There are dozens of abandoned or disabled mobile homes littering the streets of Spokane, and for the past two months the city has had no way to get them transported and destroyed.

Whenever an RV owner renews their tabs, they pay $6 to an abandoned RV disposal fund created in 2018. Since 2019, when cities request a towing or wrecking company to haul away an abandoned RV, that company has been able to seek reimbursement from that state fund to pay the costs.

This fund has been instrumental in removing the derelict vehicles because, unlike derelict cars or most other types of vehicles, the cost of demolishing a mobile home that cannot be sold at auction far exceeds its salvageable value – usually in the range $1,000 -$2,000, according to Spokane Police Department Sgt. Teresa Fuller. Before 2019, the city would either compensate tow companies themselves, or they had begun regularly refusing to respond to requests to have them removed, Luis Garcia, head of Spokane’s code enforcement team, said in an interview.

“It was a burden on vehicle scrappers because they would lose money disposing of these vehicles,” Garcia said. “The program is new, and the state recognized a need, because whenever RVs are put into circulation in the state, there’s not really an end-of-life planned for them.”

But in mid-September, with little warning, new requests for compensation were no longer accepted. The abandoned RV fund technically hasn’t run out, said Christine Anthony, spokeswoman for the state Department of Licensing, which runs the program. Instead, the department’s authority to spend from that fund expired and will need to be renewed by lawmakers in the upcoming 2025 legislative session, Anthony said.

Use of the program by cities like Spokane has grown rapidly, according to data from the Department of Licensing. In the first year, 171 abandoned mobile homes were demolished or removed, with more than $42,000 reimbursed from the program. In fiscal year 2023, that number jumped to 1,061, with the state paying nearly $1.4 million.

The number of RVs repossessed remained steady in the last fiscal year, which ended in June, but the cost of restitution rose to more than $2 million. Between July 1 and October 31, there were requests for an additional $950,000 in refunds — the state has only paid out $113,000 of those.

By October, just about a month after the state had stopped processing reimbursement requests, there was a backlog of 30 abandoned or disabled mobile homes that the city had been unable to remove, according to code enforcement records.

Councilor Michael Cathcart claims the problem is about more than an eyesore on the city’s streets.

“A lot of these RVs are used as drop-off points for drugs or stolen goods, and a lot of people who don’t know good things, often live in them,” Cathcart argued. “Not always, but often.”

Fuller agrees.

“If you talk to any of the neighbors who have these RVs in their neighborhoods, they tend to attract crime and litter on the roads and on the sidewalks,” Fuller said. “And it’s a safety thing. We’ve had a couple of these that don’t drain, they have sewage in them, and it’s not safe for the neighborhood or the people that live in them.”

On Oct. 21, Cathcart argued unsuccessfully to pull money from homeless services and set aside $100,000 to cover removal with the hope that the state can compensate the city once its fund is no longer on hiatus.

While he supports the state possibly increasing the registration fee to better fund the abandoned mobile home removal fund, he worries that the state cannot be relied upon to fund this and other programs, given that Washington is potentially facing a deficit of $10-12 billion over the next four years.

“At the end of the day, this comes down to a safety issue,” Cathcart said. “There is a lot of disruptive activity going on along these trailers and RVs.”

Garcia stressed that code enforcement and the police department’s abandoned car unit have not stopped responding to calls about these vehicles. Both departments will attempt to contact an owner and educate them on the relevant laws or cite them if applicable.

“We’re still responding to all of these cases that we get, and not all of these RV cases result in a seizure,” Garcia said.

“Whether it’s a passenger vehicle or a non-passenger vehicle like an RV, we try to exhaust all of our administrative remedies before a seizure.”