Chinatown community say their cars are being unfairly towed

“And they told him get his RV and get the F out of Chinatown cause we’re not wanted here,” said Diana Blaylock whose car was towed.

Homeless people living in Chinatown say their cars were marked and towed by Salinas Police without warning.

“She wouldn’t give us no information, no nothing,” said Blaylock. “She didn’t even give us the papers. She goes you got a choice, your truck or your RV, or we can take both.”

Some of the cars have been there for weeks, others months, some, even years.

“They just indiscriminately tagged everything on the block no matter how often it had been moved,” said Van Gresham who lives in Chinatown. “They marked all the tires.”

Attorney Anthony Prince admits some of the cars were marked with anywhere from three days to two weeks warning, but he believes Chinatown is being unfairly targeted.

“They’re not towing every car in the city of Salinas that has an expired tag,” said Prince. “They’re concentrating on this community because they want homeless people out so that they can hand that entire community over to these developers.”

Some of the residents say it’s going to cost them hundreds of dollars to get their cars back and that’s money that they don’t have.

“If they were using their car to get out of the rain that means they’d be subject to the rain for the next three or four days,” said Gresham. “Or they would have to maybe move into someone elses’ tent because there’s no shelter or even no where to find shelter.”

The city wasn’t available for a comment on-camera Friday but the city attorney did say the posting and towing of vehicles around Chinatown is unrelated to a pending lawsuit against the city about clearing out homeless.