Homelessness crisis growing across nation
Pandemic forcing more people to live in vehicles
For months, Nicholas Atencio and girlfriend Heather Surovik spent nearly every minute of their lives together in a 2000 Cadillac Escalade.
After Atencio, 33, lost his job as a plumber in May, he and Surovik, 36, delivered for Grubhub by day and at night curled up with their puppy on an air bed in the back of their car parked in a lot in Longmont, Colorado, dreaming of being reunited under one roof with Surovik’s teenage son, who was living with his grandmother.
“I’m a mom, so I want to fix everything and make it better,” Surovik said. “It’s hard when you don’t have the means to do that, when you can’t do anything because you don’t have anything.”
Americans are being driven into their vehicles by pandemic-fueled woes. And their ranks are likely to grow as the government safety net frays and evictions and foreclosures rise.
“It’s in times of crisis that the fragility of our systems are laid bare,” said Graham Pruss, a postdoctoral scholar with the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations.
Even before COVID-19, millions struggled to afford a decent place to live. The pandemic has made the housing crisis even worse, says Pruss.
He expects a surge in the number of people without permanent homes taking refuge in cars, vans, RVs and campers – and not just in the nation’s most expensive regions such as the San Francisco Bay Area, where vehicles have increasingly become a form of affordable housing, but all over the country.
“We have seen more people moving into vehicles and more restrictions on public parking for them over the last decade, and then COVID hit,” Pruss said. “I am concerned that we may be facing a population increase in mobile sheltering and vehicle residence at unprecedented levels.”
Nearly one in 500 Americans is homeless, mostly on the West Coast and in the Northeast, according to estimates. Homeless advocates say people without permanent housing are chronically undercounted. It’s even harder to track the tens of thousands of people living in their vehicles rather than on the streets or in shelters because they must move around so much.
“Vehicle residency is one of the fastest-growing forms of homelessness,” said Sara Rankin, associate professor of law and director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at Seattle University.
Black Americans, multiracial Americans, Hispanics and Latinos are far more likely to be homeless than the national average and than white Americans, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Last year, a Housing and Urban Development report found that Black people make up nearly half of the homeless population, yet comprise only 13% of the population.
“We call people living in vehicles the hidden homeless population,” said Joseph Zanovitch, executive director of HOPE Homeless Outreach in Longmont,
Colorado.
For many who are experiencing homelessness, living in a vehicle is preferable to shelters or encampments.
Vehicles offer a greater degree of autonomy and privacy, not to mention protection from the elements. There’s also the comfort that comes with families staying together, including pets. And shelter curfews often make holding down jobs with irregular hours difficult, if not impossible.
Not only that, the isolation of vehicle living has helped many escape the worst of the coronavirus, with infection rates so far lower than feared in the homeless population.
Rusty old RVs and campers, the kinds seen lining city streets or stowed under overpasses, can be acquired for a few thousand dollars, but are not permitted in many RV parks.
With few alternatives, most vehicle dwellers park on public streets, often illegally. They have no running water or electrical hookups, which can create tensions with neighbors who complain of dumped trash and sewage and scarce parking spots.
Many jurisdictions restrict or ban RVs or people sleeping overnight in their cars. Violations can prove costly, even devastating. Parking tickets and towed vehicles can result in the loss of shelter and belongings, leaving people much more vulnerable than before and much less likely to recover financially.
During the pandemic, Yesica Prado, a multimedia journalist who parks her RV in an industrial area of Berkeley, California, says she’s seen at least a 10% increase in vehicle dwellers as people lose their jobs and can no longer afford the Bay Area’s sky-high rents amid the decades-long regional housing crisis.
Their ranks are also growing as more people use pandemic unemployment aid to move out of tents and into vehicles, said Prado, a first-generation immigrant from Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico.
“If you only have so much in savings, you can either spend that money on three months of rent or get a vehicle,” said Prado, who came to the United States with her family when she was 9 and began living in an RV while a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley. “A lot of people are having to come to those choices right now.”
This new window could be useful for people who recently lost their coverage or couldn’t find a plan last year. Experts have said the number of uninsured people has risen during the pandemic due to layoffs.
People who don’t have coverage but recently developed a health problem and want better access to care could also use this opportunity. It also could help those who have insurance but may want a new plan because it doesn’t cover their doctors or prescriptions like they expected when they signed up.
“Anybody who doesn’t have coverage or isn’t happy with their coverage should be looking at the marketplace during this extended enrollment period,” said Karen Pollitz, an insurance expert with the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
Any coverage purchased will start on the first day of the following month.