Why are so many people living in their vehicles in the Boise area, and what can we do?
When I moved to Boise in 1994, seeing someone panhandling or sleeping in a park was a rare event. Now signs of homelessness appear all around us — a disheveled man resting on a pile of blankets on the sidewalk, a mother and child on the corner with a cardboard sign, a parked car filled with belongings and with fogged windows.
What happened in these people’s lives? How could this happen in a caring, beautiful place like Boise, Idaho? Could it happen to you?
Homelessness seems like a frightening and mysterious condition. It’s almost impossible to imagine ourselves in this scenario. If you were to lose your job, you might turn to savings to get by while you looked for other work. If you were priced out of your apartment due to costs of an unexpected medical event, you might stay with a family member until you got back on your feet. Ultimately, homelessness is about poverty, which is not just a lack of money, it’s also a lack of resources. Saving accounts, social networks, marketable skills or education — these are all resources that help people out of housing crises. Resources that are not available to everyone.
Imagine if your life took a turn and you had none of these resources. One day you lose your job, your health, your home — you have no friends or family to turn to. You pack as many belongings as you can into your last possession — your car. Where do you go? What do you do? Do you drive to the nearest emergency shelter and sign up for a bed for the night? Maybe not. For many people experiencing homelessness, a car, truck or camper is a lifesaving asset.
Our Path Home tracks 242 households in our system who report living in their vehicles in the Boise/Ada County area; 105 of these are families with children. Parking code in Boise allows vehicles to stay on streets without posted restrictions, as long as they can move to another parking spot every 72 hours. Our outreach team meets with these families to provide needed supplies like water, food, blankets and propane. We help problem-solve and link to social services.
Living in a vehicle offers personal space, privacy and storage that can be hard to get in our emergency shelters. It can be the only option available for some, like those living with a pet, or for single fathers with children. And people living in cars face many challenges, such as where to park without drawing attention from neighbors, accumulating tickets, how to stay warm in the winter months, and where to access restroom facilities during the night.
People experiencing homelessness are some of our most vulnerable neighbors. They are women and children fleeing domestic violence, they are aging men and women without the family or finances to survive on their own, they are people who have fallen on hard times and just do not have the right skills and resources available to dig themselves out. They are desperate for help and desperate for housing.
Voices from those opposing solutions to our housing crises are loud. If we don’t want to become like Portland or San Diego, we all need to support affordable housing and homeless solutions across our city.
Homelessness in Boise is still solvable. Please add your voice of support.