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Palo Alto police chased down and detained a man on Wednesday, April 26, after he allegedly threw objects at passersby from his trash-covered bus on El Camino Real near Stanford University, Palo Alto police Lt. Brian Philip said.
Police had contacted the man on April 25 and asked him to clean up his parking space after multiple people called the police to alert them to a bus and a large amount of debris littering the street around the vehicle. A photo of the bus, taken by a Palo Alto resident and posted on the site NextDoor, shows it surrounded by a host of items, including a small refrigerator, a step ladder, shoes and plastic buckets, both on the street and sidewalk. It’s parked across from the Palo Alto Unified School District administrative building and Palo Alto High School.
On April 25, Palo Alto officers, in addition to asking the man to clean up the mess, marked the bus with a 72-hour tow-away notice, Philip said.
The next day, officers responded to two separate calls reporting that the bus’s occupant was throwing items at passersby. None were injured. During the first call, at 10:54 a.m., the man rode away from officers on his bicycle, Philip said.
Police responded to the location again at 12:34 p.m. The man, who is in his 40s, ran from the police. Officers chased him and detained him without incident about five blocks away. Police transported him to a hospital for mental health treatment.
The city’s Public Works crews have cleaned up the area, securing any valuables in the man’s bus, police said.
The situation of people living in their cars has been a subject of debate for years in Palo Alto and surrounding cities. Palo Alto began enforcing parking time limits for people who were using parking spaces as permanent locations in 2017. At the time, the city requested Santa Clara County social service caseworkers to do outreach to the vehicle dwellers to assess their status and direct them to resources.
In Mountain View, the city began enforcing its rules banning oversized vehicle from all but 3 miles of its roads at the beginning of October 2022. The regulation is the result of a settlement reached last year between the city and RV dwellers after voters in 2020 supported an ordinance prohibiting RVs from parking on any streets less than 40 feet wide or with a bike lane — the majority of the city’s roads.
RV and car dwellers in the area have said that more affordable housing, not regulation, is needed.
