‘We are Vehicle Dwellers.’ Portraits from the Road.

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In January 2017, I moved out of my apartment and into a cargo van. I was drowning in student debt, desperately searching for ways to cut my expenses. So far, I’ve lived in my van in Colville, Washington, San Francisco, and Bellingham, Washington, and have visited countless places in-between for at least a night.

As the mileage on my odometer has grown, I’ve noticed a lot of other people living in their vehicles, many of whom seemed worse off than me. Thankfully, I’m employed full-time with a good paying job, and am able to afford paying a small amount of money each month to park out of the way on private land. I’ve used Craigslist and mutual friends to find places to park, complete with necessary utilities, for $200-$600/month. But I’ve become aware of the plight of other vehicle dwellers with fewer resources, and who must deal with police crackdowns. Citations, impounding, and knocks on the window in the middle of the night are frequent occurrences for those forced to live in vehicles on public streets. I’ve experienced it myself. On my third day of work at my current job, the facility called the police on my van, which I had parked on a public street outside the main entrance.

I’ve become aware of the plight of other vehicle dwellers with fewer resources, and who must deal with police crackdowns. I’ve experienced it myself. On my third day of work at my current job, the facility called the police on my van, which I had parked on a public street outside the main entrance.

These experiences led me to create a website, We Are Vehicle Dwellers, a place to share the stories of people who live in their vehicles. In most cases, they’re trying desperately to stay out of sight and not bother anyone, in search of a night without a knock on the door.

I’ve heard many stories of discriminatory policing. Dave and Marcia, who live in a minivan, told me, “when you live in a van, you are a suspect . . . we went to a rest stop and pulled up behind a motorhome. A police officer came up and asked us if we were with the motorhome, and when we said no, he asked us to leave. We weren't even there for an hour.”

Another person living in an old Dodge cargo van, Michael, shared his advice for avoiding run-ins with the police. “I come in late at night and leave early in the morning. I make it a point to keep moving. The mistake that some people make is that they stay in one place for too long, especially with the mobile homes.”

As urban rents soar, more people have moved into vehicles parked on public streets. There are no exact figures on the number of homeless persons in the United States who sleep in vehicles, but if news articles on the topic are any indication, that number is high and growing.

Sleeping in a car on the street can be incredibly difficult—if it is legal within a city at all. While many cities have no specific ordinances against people sleeping in their vehicles, a handful of pioneering cities are attempting to make this legal in certain areas. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty’s 2016 report, cities that do not criminalize living in vehicles include Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, among others.

Los Angeles has actually wavered on this issue. In 2014, a city law restricting people from sleeping in their vehicles was ruled unconstitutional by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“For many homeless persons, their automobile may be their last major possession—the means by which they can look for work and seek social services.”

“For many homeless persons, their automobile may be their last major possession—the means by which they can look for work and seek social services,” the court concluded. “Selectively preventing the homeless and the poor from using their vehicles for activities many other citizens also conduct in their cars should not be one of those options.”

In January, Los Angeles passed a law to let vehicle dwellers park on a small portion of the city’s streets overnight. But vehicles can’t occupy a given spot for more than 72 hours, so vehicle dwellers must move frequently to remain in compliance.

Brandon lives in a large Class A motorhome for which he must buy temporary license plates at a cost of $30 every three days because he can’t afford to renewing his regular plates. He has a feeling of distrust in remaining parked in any one place for an extended period of time. “It’s the lack of having somewhere where I know that my RV is okay and I don't have to worry about it [being impounded],” he told me. “Even if I had a place that it was okay it would take me a while to trust it.”

Other cities have taken a much tougher approach, banning and even criminalizing the act of sleeping in one’s car. A recent report from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty states that 39 percent of the cities surveyed prohibit living in vehicles, an increase of 143 percent since 2006. These cities include San Francisco, San Jose, San Antonio, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, among others. In many of these areas, people living in vehicles are often cited and fined, and risk having their vehicles impounded, leaving them without a home, transportation, or belongings.

These laws are enacted for a variety of reasons, including concerns about crime, sanitation, and already sparse parking. In San Antonio, police spokesman Sergeant Javier Salazar told the San Antonio Current, “As a city, we need tourists and visitors that come here to feel safe, and when they’re being approached and aggressively panhandled, that’s not something that’s conducive to downtown and of course that has to be addressed. In certain situations, when somebody is camping on someone else’s property or creating a health concern, while it’s not aggressive in nature, it still has to be addressed.”

Most of the people I met who are living in their vehicles are concerned mainly with having a safe and legal place to park, followed by food, toilets, showers, laundry facilities, an easy way to dispose of waste, and electricity. Safe parking lots for the homeless are springing up all over the country.

An example of these is Dreams for Change in San Diego, which has served 2,650 people since 2010, with 65 percent of them able to find housing or move into long-term transitional programs, per the organization’s website. Though these programs are great for people who are able to get into them, and are certainly better than having to park on the street overnight, many of them are full with waiting lists, and are restricted to parking overnight only.

Perhaps overnight parking doesn’t go far enough. As Brandon points out, “if I got a ticket on my window that says I have a couple hours to move, and I don't get it until I get off work, then I come back and my RV is gone.”