A popular surfing beach near San Francisco is seeing its parking lots filled not with surfers or tourists but with RVs — and nearby residents and beach visitors have had enough.

Brian Feulner, a surfing photographer from Forestville, started a petition to end “vehicle squatting” at Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica, calling on local and state governments to remove the vehicles, clean up the “contaminated” parking lot, and restore fair access to the area.

The petition, which has almost 1,200 signatures as of Thursday, also wants to curb illegal dumping of wastewater and to provide resources to homeless individuals.

“Our beloved beach is currently facing a severe public health, environmental, and access crisis that local government officials are ignoring,” Feulner wrote in the petition. “This is unacceptable. Hundreds of families, including young children attending surf camps, walk through these parking lots daily.”

He and others have claimed that the numerous RV encampments and people living in cars have led to disposal of human waste directly into the parking lot. He shared video of liquid seeping out of a waste bag under an RV.

Tests have even revealed that human waste was the source of the fecal bacteria plaguing the beach recently.

Other visitors echoed the petition’s concerns at a recent Pacifica City Council meeting.

“I don’t want to have to think, ‘When was the last time I had a hepatitis B shot?’ every time I get in the water, or play poo-poo hopscotch in the sand,” resident Jeanine Dubois said.

City leaders said they are trying to address the issue by getting a permit, including an emergency permit, from the state to close down the parking lots. An attempt to close down the lots last year failed without the proper permits; the city’s current permit requires the Pacifica State Beach parking lots to be open to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“We are working on that permit application,” city manager Sean Charpentier said, “… to move forward with an overnight closure of those lots and plan to submit that to the Coastal Commission by the end of this month.”

Pacifica, like many parts of the state, has a big homelessness crisis, and the city has a parking program for the unhoused to park in dedicated spots.

Some residents urged empathy for those who say they’re forced to live in RVs and vehicles. Trino Fuentes said on social media he lives overnight at the beach because he’s had difficulty getting public housing.

“I’m living in a van bugging nobody and giving back to my community I live in,” he wrote. “Sadly there’s no help for single fathers with special needs children.”

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