L.A. family forced to live in an RV outside of their burned-down home says the city parking enforcement is now ticketing them

Zach Boetto of CBS Los Angeles opened his report in Altadena with a scene that almost explains itself before anyone says a word: a family’s RV parked in front of the same home they’ve lived in for decades, now damaged and unlivable after the Eaton Fire, with recovery still stuck in the slow, messy middle.

Boetto stood beside the Collins family’s fifth-wheel RV and described it as the temporary shelter Joe Collins’ parents have been relying on while the family tries to make the home livable again, which is a phrase that sounds simple until you picture what “livable” means after a serious fire – smoke, soot, destroyed insulation, and a house that may look standing but still feels poisoned inside.

Then the new punch lands: Los Angeles County parking enforcement showed up and told them the RV has to go, issuing two citations in a matter of days, even though this is exactly the kind of setup you expect to see in a disaster zone where normal life hasn’t returned yet.

Boetto’s story hits that nerve a lot of people recognize – when you’re already down and trying to climb back up, it doesn’t take a major event to knock you off balance again; it takes one more bill, one more notice, one more official telling you “rules are rules.”

On camera, Derrick Collins is heard confronting the officers as they measure the RV, calling it harassment and basically pleading the obvious point: they are not out there for fun, and nobody chooses to live on the street in front of their own home as a lifestyle upgrade.

It’s a raw moment, and what makes it stick is that it isn’t theatrical; it sounds like exhaustion finally boiling over.

What The Fire Left Behind

Boetto backs up and explains why the RV is there in the first place, because this isn’t some “parked too long” situation that started as a choice – it started with the Eaton Fire and the damage it left behind.

He reports that when the fire broke out, Joe Collins and neighbors sprang into action and managed to save a few homes on El Sereno Avenue, which is the kind of detail that tells you the neighborhood wasn’t waiting for help; people were doing what they could with whatever they had.

But the Collins home still took serious damage, and Boetto notes it has been deemed unlivable, the kind of official label that turns “we’ll clean up soon” into a long-term housing crisis.

Joe Collins describes to CBS LA what happened on the south side of the house, where a neighboring home was “completely engulfed,” and the vents to their attic were also on that side, allowing soot and smoke to roll into the attic and ruin insulation until it looked like “black tar.”

That description is the kind that lingers, because it makes the damage feel physical and permanent, not like a light smoke smell that fades with time.

It also explains why the family didn’t just sleep inside the house anyway, because once you’re talking about thick soot and contaminated insulation, you’re talking about air quality, health risks, and a living space that can’t be patched with a quick scrub and some candles.

So the RV became the bridge between “home” and “not home,” parked right in front of the place they’re trying to save, a daily reminder that their lives are on hold until they can clear the hurdles ahead.

The Tickets That Arrived With A Measuring Tape

Boetto’s video shows parking enforcement officers using measuring tape against the RV, which is one of those small details that makes the whole thing feel even colder, because a measuring tape suggests procedure and precision, like the family’s emergency living situation has been reduced to inches and code language.

The Collins family says the citations came twice last week, once on Tuesday and again on Thursday, and Boetto notes they were told the RV needed to be moved off the street.

Shirley Collins tells CBS Los Angeles that the tickets added stress on top of what they already have, and that line matters because it’s the kind of understatement you hear from people who are trying not to break down while they still have responsibilities.

Boetto also points out the family says they had been living this way for roughly 13 months without issues, which adds another layer to the story: it isn’t just that they were cited, it’s that the enforcement seems to have “started” now, long after the RV became part of the post-fire landscape.

That timeline is what makes neighbors and other fire victims nervous, because if one RV gets flagged after months of no attention, then every RV and every storage pod on these streets starts to feel like it could be next.

And Boetto makes it clear that’s exactly what the Collins family is now wondering – whether this is the beginning of a wider sweep that could push already displaced residents into even more unstable living arrangements.

Local Leaders Say They Didn’t Order A Crackdown

One of the more important parts of Boetto’s report is that he doesn’t frame this as just a family versus enforcement officers; he brings in what local leaders are saying about whether this is actually a policy push or a mechanical “we’re just enforcing rules” situation.

Altadena Town Council member Nic Arnzen tells CBS LA that neither the Town Council nor the sheriff’s station put out a directive to go out and start gathering up these RVs, and he emphasizes that they wouldn’t be looking for fire victims and trying to make their lives harder.

At the same time, Arnzen adds a blunt reality: even if nobody intended to target victims, the enforcement could still “inadvertently” do exactly that, which is the polite way of describing what happens when bureaucracies collide with real human emergencies.

Boetto also reports that town council members were at the Collins home talking with the family, which suggests local leadership recognizes the optics and the human cost, even if they don’t control county parking enforcement decisions.

That part is worth sitting with, because it shows the strange way disaster recovery works in practice: local officials can sympathize, visit, and try to connect families to resources, but the rules being enforced may be coming from a different layer of government entirely.

So you can have compassion in one hand and citations in the other, and the family is still the one stuck trying to juggle both.

The Sheriff’s Department Points To Rules And Complaints

Boetto includes a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that tries to explain the enforcement posture without sounding heartless, and it’s clear the department knows how sensitive this looks.

The department says Los Angeles County has provided options that allow impacted residents to park an RV on their own property as part of the recovery plan, but it also says parking RVs on public streets is not included in that plan due to existing county and state regulations.

The statement also lists broader community concerns – traffic safety, equitable access to street parking, and keeping sidewalks clear and accessible for pedestrians, including people with disabilities and wheelchair users – which are legitimate concerns in normal times, and still real concerns in disaster conditions, even if they land differently when a family is living in that RV because the alternative is worse.

The sheriff’s department also says the station received several complaints from residents about unauthorized RV parking, which is another uncomfortable truth that Boetto’s story quietly highlights: after disasters, communities don’t just unite; they also fracture, because some residents recover faster than others, and patience wears thin.

In this particular situation, the statement notes the RV has been parked on a public street for several months and received citations for violations, and it says personnel contacted the homeowner to offer guidance on options to align with the recovery plan.

They also point out that Altadena Town Council leadership is working to connect the resident with nonprofit organizations that might help financially relocate the RV onto their property, which lines up with what Boetto says he observed on the ground.

What the statement doesn’t really solve, though, is the emotional problem: even if there are “options,” options often cost money, time, and paperwork, and families in recovery frequently have the least of all three.

The Larger Question Hanging Over Altadena

Boetto ends up surfacing a bigger issue without needing to preach it: after a fire, the emergency phase ends long before the suffering does, and that gap is where people get crushed by systems that are built for normal life.

If the recovery plan says “park it on your property,” that sounds straightforward until you remember that many properties after fires are covered in debris, fencing, insurance disputes, construction timelines, and legal restrictions that can make “just move it” feel like saying “just rebuild the house.”

And if a family has lived on that street since the 1960s, as Boetto notes about the Collins home, it adds a feeling of insult to injury, because this isn’t someone passing through; this is a family anchored to a neighborhood now treating their survival setup like a nuisance.

There’s also something troubling about the way enforcement can create a domino effect: the citations aren’t just a fine, they are a warning that the family could lose the only shelter they have near their home, which then impacts their ability to oversee repairs, prevent theft, and stay connected to the rebuilding process.

Boetto quotes Joe Collins saying, “It’s uncharted waters for everybody, but we’re in survivor mode,” and that line captures the truth better than any policy explanation can.

Survivor mode means you’re making the best choices available, not perfect choices, and then hoping the rules can bend a little while you get back on your feet.

If the county’s position is that public streets can’t become long-term RV zones, that’s understandable in the abstract, but Boetto’s reporting makes the human problem impossible to ignore: when you start enforcing the letter of the law in the middle of an unfinished disaster, you may be pushing people out of the only fragile stability they’ve managed to build.

For the Collins family, the most painful part might be how small the conflict is compared to what they’ve already endured – two parking tickets, a demand to move, a measuring tape against the RV – yet it hits them like a fresh crisis because they’re already running on fumes.

And the question Boetto leaves lingering is the one Altadena residents are now asking each other in quiet conversations: if this is happening to one family living outside a burned home, how long until it happens to everyone else still trying to piece their lives back together, one temporary fix at a time.