Residents of the expensive California neighborhood where Google has its global headquarters have voted to ban trailers from parking overnight on public streets after a camp of permanent residences has built up due to soaring housing costs.
The decision to get rid of the unsightly RVs came in a March city council vote after complaints of sewage spilling from the mobile homes and into the roads around the Googleplex campus.
Many in the meeting blamed the Google effect for forcing long-term residents out of their homes and in turn creating the housing crisis that has seen some get in trouble for discharging 'domestic sewage on the public right of way'.
But some making a home in the trailers – often with power generators attached to the back and blacked out dusty windows - are also contractors for the company who can't afford the high living costs.
Residents of the expensive California neighborhood where Google has its global headquarters have voted to ban trailers from parking overnight on public streets
A camp of permanent residences has built up in Mountain View due to soaring housing costs but soon they must go
Indicators of Google employees living in trailer homes are the campus bikes spotted near the RVs
Bloomberg reported an angry Mountain View Police Department Sergeant Wahed Magee warning a young couple he would not tow their home immediately 'but tomorrow if I come out here and it's like this, it's getting towed'.
But this month the ban is still not in place. A May 13 picture shows a tire lock, used to prevent towing, on a vehicle parked on Landings Drive in Mountain View. While Mountain View is the epicenter of a Silicon Valley tech boom minting millionaires, it's also fueling a homelessness crisis that the United Nations recently referred to as a human rights violation.
With many tech giants calling the Bay Area home, thousands of people live in RVs across Greater San Francisco because they can't afford to rent or buy homes.
'In my neighborhood there are a group of five or six duplexes and a couple that I know lived in one of them for 22 years. When Google moved in next door, their landlord raised the rent by $700 a month,' resident Susan Barkin told Bloomberg. 'Preventing parking and throwing more people out of our community is unconscionable. I do not want to live in a town where the only people who can afford to be here are very, very, rich techies or very, very, old retirees like myself.'
A Waymo LLC vehicle drives past recreational vehicles parked on Landings Drive in Mountain View, California on Tuesday, May 14
