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When Mountain View RV resident David Schaack hears a knock at his door every Monday at 5 p.m., he knows what’s waiting for him on the other side: a friendly smile, and a warm, nutritious meal.
Schaack is one of dozens of people living in their RVs who receive warm dinners every week from local residents who volunteer their time to pick up and distribute the meals to safe parking sites and street-parked RVs in Mountain View. The program started early on in the pandemic as a branch of Community Seva, a Bay Area nonprofit that has fed the homeless at local shelters for the past decade.
When the pandemic first hit, Community Seva founder Nathan Ganeshan said shelters temporarily closed to outside services, so he had to find a new way to get food to local unhoused people. Meanwhile, restaurants were struggling with a downturn in business.
So Ganeshan thought of a win-win solution: Community Seva would sponsor the purchase of nutritious meals from local restaurants, giving them some business, and then utilize its already extensive volunteer network to pick up and distribute those meals to hungry people throughout the Bay Area.
“We identified restaurants in multiple locations – one in Evergreen, one in Fremont, one in Milpitas and one in Mountain View – so that it is geographically placed and easy for volunteers to go pick up the food and drop off,” Ganeshan said.
For Mountain View, that restaurant is Cooking Papa, a Chinese eatery that has since moved its operations to San Francisco, but continues to support Community Seva’s Mountain View meal distribution, which recently increased the number of weekly meals it serves. Since the pandemic started, Community Seva has distributed 15,000 free meals to unhoused and RV residents in Mountain View.
Schaack, who lives at the Shoreline safe parking lot, said the meals do more than fill hungry stomachs.
“There are some times where I’m not feeling well or I just don’t feel like going anywhere and they show up and it just happens to hit the perfect timing, it hits the spot,” he said. “The meal program (also) keeps the people who wouldn’t normally be engaged, at least engaged twice a week with outsiders.”
That engagement with the community, Schaack said, makes him feel like “we’re not totally forgotten.”
“There are people out there that really do care about people,” he said.
Community Seva is one of a network of organizations and companies that are aiming to make life easier for people living in RVs, vehicles or on the streets in Mountain View.
Jackery, a Bay Area-based solar generator company, has donated hundreds of phone and laptop chargers, power stations and solar panels throughout the pandemic to unhoused people, many of which went to people living in their vehicles at Mountain View’s safe parking lots.
“Because of the COVID times, people had nowhere to recharge their cell phones because libraries were closed,” said Julie Wang, chief operations officer at Jackery. “So it has become an ongoing thing. We give donations almost every year.”
The Jackery solar panels are especially useful for residents living in their vehicles, as they allow people to harness the free power of the sun to charge their laptops, use a desk lamp, reheat food in a small microwave, or power an electric blanket.
Jackery partners with Mountain View-based nonprofit United Effort to distribute the solar panels and ensure they’re getting in the hands of those who need them most.
“They have just been so generous and supportive,” United Effort President Wei Qun E said of Jackery.
United Effort’s work for the unhoused community spans far beyond distributing much needed physical items like solar panels. The nonprofit provides free case management to help unhoused people apply for public assistance programs and ultimately gain housing stability.
“We look at what benefits they have, and how to get them as much as possible to stabilize the situation,” said E, who’s an attorney by trade. “Then (we) see whether they can get the Section 8 voucher through the county, which is very hard to get, or whether they are able to work and then look for affordable housing.”
United Effort is working to streamline that process by creating databases and software that put all the available resources in one place. The organization’s affordable housing database is available for anyone to use on their website, and is updated to reflect what’s actually available at any given time.
“When we were helping people look for apartments, I couldn’t find a complete list of affordable housing apartments,” E said. “So I asked the (Santa Clara County) Office of Supportive Housing, I asked the Housing Authority, I asked all those large organizations, and nobody had a list. So I said, ‘OK, let’s build one.’”
The organization is also working to build case management software that automatically generates a list of public benefit programs for clients, based on what they qualify for.
“There are so many benefits out there that we often forget the client may be eligible for a different benefit,” E said.
The long term goal is to design resources that anyone can use.
“We’re building the tools to enable more volunteers to be able to help the people who need help.”
Mountain View residents launch app to help homeowners navigate building permitsMarch 11, 2026 8:29 am
Malea Martin, thank you for your reporting keeping us informed on the goings on about our city, Mountain View.
In my opinion we should recognize that those of us living in our motorhomes and trailers, are not unhoused, and are not living in RV mode. ‘Motorhomes and trailers’, they ‘are’ our HOMES, a lot like Tiny Homes, and in need of a place to Safe Park our motorhomes and trailers for living life in our great city. And for some of us, to Safe Park our motorhomes and trailers at reasonable / affordable monthly rates. Reasonable / affordable monthly rates should be precisely defined, perhaps, 25% of monthly full-time minimum wage after taxes. As such, financially self sustaining / supporting Safe Parking Lots can be made to work, that would pay the cost of necessary infrastructure, such as potable water, garbage collection, porta-potty services and more without a financial burden on the city. Furthermore, availability would help move more motorhomes and trailers off the streets. The city, the county, and the state have lands that can be purposed to create such communities. Also, it should be emphasized that these Safe Parking communities are NOT for storage, the owners must live in their motorhomes and trailers.
Such important reporting here, Malea! Note also the organizations Community Services Agency (CSA) and Reach Potential Movement involved in this work in our community. Thanks for your ongoing articles on these needs and services!