We the undersigned to hereby declare that the City of Palo Alto should abandon its efforts to enact a Vehicle Habitation Ordinance based upon but not limited to the following facts:

A vehicle habitation ordinance will be in violation of Palo Alto’s Muni-Code.

Palo Alto’s Muni-Codes 9.37.010 and 9.74.010 state that housing is a “fundamental necessity of life,” and that the human and equal rights of every person within the city of Palo Alto’s jurisdiction shall be safeguarded and protected which includes “freedom from arbitrary discrimination on the basis of housing status.”

The state of being in which a person is using a vehicle as housing/habitation is a form of “housing status.”

The state of being homeless or un-housed is a form of “housing status.”

To deny the use of vehicles for any use based upon the housing status would be a violation of the City of Palo Alto’s Muni-Code 9.37.010.

Therefore the city of Palo Alto is prohibited from denying the use of vehicles by the un-housed by the City’s own Muni-Code.

A vehicle habitation ordinance will not solve the problems that city staff claims that it wants to solve.

Since the vehicle habitation ordinance will not solve the problems that city staff desires to abate there is no logical reason to enact a vehicle habitation ordinance.

Given that a vehicle habitation ordinance will not solve the problems that city staff desires to abate, and given that a vehicle habitation ordinance will cause significant harm to un-housed residents who habitate their vehicles, the enactment of a vehicle habitation ordinance will be regarded as a malicious act.

This is further corroborated by the fact that city staff has deliberately given immunity to any and all housed people to continue to habitate their vehicles while denying the same activity to un-housed people verifying the discriminatory nature of the ordinance.

The discriminatory nature of the ordinance and the malicious intent to harm residents who do not possess fixed addresses is validated by the proposed vehicle habitation ordinance.

City staff and proponents of the ordinance have fabricated and or have grossly exaggerated problems caused by vehicle dwellers.

City staff has refused to implement solutions to solve the problems that it claims that it wants to solve. For example enforcing current rules, (Sections 6, 7, 14 and 18 of Palo Alto Muni-Code 2.08.050 under “…Prohibited Conduct at or in Community Centers…”) at Cubberely Center. By refusing to enforce these rules, city staff has created an unnecessary problem in order to justify a vehicle habitation ordinance that will not address any of the real or imagined problems at Cubberely Center.

The City Of Palo Alto has failed to demonstrate any harm vehicle dwellers are causing anyone by the act of habitating a vehicle.

Lastly, taking away vehicles from the homeless will cause significant irreparable harm to the homeless.