This shot was taken near a freeway on-ramp in southwest Seattle. It’s a prime spot for car campers since it’s close to a greenbelt where other homeless people congregate. In addition to being a kind of watering hole, the greenbelt makes for a handy place to dump trash, go to the bathroom, and do other things that can’t be done inside a vehicle. Moreover, since this is in an industrial neighborhood (and not a residential one), a car or truck sitting here for a few weeks is less likely to draw complaints from the neighbors.
Car camping presents municipalities with a dilemma. Should it be treated as a parking violation? Or as someone’s existential crisis? Larger cities are reluctant to ticket and tow these vehicles, because they know that if they do they might be throwing some poor person out on the street and making more problems for themselves down the road. The other option is for social service workers to contact the owners and see whether they need help finding emergency shelter. But even if there’s shelter for the owner, what’s to be done with the vehicle? Most shelters don’t have a place for people to put a car, to say nothing of an RV like the one in this picture.
If the authorities simply look the other way, one car camper will draw another and another, until the problem becomes so great that the authorities must deal with it somehow. The state department of transportation did a clearing operation in this green belt last summer (see link here) and has been towing sporadically in the area ever since, but that was not enough to discourage people from camping here, and new ones are moving in every week. And so the problem continues to fester. Rents are rising fast in Seattle, and I can see where living free in a camper might look like a better option to some folks than shelling out $1000 a month for a scuzzy two-bedroom apartment. It’s hard to know whether people living out of their cars really have no money or whether they are simply trying to save up by living rent-free on the side of the road for a while. This is not one of the things homeless agencies are tracking now, but perhaps they should be.