RVs impounded by police may have tougher time showing back up on streets

SEATTLE — It’s been more than 6 months since a converted shuttle bus made into an RV, crashed into the West Seattle Health club causing a fire and $300,000 in damage.

Another RV has since rolled down the hill -- fortunately through the club’s empty parking lot this time -- and crashing into a creek.

It's two high profile incidents the club’s management had hoped would draw the City's attention to its complaints about the transient RVs that line the street by the club.

“Nothing has really changed,” says Vice President of Operations Dan Lehr. “There’s still illegally dumping on our property, scaling of our garbage cans.”

But he and club members may get some response to their complaints from the City of Seattle.

Sources in City Hall say the City is making more of an effort to declare derelict RVs as junk, streamlining a process to get them off the street faster rather than having an RV reappear on the street after being impounded and auctioned.

An internal city document, shared between two city departments involved in the City’s RV Remediation program, shows more RVs are being recycled back on the street after being ticketed and towed. In 2018, 293 different RVs were towed to Lincoln Towing’s lot — 170 had been towed and impounded more than once, with one RV cycled through six times during the year.

It's estimated 95 percent of the RVs were considered too unsanitary for living.

But the document reflects a change that may get rid of many derelict RVs some say are contributing to neighborhood problems. RV tows in the first quarter of 2019 are running ahead of last year, with more entering the route to disposal rather than auction. That’s because, the report says, police are filing more Junk Vehicle Affidavits, thereby avoiding auction process.

“That’s why it’s getting hard to buy RVs right now — they are not getting them to the auction and disposing of them faster than we can buy them,” says Thiago Cross, who boasts that he and his “people” have bought hundreds of RVs at auction, some that don’t even run and rents them to the homeless.

“I wanted to give them a place to stay,” he told KOMO News last October. He said he’s returned between 200 and 300 to the street but KOMO News was unable to verify his claim.

He said in a phone call from Denver that he still has some of his “people” buying RVs at auction but it’s getting harder to do.

When a vehicle is towed after parking beyond the 72-hour legal limit or for a number of other reasons, it’s often taken to a North Seattle storage lot run by Lincoln Towing. If no one pays the impound fees, which could run into the hundreds of dollars, and the legal owner cannot be found after 21 days, the RV is auctioned off, often times going for somewhere between $1 and $50.

“Now that they’ve had some real hard data, I hope they (the city) make some changes,” says Lehr.

“I’m very excited to see this momentum,” says the Executive Director of the SODO Business Association Erin Goodman.

SODO has seen some of the highest rates of crime tied to RV dwellers.

“I feel we've turned the corner and that the city is really taking the situation in SODO seriously," she said.

But deposing of RVs could prove to be costly.

Lincoln has contracted with ScrapIt, a recycling company 90 miles north of Seattle in Ferndale. City taxpayers pay an average of $1,500 per RV to be hauled to Ferndale and destroyed. The City of Seattle has budgeted more than half a million dollars for RV disposal.

Lehr believes city leaders need to look at the impact derelict RVs have on neighborhoods and businesses.

“I think their egos are a little too wrapped up in their programs to really have perspective needed to make change," Lehr said.

A pending court decision could also have an impact.

The City is appealing a King County Superior Court decision saying the city overstepped its authority to tow the truck of a Seattle resident declaring his truck was his home and thereby was exception from being impounded because of the state’s Homestead Act. Should Seattle lose its appeal, it could change how all vehicles are treated if its occupants say it’s their primary home.