San Francisco, CA Parking Rules: Towing & Impound Rights (2026)

San Francisco is a consolidated city and county, and its towing money rules sit in its own Transportation Code rather than in the state code. Division II, Section 305 makes the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency the party that charges for a tow: the SFMTA bills the registered owner, the owner's agent who comes to claim the car, or the renter, to reimburse the City for removal, storage, sale, or release. The authority it names is California Vehicle Code Section 22850.5, the statute that lets a local agency impose a vehicle release fee, so unlike Los Angeles County, San Francisco has actually taken that authority up. Lien fees are the one carve-out: Section 305(a)(1) pegs them to Vehicle Code Section 22851.12 and exempts them from local indexing. The section is an SFMTA Board product, amended by board resolution more than a dozen times, most recently by Res. No. 260421-031 adopted April 21, 2026.

The dollar amounts are deliberately not in the code. Section 305 sends every figure to the SFMTA Fee and Fine Schedule, and Section 301(b)(1) fixes the base as the fees in effect on March 19, 2024 under SFMTA Board Resolution 240319-028, Section 3, as updated by later resolutions. Section 301(b)(2) then has the Director of Transportation, working with the SFMTA Chief Financial Officer and without any further board vote, raise those base fees every July 1 by an Automatic Index calculated as the Bay Area CPI-U divided by two plus the two-year Operating Budget Labor Cost Change divided by two, rounded up to the nearest $1.00. Section 301(b)(3) requires the schedule to be published on the SFMTA website, refreshed annually by June 1 for a July 1 effective date, and made available on request at the SFMTA main office. Section 301(a) lets the SFMTA Board change any fee by resolution at any time. If you want the current tow, storage, or administrative charge, read that schedule; the code gives you the rules, not the number.

The reductions are where Section 305 stops looking like anyone else's ordinance. A first-time tow earns a $50 cut off the administrative fee, available only if the SFPD or SFMTA has not towed that vehicle before while it was registered to the current owner. A Low Income Tow Fee replaces the administrative fee, any dolly fee, any lien fees, and storage for the first 24 hours plus 14 consecutive days, for a claimant in a qualifying low income program or under 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level who actually removes the vehicle from impound. A One-Time Tow Fee Waiver for People Certified as Experiencing Homelessness goes further, covering the first 24 hours plus 29 consecutive days of storage, on certification from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, once per person. Subsection (a)(1)(D) shuts all three off where the registered owner is a business or the tow was connected to felony or misdemeanor conduct, and (a)(1)(E) requires a renter to be named as the driver on the rental agreement.

Section 305(b) handles bad tows and stolen cars. Fees may be waived or reimbursed where the vehicle was held for a police evidence examination, where the tow or storage was not authorized by state or local law, where the SFPD or SFMTA misreported the circumstances, or where the tow was for removal of components installed in violation of Vehicle Code Section 10751. On verifiable proof that a car was reported stolen before the tow, the SFMTA must waive or refund the administrative, towing and lien fees plus storage for the first 24 hours and two days after, though not for business-owned vehicles or cars rented out through car-sharing. Subsection (c) blocks relief where the claimant is chargeable with a related offence, where the City's error was partly the claimant's own doing, or where there is no proof of financial responsibility under Vehicle Code Section 16020.

To claim any of that back, Section 305(d) gives you 30 days from paying the full fees to file an itemized request, on the SFMTA's form, with the Director of Transportation or a designee, who may extend the deadline for good cause. Requests are made under penalty of perjury, cannot exceed the fees actually paid, and under subsection (e) will not even be considered until the requester agrees in writing to cooperate in any prosecution arising from the tow. Note what the Transportation Code does not create: there is no local tow hearing. The SFMTA Hearing Division procedure written into Section 307(d) governs obstructing-traffic citations, not impounds, so the post-storage hearing right for a San Francisco tow comes from California Vehicle Code Section 22852. Separately, the Police Department's own removal administrative fee under Division I, Section 4.1 must be proposed by the Chief of Police and cannot take effect until the Board of Supervisors approves it by resolution, is capped at the department's average actual cost, and is expressly excluded both from the tow operator's maximum lawful charge and from Administrative Code Chapter 10C reimbursement.

Tows off private property are policed through the Police Code instead. Section 3057 makes the tow firm phone the SFMTA Tow Desk within 30 minutes of leaving the property with the vehicle, reporting the plate or VIN, the firm and operator names and permit number, the pickup location and time, the storage location, and who authorized the tow. Section 3055.2 requires every permitted firm to display a plain-language rights brochure in Chinese, Spanish and English where owners come to reclaim cars, keep at least 50 copies in each language on hand, and let an owner take one without asking staff and before paying. Section 3054(5) makes an FDIC-authorized bank credit card machine a condition of holding a tow car firm permit at all. Section 8.1 of Division I is the companion list of when a car may be pulled from the street in the first place, running from Vehicle Code violations through motorcycle-only stalls, blocked driveways and electric vehicle charging bays, car share permit spaces, municipal garages more than 24 hours past the paid period, and any vehicle parked in one spot for 72 or more consecutive hours.