[Noozhawk’s note: Third in a series sponsored by the Hutton Parker Foundation. Click here for the first article, and click here for the second.]
The vehicular homeless have grown increasingly plentiful during the COVID-19 crisis as people losing jobs and housing do everything they can to hold on to the last shelter they can control: their cars, trucks or receeational vehicles.
Families and individuals — some with children, some with pets — have curled up in the back seats of compact cars or on beds in aging RVs. They’ve parked on side streets, in alleys, alongside city parks and some of the most beautiful beaches the nation has to offer.
But the problem and a temporary solution predate the coronavirus.
In 2003, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors implemented a Safe Parking Program to provide off-street parking in monitored lots as a safer option.
The program was originally designed for people living in RVs. When then-Second District Supervisor Susan Rose noticed police officers were instructed to ticket people sleeping in their vehicles near the Santa Barbara Harbor, she found a solution in repurposing community resources, including city, school and commercial parking lots typically left empty overnight. The vehicular homeless would be allowed to pull in after hours and required to pull out before business opening hours.
Since 2004, the program has been run, and expanded by New Beginnings Counseling Center, a half-century-old, Santa Barbara-based nonprofit organization. New Beginnings focuses on meeting the needs of low-income, struggling middle class and vulnerable populations with programs spanning mental health services, veterans services, and addressing needs from food insecurity to finding a safe place to rest.
“We focus heavily on case management, so we provide both a safe place for people to be at night and get their rest while monitors do rounds, and connect folks to resources, government benefits, help with housing applications, job applications, navigating their daily needs to help them safely stabilize,” said Cassie Roach, program manager for New Beginnings’ Safe Parking Shelter and Rapid Rehousing Program.
Roach was on a path toward medical school in 2015 when she began volunteering with the program.
“I fell in love with the work,” she told Noozhawk. “It’s pretty amazing to see the progression of folks where they come in first-time homeless, very chaotic, all over the place, and getting them connected to those resources and watching them stabilize and see them complete the process.
“It’s crazy-difficult work, but I enjoy the chaos. I like being busy and having a lot of things to do.”
And there’s plenty to do with a program that has expanded to include 26 parking lots throughout Santa Barbara, Goleta and neighboring unincorporated areas. Service partners include various churches and businesses, Loads of Love for laundry service and Showers of Blessing Santa Barbara for personal hygiene.
“Our folks are average individuals,” Roach said. “The vehicular homeless are the working poor who had catastrophic financial events that left them with just a vehicle. It’s a different population than the camping homeless.
“I think a lot of times people lump the homeless all together, but these are average individuals dealt a difficult hand. They just need that hand up.”
On any given night, about 150 people partake of the program’s offerings. Over the past year, the program has helped about 60 find their way back on track and into permanent housing.
“About a third of our client population are seniors,” Roach explained. “There’s also a lot of people who lost their jobs and have lived in Santa Barbara their whole life, and are looking for a temporary place just to have a safe place to park each night until they can find housing,”
Now there’s seed money to expand the program into Lompoc, Orcutt and Santa Maria, and hopes for finding community partners there to provide parking lots and related services.
“We want community partners that will allow us to utilize their parking lots overnight so our clients can safely and legally sleep there,” Roach said.
New Beginnings’ Safe Parking Program provides liability insurance coverage for lot owners, lot monitors and case managers who connect temporary lot residents with services from showers to laundry, housing to mental health. Port-a-potties are on site where restrooms are not available, though some lot owners donate restroom and other services.
“We don’t have any lots that are 24/7,” Roach said. “We don’t want to create a campground. We don’t want to create complacency.”
To be enrolled, those looking for safe respite need only pull up with their driver’s license, insurance and car registration.
“There aren’t many restrictions for who we serve,” Roach said. “The idea is to meet people where they’re at, to provide them with services and provide housing — whether they’re sober or not, have jobs or not — then offer more services to allow them to improve their lives.”
There are general rules: no smoking outside, clean up before departure each morning, no staying in the lot during the day, trash must be disposed of off site.
“We want to do everything we can to make sure the neighbors don’t complain, and we don’t want to impact or burden the lot owners,” Roach said.
“We find clients will pick up everyone else’s trash so it doesn’t come back to them. The lot becomes their temporary home, and they want to keep it nice.”
The program’s ultimate goal: not to be needed at all.
“The day I was hired I was told our ultimate goal would be for there no longer to be a program at all,” Roach said.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think the state of our economy and housing crisis is going to allow that goal to come to fruition any time soon, so we need more lots, more spaces, more staff so we can serve the over 50 percent unsheltered who are in vehicles.”
Click here for more information about the Safe Parking Shelter and Rapid Rehousing Program. Click here to make an online donation.
— Noozhawk contributing writer Jennifer Best can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.