New Federal Money Presents Opportunities
As more and more federal money arrives into Nevada and local coffers, those seeking to help our struggling neighbors are seizing the moment to reinvigorate long held ideas never tried before locally.
At the June Community Homelessness Advisory Board meeting, Eileen Bidwell, representing the One Truckee River non profit, presented the need for a local safe parking program. CHAB members seemed interested but wanted to keep the ball in her court, to keep seeing how much further she could take the idea herself. They seem preoccupied by the new Nevada Cares Campus and its safe camp, she said. She will go back to the board though, she says, because she does believe in the idea.
“Safe and legal parking can make a huge difference in people's lives. It could make the difference between living unsheltered or living in a relatively safe and legal place to park,” Bidwell said during a recent interview. “People who have no choice but to live in their vehicles live in fear of notices and having their shelter towed away.” She said other advocates in the community were thrilled by her presentation.
“The reaction outside the meeting was great. The community is really supportive of this, and I'm just delighted to hear that. I continue to go around and try to talk to people. One of the outreach workers in the community is out counting vehicles and talking to people and I've been helping her out.”
Bidwell has been seeing more and people she says living in their vehicles, RVs, trailers, trucks and cars as she walks in park areas, in her Ward 1 neighborhood and along the river, keeping an eye on vehicles she recognizes and noticing new ones where people might also be sleeping inside. She says these people are counted in annual point in time counts, used to estimate numbers of those inadequately sheltered. In western cities, estimates range from several hundred people living in their vehicles to over 15-thousand in Los Angeles County.
Long Experience Elsewhere, Now Applied Locally
The Chicago and Seattle transplant thought she was retiring when she came to Reno eight years ago, after a long career which included helping people without stable shelter. Now, due to that experience and people reaching out to her, she’s a human services educator for One Truckee River and is also on the board of the Reno Initiative for Shelter and Equality, which runs the Our Place shelter for women.
Bidwell sees zoning codes as the biggest hurdle, so that any future host to a safe parking program would be able to operate legally and be protected. Until recently, many Walmarts were operating safe parkings on their own terms, allowing people in vehicles to also use their bathrooms to clean up at daybreak.
Bidwell has studied nine safe parking programs, seven in California and two in Oregon. “Their budgets are kind of diverse, just all over the map,” she said. “Many of them operate out of private parking lots, including churches and businesses, others operate from a publicly owned parking lot. All of the nine are managed by non profit organizations and they provide access to the parking lot. So they actually invite people in and learn about them and what their needs are. And then they manage the program as well. Some of them are done very economically because the land is donated. Others are more expensive depending on the services. Some provide meals. Some of them also provide health care services. A few of them have repair services for vehicles. Some have towing. All of them provide bathroom access, laundry access, and trash removal.”
Some of these programs, up the coast from San Diego to Eugene and Beaverton, have 24-7 security, while others have part time security. “Most of them are what we call low barrier, which means anybody with a vehicle can park in these lots. Some of them only allow RVs, others allow cars as well and trucks and others any vehicle.”
Bidwell says there’ also the approach of opening up entire areas to legal street overnight parking with people inside their vehicles.
“I think that it's also necessary to designate street parking,” she said. “There are also people who are not interested in parking in a safe parking lot. They have their own reasons. And I think that they should be entitled and allowed to park. In certain cities, with these programs, there have complaints, and most of them are around, garbage of course, and you know, blocking the streets, particularly RVs blocking the streets. Or [you have] oil leaks, or if the vehicles become immobilized and they're just, you know, they they're just there, they're just parked there. So, some of the communities have found creative solutions, others have not, and it remains a problem.”
Partnerships and Non Profit Needed
It’s important to find partners with land Bidwell says, and churches could make for ideal collaborators. She also says a group of advocates could create a non profit specifically for this aim.
“This could really make a profound difference in people's lives,” she said underlying the need for this type of formal program. “People live in fear that their homes will be towed away with all of their belongings and once they're towed away, the cost of getting them out of the towing yards is exorbitant and almost nobody can afford it.”
She said it could also save local governments money. “Both cities, the city of Reno and the city of Sparks are spending a lot of money to tow these vehicles away. And the funding could be used to actually assist people in being safe.”
Sadly, she has only seen the need become more acute over time, with wages and fixed incomes stagnated for so long, and rent prices going up. Still, now Bidwell sees an opportunity with federal money flowing in to deal with housing.
“I could just kind of anticipate that this population would explode as housing prices and the cost of living increased so much over the years.I just didn't want it to get like Seattle, which now has the third largest population of unsheltered people in country. We have to be creative and work on solutions and collaborate to end homelessness. I've been going to a lot of meetings lately, national and statewide groups that I'm involved with. We're all really excited about this once in a lifetime opportunity, using federal money and that's going directly to areas to solve homelessness. I don't think we can wait any longer. I have met so many wonderful people in this community who really care about their homeless neighbors and our homeless neighbors. And, I think that the federal funding, if used appropriately it's going to make a big difference. So I'm cautiously hopeful.”
Need for New Zoning and Land Use Codes
In a follow up email to our interview, Bidwell wrote: “Zoning and land use codes have to be changed to reflect reality and accommodate the creation of more affordable housing in our neighborhoods. Many U.S. cities have done this successfully and it would make a profound difference here. Changes should include flexibility for parking vehicles.”
She reiterated that “people living in vehicles are actually NOT counted in annual Point in Time counts. When you look at the numbers, PIT totals would be a lot higher if vehicle dwellers were included. Also, one thing I neglected to mention is that private lots for RV and camper parking typically do not allow older vehicles to park there, so paid lots are not an option for many. I'm not sure why private lots have these rules.”
She also wanted to add a final underlying message to structural challenges: “The current systems to address homelessness were not created or structured to actually end homelessness. Services are fragmented and traditionally under funded. The systems should be torn down and recreated with people in mind. The ARP [American Rescue Plan] has given us an opportunity to make dramatic and lasting change. I have met so many amazing people who truly care about ending homelessness in our community. It gives me hope that safe and stable housing can become a reality in the future.”
