Jamie used to wake up most nights with a flashlight in his face. From the backseat bed he’d winnowed into his SUV, he’d look up to see a police officer rapping on his window. Keep driving, they’d tell him. But Jamie didn’t have anywhere to drive. “I asked them repeatedly, ‘Isn’t there somewhere I can go where it’s not going to be a problem with you?’”
For Jamie, who turned 55 last month, the car was his only destination: It’s where he’s slept for most of the past two years, he says, save a 6-month stint he spent “in the bushes.” After the retail music store he’d worked at for eight years went out of business, he got evicted from his apartment in San Diego, and crashed with friends and family until their goodwill ran out. Then he got a new temporary job as a flooring installer, and the job came with a car. When the gig was over, his employer let him keep the vehicle. And then it became his sanctuary.
Jamie is one of thousands of America’s homeless who, instead of turning to shelters or the streets, live in their cars, vans, and RVs. In many cities where housing prices are high, their ranks, too, are growing. Los Angeles, which reported falling homelessness rates this year, still hosts one of the largest populations in the country: Of the 50,000 total homeless residents, the majority are unsheltered, and about a quarter (or 15,700) are based in their cars. In San Diego County, where Jamie still lives, a January 2018 homeless count found that 1,262 residents lived in vehicles there, although the number is likely higher, because it didn’t include people living in RVs. And in the King County area, where Seattle is located, the entire unsheltered population increased by 15 percent between 2017 and 2018. In that same year, the number of those in their cars leapt 46 percent, to reach 3,372.
Lifting people out of unsheltered homelessness is a challenge that each city is tackling differently—building more, and more affordable, housing; increasing the number of shelter beds; strengthening mental health treatment; softening eviction laws.
But a new cadre of “safe parking” programs are cropping up across the West Coast, too, aimed at carving out space and security for the people homeless services haven’t yet reached.
The first official Safe Parking program was launched in Santa Barbara in 2004, when a counseling center partnered with city officials and local faith leaders to open up parking lots each night for homeless families living out of their RVs, and to connect them to social services. Now, the Santa Barbara program runs 23 lots with 134 total spaces, and has expanded to accept other vehicles. Other California counties like Los Angeles and San Diego run their own versions of the program, and churches outside Seattle, like the Lake Washington Methodist Church in Kirkland, have implemented smaller, more local models. (...)
Cars provide crucial mobility for those who commute to work, but the quarters are cramped: To be able to sleep inside the vehicles, people must bend their backs and knees uncomfortably. A carbon monoxide leak could prove deadly. And while vehicles may be relatively closed off from the elements, their roofs can drip in the rain, and mold can sprout on the windows. Karina O’Malley, Lake Washington Methodist Church’s Safe Parking Coordinator, says that in Washington’s rainy season, many people keep pets in the car to increase body heat, and line windshields with towels or fit tarps over the roofs to keep out wetness and chills. Bathroom access on the road is spread out and sparse; showers, almost non-existent. (“Beach showers [were] fine in the summertime, but when it gets to be wintertime…” Jamie trails off. “It’s not exactly North Dakota here, but it’s been getting down into the low 30s.”)
The hardest part, though, Jamie and homeless advocates say, is finding a space to park undisturbed for the night. “Obviously there’s fear of being broken into, especially while you’re asleep; of having things stolen out of your vehicle, your last safe space,” said Emily Uyeda Kantrim, L.A.’s Safe Parking program coordinator. “But the harassment and people continually having to move their vehicle usually comes from residential neighborhoods.” (...)
Although America has an estimated 2 billion parking spots for the country’s 250 million cars, the space is contested, and highly policed. “We can acknowledge that there are thousands of parking spaces in Los Angeles that go unused at night,” said Kantrim. Indeed, UCLA transportation scholar Donald Shoup estimates that “14 percent of incorporated land in Los Angeles County is devoted to parking” in his book, Parking and the City.
Some see Safe Parking programs as a better way to activate that unused space. Most lots open up at night to let people drive in, and then clear out during the days. Reserving land for a short period of time “in order to stabilize our most vulnerable population who are actually prevented from being in other safe spaces at night—that's reasonable,” Kantrim said.
It’s simple, says Teresa Smith, the CEO of Dreams for Change, which runs San Diego’s safe parking program: “We’re using parking lots to park cars.”
Of course, it’s not actually that simple. Each program operates, and is funded, differently. But they all start with the same premise, says Safe Parking L.A.’s Kantrim: “You have a parking lot. You identify people who need to use it. You have a security guard to check people in at night. You have some reasonable place for them to use the restroom—be it a porta-potty or an externally accessible bathroom. And that’s about it. There aren’t a lot of moving pieces.”
For Jamie, who turned 55 last month, the car was his only destination: It’s where he’s slept for most of the past two years, he says, save a 6-month stint he spent “in the bushes.” After the retail music store he’d worked at for eight years went out of business, he got evicted from his apartment in San Diego, and crashed with friends and family until their goodwill ran out. Then he got a new temporary job as a flooring installer, and the job came with a car. When the gig was over, his employer let him keep the vehicle. And then it became his sanctuary.
Jamie is one of thousands of America’s homeless who, instead of turning to shelters or the streets, live in their cars, vans, and RVs. In many cities where housing prices are high, their ranks, too, are growing. Los Angeles, which reported falling homelessness rates this year, still hosts one of the largest populations in the country: Of the 50,000 total homeless residents, the majority are unsheltered, and about a quarter (or 15,700) are based in their cars. In San Diego County, where Jamie still lives, a January 2018 homeless count found that 1,262 residents lived in vehicles there, although the number is likely higher, because it didn’t include people living in RVs. And in the King County area, where Seattle is located, the entire unsheltered population increased by 15 percent between 2017 and 2018. In that same year, the number of those in their cars leapt 46 percent, to reach 3,372.
Lifting people out of unsheltered homelessness is a challenge that each city is tackling differently—building more, and more affordable, housing; increasing the number of shelter beds; strengthening mental health treatment; softening eviction laws.But a new cadre of “safe parking” programs are cropping up across the West Coast, too, aimed at carving out space and security for the people homeless services haven’t yet reached.
The first official Safe Parking program was launched in Santa Barbara in 2004, when a counseling center partnered with city officials and local faith leaders to open up parking lots each night for homeless families living out of their RVs, and to connect them to social services. Now, the Santa Barbara program runs 23 lots with 134 total spaces, and has expanded to accept other vehicles. Other California counties like Los Angeles and San Diego run their own versions of the program, and churches outside Seattle, like the Lake Washington Methodist Church in Kirkland, have implemented smaller, more local models. (...)
Cars provide crucial mobility for those who commute to work, but the quarters are cramped: To be able to sleep inside the vehicles, people must bend their backs and knees uncomfortably. A carbon monoxide leak could prove deadly. And while vehicles may be relatively closed off from the elements, their roofs can drip in the rain, and mold can sprout on the windows. Karina O’Malley, Lake Washington Methodist Church’s Safe Parking Coordinator, says that in Washington’s rainy season, many people keep pets in the car to increase body heat, and line windshields with towels or fit tarps over the roofs to keep out wetness and chills. Bathroom access on the road is spread out and sparse; showers, almost non-existent. (“Beach showers [were] fine in the summertime, but when it gets to be wintertime…” Jamie trails off. “It’s not exactly North Dakota here, but it’s been getting down into the low 30s.”)
The hardest part, though, Jamie and homeless advocates say, is finding a space to park undisturbed for the night. “Obviously there’s fear of being broken into, especially while you’re asleep; of having things stolen out of your vehicle, your last safe space,” said Emily Uyeda Kantrim, L.A.’s Safe Parking program coordinator. “But the harassment and people continually having to move their vehicle usually comes from residential neighborhoods.” (...)
Although America has an estimated 2 billion parking spots for the country’s 250 million cars, the space is contested, and highly policed. “We can acknowledge that there are thousands of parking spaces in Los Angeles that go unused at night,” said Kantrim. Indeed, UCLA transportation scholar Donald Shoup estimates that “14 percent of incorporated land in Los Angeles County is devoted to parking” in his book, Parking and the City.
Some see Safe Parking programs as a better way to activate that unused space. Most lots open up at night to let people drive in, and then clear out during the days. Reserving land for a short period of time “in order to stabilize our most vulnerable population who are actually prevented from being in other safe spaces at night—that's reasonable,” Kantrim said.
It’s simple, says Teresa Smith, the CEO of Dreams for Change, which runs San Diego’s safe parking program: “We’re using parking lots to park cars.”
Of course, it’s not actually that simple. Each program operates, and is funded, differently. But they all start with the same premise, says Safe Parking L.A.’s Kantrim: “You have a parking lot. You identify people who need to use it. You have a security guard to check people in at night. You have some reasonable place for them to use the restroom—be it a porta-potty or an externally accessible bathroom. And that’s about it. There aren’t a lot of moving pieces.”
by Sarah Holder, CityLab | Read more:
Image: (Applied Survey Research/All Home)
