Safe parking was supposed to be a simple, inexpensive stopgap for people living in their cars. But the program has struggled to expand in Los Angeles.
Annual homelessness figures for Los Angeles County released last week show a 5% jump in people sleeping in vehicles.But federally funded programs give priority to the chronically unhoused, making safe parking one of the few forms of shelter accessible to the growing number of Angelenos who have not been homeless before.
“If you looked at the numbers and did the math, [the pilot program] was almost double” the per-vehicle payout allowed under the new plan, said Veronica Lewis, division director of HOPICS, a homeless services agency that opened the first safe parking site in L.A. in the spring of 2017.Hong, of the Asian American Drug Abuse program, said that between the required hours of operation and the strict security mandate, her organization could not afford to let people park in a lot the group owns.
The program doesn’t employ security guards, and its lots operate at a higher density than the ones in Los Angeles, which must leave an empty space between each car.Marston, with the L.A. program, said the security guards are intended to help working people sleep better, “to truly get a good night’s rest and be productive the next day,” so they can get out of homelessness faster.
He credited the lot’s intake coordinator, Laura Rathbone, with helping him get back on his feet. “She was making me do things that would help me, because otherwise I was very depressed,” he said. The authority identified 10 lots that operators could use for free. But they are scattered around the county — many of them far away from the areas with the most people living in vehicles, according to 2018 data.
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