Move Mountain View promised to conduct definitely are not happening. Is the City or County monitoring MMV?

We in the neighborhood would love to see the program succeed. What we don't want is for the community and the City to think that the program has been a success, and for Move Mountain View to collect more money for opening more sites, when the program is actually failing.

This is a great program! Congratulations to the congregations that participate, and to the the Commissions that just supported continuing and expanding theprogram. Given the severity of the housing crisis and homelessness crisis, our city must do everything it can to lend a hand.

If the program is so underused, why is there talk of expanding the number of spaces? Seems like the wrong focus.

"If the program is so underused, why is there talk of expanding the number of spaces?"

They're just starting an outreach program to let people know they can park in the lots rather than on the streets, and also have access to restrooms, social services, etc. If the program is successful there might be a need for more spaces, so the plan is to make sure expansion rules are already in place if required.

As a Christian, I encourage all congregations to actually house these unsheltered people, rather than just provide parking spaces.

I know First Congregation Church has a very nice facility (bathrooms with showers) that can accommodate the unhoused (First Congration is already doing this one month a year with Hotel de Zink).

As mentioned in the article, there is no interaction between the perrishoner and the unhoused. The building is not used at night. I am sure the unhoused will be very appreciative to have a roof over and a nice bathroom and shower to use.

Why have them spend $5/gallon on gas just to stay warm when the building is already heated.

I've lived behind the Highway church for over 25 years. One of the selling points of the Safe Parking program to the neighborhood was that we would have FEWER homeless folks living in the church parking lot once MMV took over. We were thrilled as a neighborhood. We wouldn't have people drinking in the bushes, RVs running loud generators for hours at night, or folks climbing on top of the roof of the church to sleep. Believe me, the neighborhood thought it was a win-win. I was super happy when the program launched at Highway because a woman who had lived in her car for over three years in the parking lot was finally housed...a promising start! There was good collaboration between MMV and the church with the neighborhood. MMV promised the neighborhood that only approved applicants could park at the church, there would be nightly security, regular hours and a social worker assigned to each person. As neighbors, we believed we were supporting a real effort to meet a real need. Fast forward two years.....nobody uses the lot most of the time...EMPTY. Maybe expanding Safe Parking programs isn't the answer. The city needs to do more outreach to figure out the needs of the homeless population in our area. The city needs to conduct a census of homeless folks living here to understand what the numbers actually are and assess the needs of homeless individuals in our community. Maybe we need more RV lots if that is where most of our unhoused folks are living with services robustly focused on RV communities. Maybe we need to recognize the possibility that people sleep in their cars at night on our residential streets because their jobs are here and their homes are hours away. Maybe they don't need a social worker; maybe they need affordable housing. Finally, maybe we need more intensive services for unhoused folks with addiction and mental health challenges who don't even own a car. Are our tax dollars supporting real solutions, or 'feel-good' solutions?

Shelters don't have parking lots for all of vehicle dwellers. Also, most shelters don't allow pets. Then, there is the issue of sleeping with one eye open and the other one keeping surveillance indoors to make sure they don't get robbed, and another keeping an eye on the parking lot to make sure their rig isn't getting robbed. Nobody has 3 eyes, so it's a lot to absorb when one just wants a good night's sleep. You can't sleep with your two eyes open and third eye blind is a band, not an actual thing. "There but for the grace of god go I" -- you don't know until you've experiened it, what it's like trying to sleep in an unsafe space. Cars and RV's have doors that lock. It's the least every community should offer -- the right to sleep behind a locked door with all of their possessions safely inside as well. Linda, there are PIT counts done but most of the vehicle dwellers aren't counted because they are mobile.

@MyFeelz, we're not talking about homeless shelters in these comments [portion removed.] If you believe that every community should offer folks a "right to sleep behind a locked door with all of their possessions safely inside as well," we're doing that in Palo Alto right now. My question is why aren't more people taking advantage of that offer and why are our current Safe Parking programs underutilized? BTW, unhoused individuals with service dogs are totally allowed in Safe Parking sites in our city. It's not difficult to get your dog tagged as a service dog, so just want readers to know that service dogs are welcomed in Safe Parking lots.

Linda, I wasn't directing my comment to you, and there are two comments asking why homeless people don't just use shelters for sleeping. I also did not say people with dogs can't go to the church parking lots. I said that most shelters do not allow pets. There are a few but I can't see somebody "moving" to an area where there is a shelter that accept pets. Homeless shelters aren't designed to be "forever homes" but they're turning out that way, due to circumstances often attributable to horrible circumstances. Not drugs, or mental illness. All of the people who were burned out in Paradise -- do you think they went home after the fire was out? Many of the victims of a wind-borne catastrophe are still living on the streets. Sometimes there's no way to get a foothold to try to use to steady themselves as they put their lives together via bootstrap method. Imagine a homeless person trying to register a service animal if they don't even have an ID. I rarely ascribe an attribute to "all" -- I leave room for the few shelters where they DO allow pets. [Portion removed.]

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Allen Akin, this program has been around for 2 years already. I assume 2 years should be enough for the program to show results.

Palo Alto is not paying for MMV directly but it is funded by Santa Clara County ( our tax payer’s money).

@RH: Highway and Unitarian Universalist were approved in 2021, so their programs have been running two years. First Congregational was approved in 2022, so about a year. Etz Chayim was approved in June, so just a few months.

Overall the positive placement rate (into housing or shelter) is about 45%. The rest are either still in vehicles or unknown (left without notice or refused to say where they were going).

The question of whether Palo Alto funds MMV directly was related to the question of whether the City should require MMV to give preference to clients connected to Palo Alto. According to the Staff Report, Mountain View does require preferential treatment, but also provides funding directly.

Thanks to Steve Shevick and Linda MacKenzie for having the courage to let us know of the real situation of MOVE Mountain View. I guess it's a win-win, the City Council can claim they offer this program but we don't really need to deal with it.

I volunteered at many places but was discouraged by the organizations who claim to help those in need but it's not all that it's cracked up to be.

I volunteered at a food shelter and anyone can go pick up free food, no questions asked, and good food, fresh vegetables, frozen chicken, etc., it was a mini grocery store. There were even cans of Muir Glenn Organic diced tomatoes (which I don't even buy because it's too expensive). Some people did not appear needy. The issue with all this socialism is that there is always room for abuse but the volunteers feel good about themselves and the donators can write it off in taxes.

Same thing with Lytton Gardens low-income housing. Many people living there have offspring who work at high income jobs in tech. The City Council is aware but they are still doing their job by allowing low-income housing into the community.

Someone I know who was visiting from another country had many medical appointments at Stanford for free while the middle and low class are struggling to pay for their health insurance at thousands of dollars per month.

It's no wonder that California is a target: good weather, free food, free healthcare, free drugs in S.F. Tax the rich, give to the poor. Have you looked at your retail taxes? There is a Santa Clara County tax PLUS a Santa Clara County District tax.

Meanwhile, we are paying 6 figures of state taxes to support these programs, not that money fell into our laps. I don't know why voters don't vote more wisely.

@SAHM
"no wonder that California is a target: good weather, free food, free healthcare, free drugs in S.F" This is of course a moving target. Sounds like a lot of driving, commuting, shifting, living, coming, going... I am a born and bred N. Californian and I feel like an alien in this vast California desert of the have's a lot to the majority who have nothing or hovering around zero. a UBI universal basic income could help a ton here. Yet the legislators wield an anvil of burdensome, ill equipped, dysfunctional power from the cream at the top. What get to the bottom? A quasi "shelter" with so many policies and rules making survival near unreachable.

The only target I experience is the rise in poverty, the decline in quality of life, the absolute absurd amount of lines, paperwork and shear disregard for the sanctity of human life at its most base.

Human survival in California, the 5th largest economy on Earth, is failing its residents sorely, sadly, tragically.

I am concerned that people who are homeless are being encouraged to come here because the group is promising something - but the something is less then desirable. The people during the day park on residential streets -they are an "unknown" when we have people who are increasing the residential robberies. This is a set up for a lot of undesirable outcomes. Better they get situated in a place that is theirs.
Mountain View has more variables in types of available space as well as a huge inventory of apartments with varying cost levels. Palo Alto has less variables in types of housing and available space.

the churches should post where housing is and get people to those locations. Also they should entertain putting permanent housing on their back property - build.

We have big rains coming soon and this idea will not work well with that situation. Get people to a location where they ae inside a room.