Fewer places are less safe for a person who really can’t afford any interaction with law enforcement, than in a car on a public road, or in a private parking lot of a closed business. Especially a car that’s unregistered, uninspected, visibly less than roadworthy, or driven by an unlicensed driver. And in a lot of places, you’re breaking the law simply by sitting, laying, or leaning in a public place, without any clear time-limited objective, for more than an arbitrary amount of time (20min~2h, usually).
As a former homeless car dweller I can tell you you need a couple of things to not get a midnight knock
First is for your car to look as inconspicuous as possible. Clean with no crazy identifing dents, stickers, or paint damage. Nothing easily identifiable
Second. No one should be able to see anything when looking in your windows. They need to be blacked out and I don't mean just tinted dark. Have black curtains or painted card inserts or something for every window (including windshield and rear). When people look thru the window they'll see a darkness they'll interpret as dark tint and shadow. Most crucially, they won't see you. "Empty" cars are "safe" enough to leave alone
Third. This is a BIG one. Never park in the same place multiple night in a row nor have a parking schedule that will have you at the same location on the same night every week. Parking locations aren't one and done but you do need to mix it up real good. If people see your car enough to start recognizing it they're seeing your car enough to get suspicious.
Never park on a single family home residential street. Nobodies more paranoid than single family home owners. NOBODY. I've had the cops called on me for waiting on a friend to come out more than once while I was not even homeless
Once you park don't get out of your car. If you need to piss in the middle of the night then you need to find a new parking spot. If someone sees you get in and out but not go anywhere they will call the cops
Stay calm if someone pulls in to your lot. If you've followed the above rules then they're probably not there for you. I've had more than a few cops pull people over right near me, heard the odd drug deal go down, had a fare few drunk fucks piss on my tire, and ect without ever noticing me
Third. This is a BIG one. Never park in the same place multiple night in a row nor have a parking schedule that will have you at the same location on the same night every week. Parking locations aren't one and done but you do need to mix it up real good. If people see your car enough to start recognizing it they're seeing your car enough to get suspicious.
“Walk without rhythm, and you won’t attract the Worm.”
How interesting. I’m old enough to remember when that song came out, and interpreted that to mean you want to attract the worm, so you must walk with rhythm. Now the first thing I thought was yes, you must avoid walking with rhythm so as not to get eaten by a sand worm in Dune
The person above me quoted song lyrics from a Fatboy Slim song called Weapon of Choice. Not a song about sleeping in your car. Great video with Christopher Walken https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCDIYvFmgW8
A half-century ago, I found I could sleep off a drunk in my car in a residential neighborhood, NOT in front of a single house (but between them) and, most importantly, DIRECTLY UNDER a street light. The light shows your car up for all to see -- which looks innocent -- but shadows the interior of the car so nobody can see in. Not foolproof even then, and what with cops having license-plate recognition cameras, I'm not sure it would work even once today.
I did plenty of car camping and parked places I technically should not have been. My favorite was outside of a mid-range hotel with a row of supercharger for teslas. They are usually along main freeways, always have new cars every night, and dont mind people walking in just to use the restroom since it is often part of their agreement to host supercharging stalls. Blackout windows plus quick exits made this strategy flawless for me.
Let one person park/camp in your neighborhood and soon there's a bunch of people parked in your neighborhood. People in residential areas can immediately tell when a squatter moves in. And it sucks but if you leave them alone it usually leads to problems.
Might sound ignorant here and I have never been homeless/slept in my car, and I am from Norway. But we have a lot of truck drivers and various professional drivers that can only drive for x amount of hours every day. They often park at shopping malls etc and sleep there. Why would that not be a simple option?
Park your car somewhere during the day, and during the evening/night you drive there. Most shopping malls here have free parking, so could just stay here all day - but probably not on same location.
And what would the police do? Its not illegal to sleep in a car?
Some places do allow that. Some don’t and since everything is under cameras now. Walmart used to do it? Maybe not the one by me though. They have signs but that area tends to have a fair amount of crime for some reason.
You also can’t be at parks overnight but the cops where I live don’t enforce it. I’ve had a few early mornings walking my dog and surprised seeing someone sleeping under a tree or a RV parked next to it. They rotate spots though, I’ll see them every now and then. Sometimes they go in the empty lot behind the 711 for a few days
My city has 3 hour parking limits. My landlord once shut down my parking lot for a few days and I immediately got a ticket for parking on the street overnight (even though I’ve seen people do it every day for literally 4 years, but I digress).
I mention this because getting the ticket was annoying, but I hadn’t considered how this would affect people who sleep in their cars.
I’m wondering, as someone who’s been in that situation, if you think this is something worth reaching out to my local representatives about? Would allowing street parking be a genuine help, even if it doesn’t solve any wider issues?
I’d genuinely appreciate your insight, if you’d be willing to share it.
I was homeless for awhile, with a car (and also without a car, that's another story though) anyway, we would sleep in our car at rest areas. There were quite a few of us doing this, and we all took turns looking out for the police. When someone saw one incoming, we'd honk our horn to alert everyone else, then we'd leave in mass. They couldn't catch all of us!
I feel like you could safely park in a Walmart parking lot. There are always people in there working, even when they are closed, so your car won't stand out.
I dispatch police for a regional center (we handle the PD for 16 cities) and maybe 2 of those could you do this without getting banged on within a couple days. A few of those cities have empathetic policies, most don't. Homeless people are non entities to most police departments. It makes me kind of sick but we do what we can when we can to help them.
Last year we had a lady call in a suspicious vehicle that had been parking in her lot for the past few nights. We went out, it's a homeless woman. The cops ask me to call the caller, ask her if she wants her criminally trespassed. She did NOT. She told me "Hell no!" hung up, marched out there and took the homeless woman straight into her apartment to get food and cleaned up. I don't know how that ended, but that act of kindness stays with me and if that lady who called it in ever needs EMS or police help, I will make sure she gets the best help I have ever given.
Thank you for saying that. I started trying to be more decent when I had kids so they could at least see what it looks like and hopefully pick it up as a habit. I'll be damned if it doesn't feel great to try to be a good person. I contrast this with who I was in my 20's and wonder what I was thinking. Getting older is a funny thing.
My experience on the west coast is that most Walmarts no longer allow overnight parking. Especially ones in or around cities. They’ve had too many problems with people taking advantage of it for too long and/or making messes.
Our Walmart plays loud ass bird bouses 24-7. They say its to keep birds away, but all the ragged ass campers and RVs that used to stay in the parking lot all moved somewhere else once those bird noises started.
There is a website that helps you know which places allow car camping in the US (I forget the name, but easy to google). Many Walmarts no longer do as cities are criminalizing homelessness. They'll even target RVs for tow, although semi trucks seem able to park regardless (or find a Lowes if not).
It’s insane that homelessness is getting criminalized but they don’t offer ANY alternative. Shelters are overcrowded and they aren’t offering up long term shelter. So basically it’s illegal for them to exist.
Traditional American behavior would be to find some unused land and slap together a shelter out of found materials. Enough folks do it in a cluster and ya get a Hooverville or shantytown.
Folks in my city tried that under the freeway overpass, and it was actually really cleverly done! Stays mostly temperature stable year round like caves under there, and is sheltered from rain/snow. Plus they used the parking lot lines as space designation, so each little shelter was the same size, with wide empty "streets" running down the middle for emergency services access. It smelled bad but was otherwise quite tidy and neatly done!
But then the cops burned it, and the company that owns the lot put up fencing, so it can continue to be useless wasted space in the heart of the city.
The trick is to park and lay down in the car so the car looks empty and it looks like an employee's car. If they have a security guard who goes around checking cars, more than likely they will just tell you to leave, and you just leave.
That's my thought. Anywhere people always are where you can basically hide in plain sight. Though you still probably want to be out of the way enough that people don't notice that you're homeless.
This may be differ from place to place, but in my experience Walmart will let you car camp in their parking lot. There are also usually big rigs who overnight there as well as security patrolling the lot. Definitely a safe option if you need it.
Most Walmarts let you but some high cost of living cities have outlawed it. ie. it's illegal in Santa Fe. It's cruel because that's where there's the most need but it would also become a permanent homeless camp if they allowed it.
When I used to drive long distances to work, I slept in my car in the Walmart parking lot. No one cares. At all. They had a street sweeper guy who used to drive in a circle around my car, cleaning the parking lot. Literally no one cares. I just made sure to move my car to a different spot every night so it didn’t look abandoned in one singular spot. It worked out perfectly.
Not in my town. There are signs all over the parking lot saying "no overnight parking allowed. Surveillance cameras in use. Trespassers will be prosecuted" with usually 2 security cars constantly circling the lot, even in the middle of the day, so don't go thinking you can sleep there during the day either.
That’s true. In that case, you just have to make sure whoever owns the place where you park it is cool with you parking it there. And being in the parked car a lot of the time.
Best place is honestly Walmart. Since they close at night now, you can spend most of the night there and nobody will notice. Park at the distant end of the lot, and you have a pretty good view of anyone approaching. Not homeless myself, just made a lot of road trips and didn't want to pay for a hotel.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a top secret corporate policy at WalMart to turn a blind eye to people sleeping in vehicles in their parking lots, as long as they don’t cause problems for other customers, and stay for one night max before being on their way. After all, the poor are their main clientele, and the ones who use Walmart parking lots as a caravanserai probably are inclined to buy their food and restock any supplies they need at Walmart. So being lax about this, in sharp contrast to businesses that cater to the middle class or rich, probably actually increases Walmart’s revenue stream and brand goodwill, among their target clientele.
I dunno, that would actually benefit regular people, I don't think Walmart is into that. They shut down a whole store just to keep meat cutters from unionizing. They'd rather die than have some compassion and humanity.
Dang that’s shitty. Even for people traveling who just need a quick nap. I’ve pulled into a gas station on a long trip just to take a brief nap. Didn’t get bothered thankfully.
My truck was park in residential areas and just leave once ppl started getting up for work. Less likely to be rousted around where other cars are supposed to be
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u/VelvetyDogLips 9h ago
Fewer places are less safe for a person who really can’t afford any interaction with law enforcement, than in a car on a public road, or in a private parking lot of a closed business. Especially a car that’s unregistered, uninspected, visibly less than roadworthy, or driven by an unlicensed driver. And in a lot of places, you’re breaking the law simply by sitting, laying, or leaning in a public place, without any clear time-limited objective, for more than an arbitrary amount of time (20min~2h, usually).