Patrick Quinones is homeless in the middle of a pandemic. Now he's part of a group suing to halt San Diego from enforcing its ban on sleeping in vehicles.

• San Diego is facing litigation over the continued enforcement of its ban on sleeping in vehicles.
• Tristia Bauman, an attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, told Business Insider that the ban is a threat to public health.
• "We think it's especially so — and clearly so — during the pandemic, when everyone is instructed to shelter in place and to come into contact with as few human beings as possible," Bauman said.
• The latest ban was imposed in May 2019. "We will not allow the proliferation of 'van life' culture that takes advantage of San Diego's generosity and destroys community character," Mayor Kevin Faulconer said at the time.
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Patrick Quinones had a nice thing going on, splitting $1,000 per month rent on a loft in downtown San Diego. But nothing lasts forever, especially not when it is relatively affordable housing in Southern California. His landlord raised the rent to $1,600 over a period of 60 days.

Quinones first moved to a junkyard near the border. Now, like thousands of others in San Diego — the vast majority, local tenants who were priced out of their homes — he lives on the streets in the middle of a pandemic, according to an April 22 declaration he submitted as part of a lawsuit against the city.

"What we're alleging is that the city is violating people's constitutional right to bodily integrity," Tristia Bauman, senior attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, told Business Insider.

In the wake of COVID-19, the organization is petitioning the US District Court for the Southern District of California for an emergency order that would prevent people from being evicted from their homes — which, for some of the state's poorest residents, might be a car or RV. The organization first took to the courts in 2017, alleging that San Diego's prohibition on living in vehicles was unlawful.

In May 2019, the San Diego City Council imposed an emergency ordinance that prohibits vehicle habitation anywhere in the city between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time, except for a few designated "safe parking lots." A federal court had earlier ruled that an existing prohibition was too vague to be lawful.

A January 2018 count found more than 1,200 people sleeping in cars. RVs were not counted.

"If you want to work toward finding a permanent home, we have programs that can help," Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a Republican elected in 2014, said at the time. "We will not allow the proliferation of 'van life' culture that takes advantage of San Diego's generosity and destroys community character."

Those who defy the ordinance risk losing their shelter. Quinones, for example, had his truck with a pop-up trailer towed. He lived in it with his partner, who suffers from congestive heart failure; Quinones himself has schizophrenia. Neither could afford the $2,600-plus cost to get it back from the tow yard.

Their next home, a $500 RV, met the same fate.

"Our money ran out and when the motorhome was towed, we ended up on the streets," Quinones told the court.

The office of San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott, a Democrat, declined to comment.

Bauman, whose organization is joined in the litigation by the advocacy group Disability Rights California, hopes the court takes up the latest challenge sooner rather than later, given the public health emergency.

"We're alleging that taking people's vehicle homes and leaving them with the option of sleeping outside and unsheltered or in a congregate [shelter] setting is always more harmful to their health and safety," she told Business Insider. "We think it's especially so — and clearly so — during the pandemic, when everyone is instructed to shelter in place and to come into contact with as few human beings as possible."

There are 11 named plaintiffs in the case, representing what Bauman says is a class of people ill-served by both the ban on vehicle habitation and the city's reliance on designated parking lots that may be hard to get to — and expensive for people on fixed incomes driving inefficient vehicles — or too crowded for people with disabilities and suppressed immune systems.

"People are left with very few choices," Bauman argued. "And for a lot of our class members, they're just inadequate choices."

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