Homeless people are living in their cars. Bellingham hopes a neighborhood option will help
In 2011, Lake Washington United Methodist Church opened its parking lot to people who were homeless and living in their vehicles, giving them a place to park overnight — one where they felt safe and weren’t moved along by police.
Their first night in the parking lot makes a difference, according to Karina O’Malley, a volunteer who helped start what’s called the safe parking program at her Kirkland church.
“That was the first good night of sleep I’ve had in months,” O’Malley said of what those who are homeless — the church calls them guests — tell volunteers.
“They’re a different person,” O’Malley said to The Bellingham Herald. “Sleep deprivation is scary.”
Getting enough sleep is difficult for people living in their cars because they’re awakened three to four times a night and asked to move along, according to O’Malley, or they fear become crime victims, especially women.
“It’s terrifying,” she said.
The Kirkland church’s parking lot is open to women and people with children. On a recent November night, 48 people slept in the parking lot in their cars and vans, according to O’Malley.
Safe parking, as it’s known, is being explored or created by municipalities on the West Coast, including in Washington state, as a temporary option for those who are homeless. The idea is to allow people to legally park the vehicles they’re living in and access services in the hope that they can get back into housing.
The scope of the problem is such that:
▪ In Los Angeles County, an estimated 16,500 people live in their vehicles, according to a July 1 story in The Christian Science Monitor.
▪ In King County, an estimated 2,147 people live in vehicles, according to the 2019 Point-In-Time Count, an annual census of homeless people.
▪ In Whatcom County, about 67 people do, according to the 2019 Point-In-Time Count. It’s a population that homeless advocates believe is under-counted. They’re among the estimated 700 people in Whatcom County who are homeless.
Temporary shelter
As the city of Bellingham paves the way — officials are creating a template — for churches and nonprofits that might want to open their parking lots to those who are homeless, officials are looking to the model created by the Lake Washington United Methodist Church.
Under the current proposal, people would be screened ahead of time and could park overnight only, meaning they would have to leave during the day.
“We’ve done the research. It can be done. Here’s the way to do it,” said Rick Sepler, Planning and Community Development director for Bellingham, of the template the city has created.
No group has yet stepped forward to offer a safe-parking space, Sepler said.
“If some group will take that on, it would be fantastic,” he said.
If not, the City Council may discuss in the coming months whether to take it on as a city project, according to Sepler. But it doesn’t have the ability to do that now because it’s overseeing the winter shelter for women at Civic Stadium.
Safe-parking areas were among the different types of temporary homeless shelters that the Bellingham City Council approved in October 2018. The number of people allowed in safe-parking areas would be capped at 100 people citywide under those rules.
City rules bar RVs from safe-parking areas in Bellingham because they would allow multiple people inside, where it’s difficult to monitor what’s going on, city officials have said.
Safe parking also has been discussed at the Homeless Strategies Workgroup, which is made up of service providers, homeless advocates, as well as county and city officials, including from Ferndale.
Ferndale also is interested in a safe parking program, although it’s still finalizing its rules and hasn’t picked a location, according to city spokesman Riley Sweeney.
“Homelessness doesn’t look the same in the small cities as it looks in Bellingham. We have less people living under bridges and more people living in their cars or on the edge of poverty,” Sweeney said to The Bellingham Herald.
“The solution is affordable housing for all but in the meantime, safe parking can help mitigate the hazardous impacts of living day to day,” Sweeney said.
Safe parking
It’s not illegal to live in your car when you’re homeless. In residential neighborhoods, street parking is allowed for 72 hours at a time unless a posted sign says otherwise.
Bellingham police say they learn about people living in their vehicles — as they do about people living in the woods — when the public complains.
A vehicle parking for too long in a spot is the main grievance, police said in a previous Bellingham Herald article.
While there are spots around Bellingham where people can legally park now, they’re not monitored nor are they staffed. They also don’t have garbage or bathroom services, according to Mike Parker, director of the Whatcom Homeless Service Center.
Parker said safe parking doesn’t yet exist and praised the city for doing the research for such a program.
In Kirkland, O’Malley saying those who are homeless will do what they can to make sure that their vehicles don’t look like they’re being lived in.
In 2013, the church started allowing people to park there around the clock as it changed its program.
“Our mission is to be in relationship with people,” O’Malley explained, adding that the extended hours allowed people in the congregation to get to know the people living in cars.
They opened their church building each morning so people could come inside and start their day by making breakfast, charging their phone and brushing their teeth, she said.
There’s WiFi so people can work, check their emails and fill out applications.
There’s no overnight supervision. People in the church’s safe parking supervise themselves as a community, and all have phone numbers they can call if there are concerns that need immediate attention, according to a church Q&A.
As for those who are homeless, O’Malley said the “most common story is the mismatch between income and rent.”
“Oftentimes, folks have had some sort of precipitating event, usually a health crisis,” she said, adding that many of the women staying in the church’s parking lot are older, in their 50s and 60s.
How much does it cost the church a year to create the safe-parking area?
About $20,000 a year, including costs for a larger dumpster, utility, portable toilets and staff, O’Malley said.
By contrast, Sepler said it would cost the city $17,000 or more a month if the city had to do it because it would have to hire someone else to do the work.
As Bellingham looks to the model created by Lake Washington United Methodist Church, O’Malley provides the following advice for others thinking about creating safe parking:
▪ Start small.
▪ Be flexible, but start.
▪ “It’s a simple program to implement. It’s very inexpensive. It’s straightforward. It’s easy to tweak,” she said. “It’s a wonderful ministry for a church to take on.”
