We’re going to see more of this – from the unfortunate ones to those who deliberately choose to live a life untethered.
Each night at 6 p.m., San Diego’s New Life Assembly church opens its parking lot to dozens of people who will spend the night in their cars. The church is one of three sites in the city where the homeless can park overnight without fear of being ticketed or towed—or worse. It’s part of a citywide safe parking program started in 2010 to confront an increasingly visible face of the state’s homelessness epidemic: Californians sleeping in their cars.
As housing costs soar in major cities, more Americans are living behind the wheel. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn’t collect national data on vehicle residency, but unsheltered homelessness—a category that includes people sleeping in vehicles—is on the rise.
In 2016, HUD counted 176,357 unsheltered people nationwide on a single night; last year, that number jumped to 192,875. In King County, Washington (which includes Seattle), about 3,372 people—more than half of the county’s unsheltered population—are living in vehicles. And in Greater Los Angeles, which has the largest unsheltered homeless population in the country, more than 15,000 people live in cars, vans, and RVs.
The car has become “a new form of affordable housing,” says Graham Pruss, a researcher and former outreach worker for Seattle’s Road to Housing program, a city initiative that helped residents living in cars find more stable housing.
In the tight housing markets of West Coast cities, it’s not just the destitute or the unemployed who see their cars as their best option. “I have met people who are working at Amazon and rent an RV to live on the streets of Seattle while they’re saving enough to get into their own place,” Pruss said.
After years of crackdowns, cities from Santa Barbara, California, to Kirkland, Washington, are trying a new strategy: safe parking programs.
San Diego’s program, run by the nonprofit Dreams for Change, has three lots with 150 spaces. The program has 325 residents—more than two people share a car, in some cases—ranging from families to retirees to tech workers making nearly $100,000 a year. And they sleep in models ranging from a Honda Civic to a Lexus. “Most of the time you walk through the parking lot, you wouldn’t know that they are a parking lot full of individuals living in their cars,” said Teresa Smith, CEO of Dreams for Change.
http://www.dreamsforchange.org/the-safe-parking-program/
Link to Article
Quote: “I have too many children.”
Moved from Michigan several months ago.
Not really sure how this becomes an affordable housing issue.
Agreed. It’s more of a “Chasing a Dad Who Doesn’t Want to Deal With 5 Kids” issue. Cheerfully digging your own grave, then complaining about the view has nothing to do with “affordable housing.” It’s a cultural issue the government isn’t equipped to mitigate effectively.
The reporter willfully turning the issue into a political editorial on gender doesn’t help the woman at all. It just makes matters worse.
Conclusion: if you’re looking for “affordable housing,” don’t move to a sanctuary city in a welfare state. Lower end housing is intended to include foreign nationals, and their children, and their children, not only you and your five kids. They have civil rights too, you know. There are not enough construction workers available to deal with it for a decade.
If you’re working middle-class or especially poor, don’t come to southern california. As the video illustrates, you probably won’t like what happens.
Original article reference:
https://slate.com/business/2018/08/vehicular-homelessness-is-on-the-rise-should-cities-help-people-sleep-in-their-cars.html
Here in Silicon Valley, a popular place to park your camper/RV is the 1km stretch of El Camino Real that fronts Stanford University. I would guess there were more than 50 the last time I drove by. Does that count as ironic?
Yes, ironic.
P.S. I do have same article linked at bottom of my post, but I probably miss one occasionally. Thanks for the assist Ross!
I keep running these types of articles here because if people out-live their money, they need to get crafty quick.
Just presenting all the options.
It’s part of the bubble-era effects.
Call me crazy, if I was her I think I would have stayed in Michigan where my 5 kids and I didn’t have to be homeless. That seems better to me than living out of a van in a parking lot.
Maybe plan first rather than act first, its easy to find housing pricing online before you move somewhere…Common sense people.
When I lived in West LA this was epidemic – especially in Venice, where the coastal commission guarantees “access” for all, especially motor homeless living in their RVs. Not a joke:
https://documents.coastal.ca.gov/reports/2010/9/W25a-s-9-2010.pdf
Down here in Carlsbad the city did not ask the coastal commission for permission – and turns out their 22′ overnight parking restriction works great, even by the ocean, even if it restricts access. LA is just too stupid (or too big) to know better (Santa Monica, OTOH, had no issues and they didn’t ask either).
The real question is, who wouldn’t want to throw up a handicapped placard and park at the beach in your RV if no one cares? Dump sewage directly into the gutter, pay no property tax, collect services if needed. It’s the American Dream! And don’t be fooled by the interloper in that article, a lot of these people are local and just know a good scam when they see it – why live in an RV in Riverside when Venice beckons for the same price?
Just read this in the news:
Judge orders San Diego to stop ticketing homeless living in vehicles
“A federal judge has ordered San Diego to stop ticketing homeless people for living inside vehicles, calling the city’s longtime law prohibiting such behavior too vague for effective enforcement.”
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sd-me-homeless-vehicle-20180822-story.html
Hey Jim,
Sorry I missed the link at the bottom. I didn’t mean it as a criticism, just thought the article had a lot of interesting info (as do you). It’s a complex issue with no silver bullets in sight.
Agree, and let’s keep discussing here because it is likely to become a much bigger issue with no easy answers. It is bubbleinfo too!
Certainly a contentious issue with many opinions, to be sure.
However, I think everyone CAN agree on ONE thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XytYmeLsyb4&feature=youtu.be