Roadmap to Housing Program to Offer RV Parking in Venice

The Roadmap to Housing program will add spaces for RVs to safely and legally park overnight in Venice at the Penmar Golf Course parking lot, according to Councilman Bill Rosendahl. 

The lot is located on Rose Avenue, and is bordered on two sides by the golf course, by the golf course maintenance yard on a third side, and across the street is Penmar Park, which has a high fence and no access from that side.

LAPD Pacific Division Senior Lead Officer Theresa Skinner helped identify the location. "Officer Skinner and I did a ride-along, and she thought this was an appropriate location," Rosendahl chief of staff Mike Bonin told Patch. "Capt. Peters has signed off as well."

The program, formerly known as Streets to Homes or Vehicles to Homes, offers vehicular homeless in CD 11 safe and legal places to park overnight, while providing social services and transitioning people into permanent housing. It was set up by the councilman and is administered by People Assisting the Homeless (PATH). The program has been in development for more than two years and is based on similar programs in Santa Barbara and Eugene, OR.

In order for the program to work, the city attorney's office had to draft changes to the city municipal code, which will likely go before the City Council in the coming month. A previous version of the draft ordinance, known as 85.11, did not include any parking spaces in Venice and asked for a 50-foot buffer zone between parking spaces and residences.

The current iteration, announced Thursday, imposes a 150-foot buffer zone.

Some members of the Venice community asked for a 300-foot setback at a Venice Neighborhood Council meeting in March. However, the two locations previously included in the program, at the councilman's offices in Westchester and in West L.A., would have been nullified by the longer setback requirement.

"We started to get a lot of pushback from Westchester and West L.A.," Bonin told Patch. The Westchester Neighborhood Council held a heavily attended meeting Tuesday night to hear an update on the plan.

"I would like to see Venice pick out some lots," Westchester Neighborhood Council member Nora MacLellan said at a City Council Transportation Committee meeting last month. "People don't want to be uprooted from their community."

Venice Neighborhood Council member Carolyn Rios agreed. "The people who live in Venice need to be housed in Venice," she told the Transportation Committee.

However, many Venice residents have said that the neighborhood is too densely residential to offer any suitable locations. "People do not have the right to park on our streets and in front of our homes," Mariana Aguilar said. "The fact that we would like a solution does not mean we aren't taking ownership of the solution."

Another component of the program will be to find parking spots at churches or other privately owned locations. Rosendahl has directed the city attorney's office to look into what would need to be changed at the legal level to allow for that practice, but it is going to be a long process. Although 85.11 will change the municipal code, allowing for overnight parking on private lots will call for changes to the city's complicated planning code.

The new draft ordinance also includes a three-year sunset clause over the program, Bonin told Patch. A sunset clause was supported by many members of the community, as well as Rosendahl's fellow Transportation Committee members.

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