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Wrecked

Vehicle towings take a huge toll on America’s poor.

by

Mary Lovelace was living in Brentwood, California, and working as an interior designer. As a home-improvement specialist, she would drive a minimum of 365 miles every day in her car, carrying samples including doors, windows, and hardware in the trunk and backseat.

“Then the recession hit, between 2007 and 2009,” Lovelace recalls. “It kept getting worse and worse.” Fewer people were hiring interior designers, and eventually Lovelace was laid off. She received unemployment, which wasn’t enough to cover her rent after other expenses. She tried without success to find other work. She was eventually evicted from her rented house. A friend in nearby San Francisco let her stay in his garage. She parked her car across the street. 

Parking tickets began to accumulate on the car. Some tickets, she says, listed the wrong address, a block and a half from where the vehicle was parked; sometimes the dates did not match. After a while, the car was “booted”—a metal device clamped on the wheel to render it immobile.

Nearly 50,000 towing businesses operate in the U.S., and they have already generated more than $8 billion in revenue so far this year. 

 “I tried to fight it,” Lovelace says. “They wanted an astronomical amount of money for booting my car, the tickets. They gave me three weeks to get my car.” Because Lovelace was unable to pay, her car was sold at a lien sale, in which towed vehicles are auctioned off to collect debts from owners.

 “You have this hopelessness and you really feel like giving up,” Lovelace relates. “You lost your job, you can’t work or apply for the job you used to have, because your car has been booted and towed. You don’t have the money to buy a new car. They don’t give you a payment plan or options. You can’t even appeal the tickets if they’re bogus.”

In fact, millions of Americans have their vehicles towed every year for nonemergency reasons, including unpaid tickets, expired registration, and parking for periods of longer than seventy-two hours. These are what are known as “poverty tows.” The result for individual car owners can be devastating.

Vehicle ownership, for many Americans, has become key to financial security. When vehicles are hooked and hauled away by tow trucks, also called wreckers, people lose more than a machine. They lose their transportation to work, the bank, the grocery store, and the doctor’s office. In graver circumstances, they may even lose their homes.

Nearly 50,000 towing businesses operate in the United States, according to the business market research firm IBISWorld. They have already generated more than $8 billion in revenue so far this year, compared to $7.4 billion in 2018. Ideally, towing is used for emergency or safety reasons and to prevent further harm. These include tows for vehicles obstructing the flow of traffic or blocking driveways and access to fire hydrants. They are also used in cases of stolen vehicles and nontraffic-related crimes.

The American Property Casualty Insurance Association surveyed 448 member company employees who handle towing cases in its “2018 PCI Towing Survey Analysis.” It identified excessive rates and fees as “the worst problem insurers and consumers face with towing companies,” citing excessive daily storage rates, release process issues, and practices “that make it difficult to recover a vehicle or even gain access in order to get personal effects or commercial cargo.”

The survey ranked the cities of Houston, Dallas, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, as well as the states of Texas, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, and New York, as being the “most in need of pro-consumer towing reforms.” But these practices are not unique to these cities and states. 

Rather, they are reflective of laws and practices across the nation that prey on the poor and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. A case in point: the state of California, number three on the survey’s list.

In March 2019, a coalition of legal aid and civil rights organizations released a report titled “Towed into Debt: How Towing Practices in California Punish Poor People.” It estimated that roughly one million vehicles were towed by public agencies in California in 2016, and that at least 200,000 vehicles with government-issued tows are auctioned off annually.

The report found that towing and related policies pertaining to law enforcement disproportionately affect middle- and low-income motorists, especially people of color and immigrants.

Mike Herald, director of policy advocacy for the Western Center on Law & Poverty, a California-based public interest law firm and contributor to the report, points to revelations from Ferguson, Missouri, as an example of what has been happening elsewhere.

 “In the wake of the Ferguson uprising in the summer of 2014,” he says, “there was a series of stories that highlighted problems, not just in Ferguson but other cities around the country, where municipalities were relying on fines and fees as a way to both oppress people of color and to generate revenue for the local governments.”

California has some of the nation’s most costly court fines and fees. Sixty percent of all court filings are based on traffic or infraction citations, according to “Paying More for Being Poor: Bias and Disparity in California’s Traffic Court System.” The 2017 report also found that “Californians who cannot afford to pay a fine for a traffic citation face harsher consequences than those who can: some Californians mail in a payment, while those who cannot pay experience license suspension, arrest, jail, wage garnishment, towing of their vehicles, and job loss—for the same minor offenses.” 

Elisa Della-Piana, legal director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the groups behind both the 2017 and 2019 reports, traces many of these practices back to the 2008 recession. That’s when “California and states across the country started charging more fees and fines as a form of regressive tax. Knowing the income tax was going to be harder, they started looking for other ways to raise revenue.”

The average vehicle tow fee in California is around $189 with an additional administrative fee of $150 and a daily storage fee of $53. After only three days in storage, vehicle owners have to pay a minimum of $500 on average to retrieve their vehicle. Over time, with various other fees tacked on, the charges can easily swell to $1,500 to $2,000. 

Considering that California minimum wage workers make roughly $96 per day, these costs are often prohibitive. In the end, many if not most low-income motorists walk away, opting to buy another car from a dealership at high interest rates or go without a car altogether. 

“If I was to characterize this scheme overall, I would say the effect is draconian,” Della-Piana says. “That might not have been the intent. I think these things crept up over time, but if you have a city [and] a state passing laws with the goal of collecting money, you start to stray from just outcomes. You don’t get justice from the city trying to collect money for its own interests.”

She notes that California residents whose cars are towed are legally entitled to a tow hearing. “However,” she says, “many police and traffic departments across the state are not following that law.” She says that when one person her group worked with went to the police station to ask, “How do I get a tow hearing?” the police replied, “We don’t do tow hearings.”

And even when a tow hearing is offered, the “best-case scenario,” according to Della-Piana, is that the owner of the towed vehicle will get to talk to an officer in the same department that ordered the tow. The officer, she says, usually refuses to show the owner the evidence or allow him or her to interview the officer who ordered the tow.

The only recourse, Della-Piana says, is to seek a writ from a superior court judge to overturn the administrative action. But that usually costs more than they can afford.

“It’s a system that’s really set up to fail if you’re in financial straits,” Lovelace says. “What’s ironic about it is if you have money, you just pay the ticket and be done. But if you don’t have the money and you’re struggling to be productive again, this doesn’t give you encouragement to be better. It just puts you further in the hole.”

One of the most startling findings of “Towed into Debt” is that lien sales do not financially benefit the municipalities that ordered the towing or the sale to begin with. This undermines the entire purpose of why such measures are enforced.

Nisha Kashyap, a staff attorney for Public Counsel, a California-based pro bono law firm, elaborates on this point. “The [vehicles] are often sold for significantly less than their value and significantly less than the total amount of debt owed on the car in the form of tickets, towing, or unpaid registration.” So all the money from these sales goes to the towing companies, which under the law “have the first bite of the apple when it comes to recouping their costs from the profits of the lien sale,” Kashyap says.

One of the biggest problems facing California residents is the lack of parking opportunities. Residents who can afford to pay for private parking are less likely to have their vehicles towed. Those who lack the funds are often forced to park on public streets or private lots if push comes to shove. 

In February, a member of the California state assembly, David Chiu, Democrat of San Francisco, introduced proposed legislation to “scale back towing practices that harm low-income people” by eliminating “poverty tows.” The proposal, Assembly Bill 516, is now being considered by the California Assembly and Senate. 

Since AB 516 was first introduced, it has been amended, weakening the measures it sought to implement, for instance by removing a provision to end towing for lapsed registration. Though the earliest version was much stronger in terms of protecting consumers and low-income families, Public Counsel and kindred organizations still support the bill.

But the bill’s supporters face an uphill battle, due in part to aggressive opposition from municipalities. The League of California Cities, a statewide association of city officials, opposes AB 516, saying it “eliminates the ability for cities and law enforcement to adequately enforce state and local vehicle violations.”

“When I lost my car, I lost my only asset. I lost my ability to affordably buy food at the grocery store. I have chronic pain from a work-related injury, and without a car, I lost my ability to attend medical appointments.”

Among the myths surrounding the bill is the belief that it would eliminate towing entirely, hinder local governments’ ability to tow abandoned vehicles, and allow residents to refrain from paying tickets without facing legal repercussions. Jennifer Kwart, a spokesperson for Representative Chiu, disputes this: “There remain half a dozen other mechanisms a local government [could] use to compel payment for unpaid tickets that do not involve towing.”

When a California legislative committee held a hearing on the bill, one of the people it heard from was Oakland resident Jannette Jalalian, a senior resident of a subsidized housing unit. Her car, a gift from her son, was towed on May 25 after she received a number of parking tickets that she was unable to pay.

“When I lost my car, I lost my only asset,” Jalalian told the committee. “I lost my ability to affordably buy food at the grocery store. I have chronic pain from a work-related injury, and without a car, I lost my ability to attend medical appointments.”

In a subsequent interview with The Progressive, Jalalian estimated that she owed more than $6,000 in order to get her car back.

Given the severity of the economic impact on people like Jalalian, you’d think that towing practices would garner more attention. Della-Piana takes a stab at explaining why this is.

“It’s one of those issues that primarily affects middle- and low-income Americans,” she says. “It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t sound central to someone’s livelihood. Everyone understands why making a living wage affects your ability to support a family, why health care is so important. I think towing sounds like a rare thing for people who haven’t experienced it. I don’t think there’s a widespread sense of how much it affects people or a widespread sense of the kind of injustice it is.”

While there are many legitimate towing companies, others operate as tow “pirates” who engage in cutthroat tactics that can be deemed unscrupulous, unethical, and unlawful. They abduct people’s vehicles and hold them hostage until the owners pay whatever ransom, for lack of a better term, is demanded for the vehicles’ safe return. 

“The abuses by private towing companies really are rampant,” Della-Piana says. “There are multiple ways that towing companies are making money in a predatory and unlawful manner.”

Here are some examples from around the country:

  • Sacramento, California: In March 2018, the owners of Davis Tow Inc. and two employees were each charged with twenty-nine counts of auto theft and one count of conspiracy to commit a crime. Prosecutors called the operation a “predatory tow conspiracy” that targeted vehicles parked during sports events; the accused denied the charges. The charges are still pending, with a hearing set for December 3.
  • Kansas City, Missouri: 24/7 Towing, a firm exposed for price gouging, resurfaced in January under the name KC Towing & Storage to resume its predatory practices, according to a report by FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV.
  • Detroit, Michigan: A McDonald’s restaurant announced in February that it had cut ties with Breakthrough Towing after customers came forward with proof that their vehicles were towed while they were still in the restaurant.
  • Memphis, Tennessee: An attorney last year accused PB&J Towing of violating city ordinances by towing vehicles from areas without clear signage, “targeting primarily poor people and college students.” 
  • Sunrise, Florida: All County Towing was this March ordered to pay $500,000 in fines for having illegally towed ninety-four cars at a shopping mall during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2015.

Numerous towing companies employ creative billing to generate revenue. In Huntsville, Alabama, a towing firm in 2013 charged a woman a $150 fee for using “foul language” after her vehicle was towed from the parking lot of her friend’s apartment complex. While not standard practice, such unreasonable additional charges have prevented owners in California and other states from retrieving their vehicles. 

“We have many, many clients who had their car towed from a private housing parking lot, where there was a friend or family members or someone who lived there, and the landlord was harassing them to move out,” Della-Piana says. “Just the number of these tows from people who owned homes is outrageous. It’s a big problem across the country.”

Towing services frequently work with business owners and landlords, and have been known to stalk parking lots, lurking around corners, ready to pounce. Sometimes they are aided by “spotters”  who photograph or write down license plate numbers before calling the towing firms they are working for with new leads. “Those kind of sweetheart relationships from the bigger landlords and the towing companies are really prevalent,” Della-Piana says.

Victims of predatory towing have limited options. They can file complaints with the Better Business Bureau or vent their frustrations by posting negative reviews of these companies online. While these actions are perhaps cathartic, they do next to nothing in terms of stopping these practices.

The impact of towing policies on the lives of everyday people, struggling just to make it through another day, is beginning to attract some public attention. 

In Chicago, more than 50,000 vehicles were towed and sold between 2011 and 2019, according to a joint investigation conducted by ProPublica Illinois and the local public radio affiliate, WBEZ. “The city and its towing contractor pocketed millions of dollars, while residents were left with ticket debt,” the report said. “The vast majority of cars bound in these tow-and-sell operations hail from low-income and minority communities on Chicago’s West and South Sides, where experts have said residents are already hard-pressed to pay for effective transportation.”

On July 23, newly elected Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot presented plans before the City Council to reform towing practices in the Windy City. It would eliminate the city’s controversial policy of suspending driver’s licenses for nonmoving vehicle violations; reinstate a fifteen-day grace period for vehicle sticker renewal after expiration; offer payment plans to ticketed drivers, with lower fees and longer timeframes for low-income residents; and let drivers request a twenty-four-hour extension to pay—or start a payment plan for—fines for “booted” vehicles.

Advocates hope these measures will be implemented and serve as an inspiration to other localities.

The heavy toll of towing policies on the working class and poor is being felt across the country, and especially by those individuals who are barely surviving. According to the “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2018,”  published by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, three out of ten American adults “are either unable to pay their bills or are one modest financial setback away from hardship.” That means heavy fines or the loss of a vehicle could set off a chain reaction of negative consequences.

“Our goal,” Della-Piana says, “is to increase the understanding of how many Americans this is affecting, how deeply unfair and unjust the system is, particularly in communities of color and low-income communities, and through attention try to bring some change.”

Sidebar: Suing the Bastards

One avenue for opposing the predatory towing of vehicles by local governments and private companies is to challenge these practices in the courts. Some homeless advocates and residents have filed lawsuits against local jurisdictions over their towing practices on constitutional grounds. They point to the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution to demonstrate the illegality of “poverty tows.” 

The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless searches, which could be interpreted as applying to tows. The “excessive fines” clause of the Eighth Amendment prohibits disproportionate financial penalties. And the “due process” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires adequate notice and opportunity to contest an action.

On August 27, 2019, Los Angeles resident Joseph Morrissey filed a claim for damages against the city, the first step toward a lawsuit. Morrissey returned from spending a week in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery to find that his vehicle, which had been parked legally outside his home, was ticketed, towed, and sold because he failed to heed a notice that it be moved within seventy-two hours.

In a 2018 case, Smith v. Reiskin, the plaintiff won a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The city of San Francisco was ordered to return the plaintiff’s car after it had been towed for unpaid parking tickets. The plaintiff, Sean Kayode, was homeless and using his car to work as a delivery driver, and was unable to pay to get the car back. 

Elisa Della-Piana of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area declared the decision “a crucial victory,” with her organization saying it would provide relief to “thousands of low-income San Francisco residents, who face exceptional financial burdens from tow and impound fees stemming from the city’s practice of towing vehicles without warrant or hearing to collect on unpaid parking tickets.”

A decision on the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment could come as early as this October. Another state court case, Coalition on Homelessness v. Reiskin, will also challenge San Francisco’s policy of towing for unpaid tickets.