Safe Parking Lots: A Community-Led Initiative to Address the Criminalization of Homelessness

Background and Purpose: Housing affordability has become a major issue around the country. Increasing numbers of people experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness have pushed individuals to identify new ways to solve their housing challenges including using cars as temporary, or even permanent, shelter. People using their vehicle as a form of shelter face the challenge of finding a safe place to park due to camping bans and other laws and ordinances that criminalize homelessness. One response to these bans has been to set up safe, legal, and reliable places for individuals to park overnight. The idea of parking a vehicle in a designated lot for the purpose of sheltering has become known as “safe parking” and is largely considered a harm reduction approach to address homelessness. This mixed methods study explores housing and well-being outcomes for people who are sheltering in their vehicle in a safe parking lot.

Methods: This study used a cross-sectional mixed methods study with survey data and qualitative interviews. The survey included retrospective questions about participants’ sense of safety, sense of security, mental health, and physical health. The qualitative interviews addressed the nuance of individual experiences and provided context to the quantitative findings.

Participants from seven safe parking lots in the Mountain West were invited to participate in surveys and interview. Ultimately, 37 participants completed surveys and 15 completed interviews.

Results: On average, participants reported spending 25 months (SD=4.71) sheltering in their vehicle and 4.5 months (SD=0.73) in a safe parking lot. Most (66%) participants reported being employed or retired and an additional 16% reported being unable to work and 6% reported being a student.

Participants reported a significant improvement in sense of safety (t=-3.81, p<.001), stress and anxiety (t=-2.98, p<.01), and mental health (t=-1.61, p=.05). Interview participants highlighted the importance of having a dedicated place to sleep in reducing the stress of finding a place each night. When asked about the most helpful part of being a safe parking lot, safety, bathrooms, and community were the most common responses.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings from this evaluation align with existing research on the relationship between lack of housing affordability and increases in homelessness. Upwards of 80% of participants had some form of independently earned income, suggesting that accessing housing may go beyond gaining employment and speak to the need of more low-income housing options.

Participants shared that the most helpful parts of staying in a safe parking lot were the key aspects of safe parking lots: a bathroom and the security that comes with a safe place to park. As the name implies, the largest statistical change in joining a safe parking lot was an improvement in participants’ sense of safety. This suggests that, at its core, safe parking lots are meeting the basic expectations of guests. However, participants also talked about the services that went “above and beyond” expectations. As policies criminalizing homelessness are passed across the country, safe parking lots are one way to improve safety and well-being for people sheltering in their vehicles.