Last Refuge for the Homeless: Living in the Car

The widely respected Time Magazine recently produced an interesting article regarding 'vehicle dwellers':
For people who cannot afford rent, a car is the last rung of dignity and sanity above the despair of the streets. A home on wheels is a classic American affair, from the wagon train to the RV. Now, for some formerly upwardly mobile Americans, the economic storm has turned the backseat or the rear of the van into the bedroom. "We found six people sleeping in their cars on an overnight police ride-along in December," says John Edmund, chief of staff to Long Beach councilman Dee Andrews. "One was a widow living in a four-door sedan. She and her husband had been Air Force veterans. She did not know about the agencies that could help her. I had tears in my eyes afterwards."
"Cars are the new homeless shelters," says Joel John Roberts, CEO of PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) Partners, the largest provider of services for the homeless in Los Angeles County, which had nearly 50,000 people homeless in 2009. Of these, experts estimate that up to 10% live in vehicles — even though doing so is illegal in most of the county. A similar situation is true for many other regions across the nation, especially in the Sun Belt. A woman lives in her BMW in Marina Del Rey, a swank L.A. address on the coast. PATH outreach workers Jorge Guzman and Tomasz Babiszkiewicz say she was an executive recruiter until the Great Recession. "She was self-employed for 36 years," says Guzman. "Now she sits in the car with a blanket and reads. She has not told her daughter." Read more (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1963454-1,00.html#ixzz0fiVYcq5N)

S-10 truck...living in it...no way. No place to recline! Wish I had a sedan or small RV. I love my truck...have taken good care of it (2001 with only 74000 miles). Sleeping in it is like worse than the comfort of a dentist's chair. Don't know what to do...soon, i will not afford insurance, and what is a car dealership going to give me...half of what it is blue book worth?
Any ideas welcomed. To all, may a blessing come.

Frost (but not forzen yet)

Thats fine and dandy but lest we not forget that it take quite a cash infusion to keep a car going even if its a beater you own outright.

Let me explain the obvious expenses will be fuel and insurance payments as basic liability is pretty much a requirement everywhere nowadays, registration and plate stickers, here in the state of Texas you also are required to get and post a safety inspection sticker prving you vehichle is road "worthy" as politicians deemed it

Now the real wallet drain especially on most cars the since the 1980's and forward repairs are so complicated now ya cant just get by any more with a toolbox and a trip to NAPA or the is so technical now you will be forced to take it to a shop that will chargethrough the roof

Now without substantial savings or a soure of employment how are ya gonna afford all that huh

My small tent, sleeping bag, and framepack n a good pair of workboots n my scrounged tenspeed bicycle are alot cheaper than a car all day long freeing up my meager cash for other things in life

How do you live day to day? You are an interesting person, based on your insights that I have read here. But do you have SSI or SSD coming monthy that allows you to live somewhat with an income? Madison is cold! Where do you go...friends, shelters, cardboard boxes? I would like to know how you live and survive. I think you know much, and I am willing to learn.
frost

How do you live day to day? You are an interesting person, based on your insights that I have read here. But do you have SSI or SSD coming monthy that allows you to live somewhat with an income? Madison is cold! Where do you go...friends, shelters, cardboard boxes? I would like to know how you live and survive. I think you know much, and I am willing to learn.
frost

I am no-longer in Wisconsin as I age i can no longer tolerate the bitter winters of the midwest but about march or april I plan on making my way back to the midwest probably Duluth-Superior area as I like the area the cops are very laid back as long as ya arent doin drugs "very strict on drugs use" and summers are mild "75-80" in july is considered a heat wave and it gets down to 45 at night makin it easier to sleep for me anyhow.

I have a pending disability application but have become discouraged over the years so I gotta wait a decade to clain retirement age so the majority of my income comes from Odd jobs, Dumpster divin for scrap metal or stuff I can fix-up n sell on the street, temp servivces, and if all else fails i panhandle from time to time.

As for shelter I currently have a small 2person tent not much but big enough for me n my stuff at night and it keeps the rain off of me depending on where I am and how strict the laws i also look for abandoned homes or boarded up crack houses and break into them but i usually like a partner when doin this so we can watch eachothers backs if someone other than the cops show up If the weather is really bad i will go to shelters but I find many of them overcrowede and stressful n very codescending towards clients and dont forget overpasses if not already occupied many times I wander into a woodsy area of town or a park n just pitch my tent you can also camp in storefronts and city bus shelters if the cops dont chase ya out just leave early though as not to be discovered in larger metro areas bus and train stations as well as other places are open all-night and if you dont draw attention to yourself just sit somewhere and blend in they generally do not bother you.

if I happen upon gainful paycheck employment i will look for a room by the week in a cheap motel or on craigslist people often rent furnished rooms in their houses for extra cash but i prefer the weekly motels cause with then it's just straight buisness cassh and a key wheras peoples house often want refereces and background checks n to sign a lease.

Also when I can i am knwn to go couch-surfin but more often than not peoples patience wears thin in short order and it often ruins the friendship so I try not to rely on that method long term.

S-10 truck...living in it...no way. No place to recline! Wish I had a sedan or small RV. I love my truck...have taken good care of it (2001 with only 74000 miles). Sleeping in it is like worse than the comfort of a dentist's chair. Don't know what to do...soon, i will not afford insurance, and what is a car dealership going to give me...half of what it is blue book worth?
Any ideas welcomed. To all, may a blessing come.

Frost (but not forzen yet)

Frost, my best suggestion is to trade it on something like Craig's List for an older van. ANY van. Best would be a van that will give you enough room to sleep in and set up a small rolling home. If you are not going to move much, go for one with a camper van fit out. If you plan to move around, then good mechanical condition is your best bet.

Emphasize the good condition of your truck in the add. Or sell it and buy a van.

Now the real wallet drain especially on most cars the since the 1980's and forward repairs are so complicated now ya cant just get by any more with a toolbox and a trip to NAPA or the is so technical now you will be forced to take it to a shop that will chargethrough the roof

Now without substantial savings or a soure of employment how are ya gonna afford all that huh

Hi Dave.

A lot of people buy older vans that they can work on themselves. The Chevy Astro being a very popular model with VanDwellers in the USA. Easy to work on, older so less technology. Cheap on parts (lots of wreackers have them) and a good network of people who live in them.

Vans offer security over a tent. You can pretty much lock up a van and be sure stuff in it will be there at the end of the day. Still, I figure people who break into a tent would not stop at breaking into a car.

Vans offer security over a tent. ...

That's true to an extent. But then, other folks that realize you've got a vehicle (and possibly stuff of value within) can and do case things out, especially if you frequent areas with any of the street vermin.

"Security" always requires a certain amount of preventative measures. I tend to ONLY park in certain areas if I'm going to be away from the vehicle for spans of time. And only certain areas qualify for where I'll overnight too.

It's also important to be very selective about who you ever let in the vehicle, at all.

I live in my station wagon with my partner. I have a big lockable toolbox on the roof that carries nearly everything needed to pull the car apart and put back together (assuming i have the parts required if any). In front of that i have plastic tubs to hold food,cooking equipment, toilet paper and whatever else we deem necessary. We have a large weather resistant bag that holds the bedding. And a 20L water bottle and a sack of dry dog food. All that is strapped down with ratchet starps and U-Bolts, covered in a tarp which is pinned down by a cargo net that gets tied in knots to make it difficult to un-do quickly.

One of us is usually with the car at all times as the other ducks into a shop for something. If the car is un-attended, it's usually nearby as we let the dogs run around and a close eye is kept on it and if someone(anyone) happens to be walking by it, we re-group at the car immediatley.

By night we have parked in a location that we feel good about and go about cooking, setting up the bed in the back, giving the dogs a feed and some water.
I like to think we are fairly un-approachable as our dogs(Rotty & Pitty) are anti-social, even if someone walks by talking all cutesy to them they just growl and bark. No-one has ever felt confident about touching them which makes us feel kind of safe, But in the event of a un-desired interaction with some drongo, There is two of us ready to switch on "the crazy" with a toma-hawk and steel bar and take the fool to school while we let slip our dogs of war. lol

i have had a pitty and a piggy for years even then being declared dangerous and moving on over again, when i could only afford to drive the car once a fortnight for shopping.
so much enlightened after the dogs were forced put down, sad but freedom and peace...

My transmission is about to give out...

What to do...what to do.

I guess just play it out right? At least it's summer.


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I had a Prius, still had payments to make on the thing ..... long after it was gone I learned that that a guy much bigger than me was living in his lol.

I calculated that living in a rented room made a lot more sense than living in a car.

When I lost everything, I eventually handed the Prius back to the local repo outfit (I arranged everything with the finance co., etc. and by that time, a few months after my life crashing to a smoldering pile, I was living with a friend in Northern Arizona and I handed off my car at the local Safeway in the parking lot and my friend drove me back to his place.) I figured the car in actuality cost me about $600 a month to own and operate. I may have been smart to keep it, since it was new enough that the costs were pretty much fixed. The payment, I had a service plan so that was good for years, my insurance, etc. But I sensed it was not very "scale-able" and in fact my life crashed because I didn't have enough layers of redundancy, I was too efficient. I ran my small biz out of my apartment, the car was not really best to live in, I stored all my material in the apt etc. When my sales plummeted in mid 2007, it all came crashing down HARD.

If instead, I'd had a storage unit for storage, a rented room to live in, a paid-for minivan, and an "official" address yet somewhere else from the storage unit and rented room, plus done all computer work with a laptop which you can grab and RUN, then my crash would have been much more graceful. Lost the rented room, live in the van, use the storage unit and losing the room would not mean losing my "official" address. Things go down further, downgrade to a smaller storage. Things go down from there, lose the van and get a bicycle and sleep "wherever". And so on.

In fact when I came back out here, the original plan was to sell the motorcycle right off, use the money to get a storage unit and a bicycle, and go around to different farmer's markets and draw caricatures for a living. Shower in a gym. But I ended up paying to sleep on a guy's couch (which gave him his drinking money) and kept the motorcycle for quite a while.

But getting back to cars as money-leaks, they sure can be. I compare a car to supporting another person, one who has first-class tastes. It's probably $500 a month easy even for a paid-for car. AAA figures say the average American is paying about $8k a year, for most that's $13k they have to earn since it's post-tax dollars.

JustSumGuy - "what to do, what to do"... well, better start working on Plan B right now. All of us here know the world can collapse and FAST for anyone. It's happened to all of us. When I had my business I wish I'd been burying little caches of cash, setting up all kinds of emergency food stores and various "escape routes" of various types.

My erstwhile "couchlord" (like a landlord but I just rented a couch from him so, get it?) is now homeless. I think his family will eventually bail him out, or he'll die from alcohol poisoning or something, anyway, I told him as I've told many, if he knows he's gonna be homeless, get a storage unit so you have some kind of a "home base". The storage unit allows you to have more than one change of clothes, keep personal papers, etc. You should always be able to panhandle up enough to keep it. If you ride a bicycle you'll need it to keep spare tires and tubes, parts, etc in. Then you can sleep "wherever" in the summer, in the winter, well, hit the shelters, save up for a room, something. But keep the storage unit a SECRET. Gov't and any other agencies will want to take everything in it, people even "friends" will want to rob it, etc. In fact you need to keep all your "aces in the hole" secret, once you're poor in the US you're supposed to stay poor, and dependent, so for your plans to get back on your feet are to work, you have to exercise some basic security.

Learn some craft or job like window-washing or sign-painting or something, and work on getting back on your feet as a proud working person.

If you decide you HAVE to live in your car, I suggest:

Keep it CLEAN yep go to a coin-op carwash, or use a bucket and sponge, whatever, keep that sucker looking nice and middle-class.

If you can, get one of those "My student is the ...." stickers somewhere, and stick that puppy on. Use NO OTHER stickers. OK maybe the old "AAA" oval, stickers should be limited to 1-2 and nice middle-class-people type stuff.

Consider using a car-cover if you're just parking on the street. There's an EXCELLENT page out there on living in a car and the key is a car-cover. If I'd read that at the time my world ended, I'd have danced right on over to Toyota and gotten the factory cover, and had a go at living in the Prius. It may have worked out well.

Consider joining the Elks. They have clubhouses in every town, offer cheap parking for campers (and I think this includes car-campers if you're neat and clean) and are a good outfit. Nice people and they allow women to be full members now. In fact any fraternal organizations you can join can be a big plus, If you're a vet, join the VFW or the American Legion. I actually joined the Legion up in N. Arizona and was getting lines on informal $10 an hour jobs, but I wanted OUT of there and back to my native state. The Eagles is another good outfit.

Yep "mommy" stickers, carwashes, and fraternal organizations ....

You also need to keep yourself squared-away. If you're not a good housekeeper or highly disciplined about personal hygiene, living in a car will square you away as fast as doing a stint in the Marines.

i agree with garlic breath. your best bet is plan b now. like start pooling your resources, and looking for another rig. And also what you are going to do with the rig you are in.

Those are some good tips, obviously from hard won experience.

I, too, had a fairly rapid situational decline and saw homelessness quickly approaching. That zone seems to be one of the most critical for many people. Some freeze up. There's a common reaction, at least for awhile, of wanting to keep (over)investing in trying to stave it off and avoid it, even when it's virtually inevitable. Especially when the prospects are pretty dim ahead and one isn't at all experienced or used to having to live and operate so minimally. But that can only squander precious resources and at a time when it can make the most difference.

I used a last credit card, that I'd acquired not too long before as an "emergency" resource, to rent a truck and get a storage unit. I sold off/traded some things to get some labor help for loading/moving (had some health probs at the time, but still did a lot of work myself).

I'd bought a small station wagon, thinking it could be handy if I eventually had to use it for that, but it got stolen not too long before everything else came crashing down. I had a motorcycle, too, but had to sell it to finance the effort to fight off what, in fact, was an illegal eviction. Then I learned how sleazy, yet effective, junkyard attorneys can truly be, when I got tricked and lost.

So I sold off some more and got a decent bicycle and began a daily regimen of riding further and further, to get in shape with it. Later, once 'out there' I sold that one in order to buy a cheaper one but with one of those kiddie trailers, so that I could more easily lug loads and not have to use shopping carts, etc. That turned out to be one of my better investments.

I always kept a certain amount of "camping" and other utility type items around, but made a point of also beefing up the gear with a good military air mattress and "sleeping system" (sleeping bags/bivvy bag) and began to use these on the floor in advance of having to in order to get comfortable and used to it.

When The Day came, I was reasonably prepared in these ways, although mentally/emotionally it was still difficult, despite all measures in advance. I've watched others that haven't taken such steps fall apart when their time came, though. And yet others have to go homeless with much less useful, quality gear which makes it all much harder, overall.

I'd also had a laptop and a digital camera which I used to continue selling off storage items to keep a modest cashflow going, since the storage and general ongoing operating costs continue, and doing recycling and such was so competitive and meagre.

If I had to do it all over again, there probably are some further moves I'd have made and begun more in advance. If I ever manage to get back out of the jam enough, I will be sure to not only keep such basic gear always on hand, but will make a point to incorporate some further "preparedness" into my inventory and lifestyle. Just in case. I never want to have to go through that again, even as relativey "well" as I did.

For the better part of a year now, I've been mainly living in an RV-type van. It makes such a huge difference and is such a major advantage that I think it's as dramatic a step from the streets as it is to go back "inside" from the van. But it sure does add costs. And parking becomes an ongoing logistical issue, having to move it around so often and much and various considerations for security and maintenance, and potentially expensive risk due to tickets.