Data from the San Diego Police Department shows most car tows in 2025 were for registration-related offenses. These are commonly known as "poverty tows."
Sticker shock
Before Ted Womack started working at the nonprofit Alliance San Diego, he experienced a hardship that his workplace is now trying to prevent.
More than five years ago, he moved back to San Diego from Dallas, Texas. He was relying on his car to get to job interviews when it was towed for an expired registration.
Womack was quoted $6,000 to get the car out — he originally bought the car for half that price.
“I never ended up getting my car back,” Womack said. “I was just pretty much out of a car for … maybe a year and a half, two years to get another car.”
By the numbers
According to data obtained through a public records request, most San Diego Police Department tows last year were for registration-related offenses like Womack's. In 2025, nearly 30% of all impounded vehicles fell into this category — more than any other.
The leading cause overall was registrations expired for more than six months, accounting for 6,533 tows.
This isn’t a new trend. According to a 2022 report by the Office of the City Auditor, the most common reason for towing between the fiscal years 2017 to 2022 was expired registration.
It's one of three types of “poverty tows.” Also known as “disproportionate impact tows,” they also include 72-hour parking violations and five or more unpaid parking tickets.
Poverty tows
Jessie Schmitte, Alliance San Diego’s state policy manager, said poverty tows can have devastating consequences.
“Folks are thinking that, ‘Hey, this is my vehicle. This is the last thing that is allowing me to cling on to civilization. It's allowing me to get my child to school. It's allowing me to go to work,” Schmitte said. “When the city does take that away from an individual, they're taking not just a vehicle away, but they're taking away a, really, a livelihood and a piece of their dignity.”
SDPD towing fee schedule
These are some of the fees associated with getting a car towed in the city of San Diego. The current SDPD fee schedule is available here.
- Standard tow rate → $231-$424 (Price depends on the size of the vehicle.)
- Various storage fees:
- Standard-duty Vehicle (includes Pedicab) → $65/day
- 1st Day Hourly (24 hours or less, maxes out at daily rate) → $6/hour
- Gate Fee (after hours fee, inclusive of labor) → $50/per incident
- Notification of Stored Vehicle → $25
- City administrative fees → $265+
- Dispatch contractor fee → $22
The 2022 OCA audit of the city’s towing program also revealed registration-related tows were "approximately three to five times more likely to result in a lien sale" — meaning the cars weren't recovered by their owners.
Schmitte’s coworker Womack said not having a car made living in San Diego much harder. He missed out on several job interviews due to transportation issues. When he did get work, he had to commute from Spring Valley to North Park via bus.
“I'm having to get ready for work within three or four hours because I have anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hour bus ride to get to work,” Womack said. “And that's if all the buses on that route are running ... there's parts where I'd have to walk in between to get to the next step.”
What's next?
San Diego City Councilmember Stephen Whitburn’s office has been exploring solutions to reduce the impact of poverty tows.
In November last year, the City Council’s public safety committee passed amendments to council policy that would ban towing cars for expired registration.
Council policies are administrative guidelines used to direct city staff and guide decision-making processes, but do not carry the weight of law.
After the committee OK’d the policy, it was intended for the full City Council to vote on it. But Whitburn’s office decided to try other avenues first — including having police make administrative changes instead.
When asked about these efforts, SDPD communications manager Ashley Nicholes told KPBS in May “the Department continues to evaluate the Councilmember’s proposal and has not yet settled on next steps.”
Whitburn’s office has since decided to move on.
“But at the end of the day, after continued talks, we decided that the best course of action is to bring that to the City Council,” Whitburn added.
A date for that has not been set.
The city of San Diego currently has a payment plan option for low-income residents that waives some administrative fees and penalties, but it only applies to parking citations and does not offer direct subsidies or waivers for towing and storage fees themselves.
Portland has a pilot program that does. It provides up to $300 for towing and storage expenses. To qualify, you must be low-income or be a victim of auto theft. San Francisco is another city that is working to address poverty tows. Their program takes a proactive approach. The Text Before Tow Program allows drivers to sign up to receive the text notifications warning them before a car is towed for offenses like 72-hour parking. There’s no text warning for expired registration-related tows, however.
SDPD's towing program shortcomings
The most recent public data available in the 2022 OCA report shows the SDPD towing program is not making the city any money, quite the opposite. It concludes that the San Diego towing program operates at a significant financial deficit, costing the city an estimated $1.5 million annually.
“Because SDPD only accounts for its labor costs associated with the program, it does not account for the other factors that underlie the true deficit,” the report reads. “These factors include other unaccounted program costs, such as lost revenue from cost recovery fees due to lien sales and waived fees for bad tows.”
About 27% of vehicles are left unclaimed and sold by the city at lien sales with proceeds failing to cover towing and storage costs, the report stated, losing $63 per vehicle sold.
The report also had several suggestions to improve the program, including “publicly reporting on the program’s outcomes, impacts to residents, and potential revisions to tow policies and practices.”
In a later report published December last year, OCA noted three out of four of its recommendations to SDPD’s towing program had not been implemented yet.
Ted Womack from Alliance said there needs to be improvements to the towing program. For example, a warning before a car gets towed. It could make a big difference in a city as expensive as San Diego.
“One thing that we all acknowledge about San Diego is that it's a tough city to live in, and it's a tough city to relocate back to if you don't already have income set up for yourself,” Womack said. “And my situation (was) probably just like a lot of people too, where they're just kind of doing what they have to do until they get to that next step.”
_
