On the second night after his church opened its parking lot to people living out of their cars, vans and other vehicles, Glenn Nishibayashi noticed a mother and daughter using one of the spaces.
He was interested in knowing how the previous evening worked out for them, and went over to inquire.
“This was the first good night’s sleep I’ve had in weeks,” the woman told him.
She explained that she was more accustomed to fitful nights parked on the street, staying half-awake so she could be alert to potentially being approached by strangers or rousted by police officers.
Members of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church were initially concerned about the possible risks of opening up their parking lot to down-and-out strangers. But talking to the mother and daughter reassured Nishibayashi that their congregation had made the right decision to give the program a try.
“This is exactly what this program is for,” said the 61-year-old Nishibayashi, whose grandparents helped found the historically Japanese American church located in what is now Los Angeles’ Koreatown.
“It gets rid of that worry, so you can function so much better,” he said. “This told me we were doing exactly the right thing.”
St. Mary’s, which now also serves Spanish-speakers, has special significance to the Japanese American community, as well as to Nishibayashi’s family. For at least three generations, it was where he and relatives got married and marked other milestones. It was also the social and spiritual hub for a community that had suffered internment and racial discrimination during World War II.
In March, St. Mary’s became the first site in Los Angeles to offer a privately operated “safe parking” program to shelter some of the city’s more than 8,500 vehicle dwellers.
Nishibayashi, who considers the program a small step to address the “huge problem” of homelessness, voted as part of St. Mary’s governing board to turn their modest church lot into a refuge for people living out of their cars. They opted to make up to 10 of their parking spots available each night, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
He said part of the appeal of the program was that if a problem arose, they would be able to immediately halt it. The program is operated by the nonprofit Safe Parking L.A., which handles the security, screening process and other logistics. The group also helps to connect the program’s clients to social workers who work to get them back on their feet.
St. Mary’s Rev. Anna Olson said when she first heard about safe parking, it seemed like a feasible way for a community church without very much manpower to do their part to address a homelessness crisis that in recent years has seemed to eclipse all other problems in the city, and which has exploded from Orange County to the Inland Empire. The number of people experiencing homelessness Los Angeles rose 20 percent last year to 34,000, and by 23 percent countywide to 58,000 people.
A survey conducted by USC in the two months following L.A.’s annual homeless count found that 50 percent cited unemployment and financial reasons for becoming homeless for the first time, according to Gary Painter, director of the USC Homelessness Policy Research Institute.
“It was something we could easily do,” Nishibayashi said. “It required simply opening the gates to our parking lot.”
Creating a ‘culture shift’
Olson said that safe parking programs can sometimes be a tough sell initially, with concerns arising over safety and nuisance issues, but so far their program has operated smoothly.
“None of the most catastrophic things that people could have imagined, and I’m sure some people did imagine, have happened,” Olson said.
While safe parking programs have long been established in places like Santa Barbara and San Diego, none existed in Los Angeles up until about a year ago. Efforts to set up parking programs in Los Angeles had moved slowly, even after the city last year instituted a ban on overnight vehicle dwelling in all but the industrial and commercial parts of the city.
When that ban was adopted, city leaders dangled the prospect of safe parking programs as a way to alleviate the limitations the ban placed on vehicle dwellers. But public officials’ efforts had yielded only one county-operated program at the Wesley United Methodist Church in South Los Angeles, at a price that many faith groups and private property owners would consider cost prohibitive.
Meanwhile, the number of vehicle encampments seemed to only grow, most visibly in the form of large motorhomes lined up on city streets and under freeway over passes.
Some members of the faith community over the last year and half have begun working to get more safe parking programs launched, but without the high cost. St. Mary’s program grew out of efforts by Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, an interfaith group that advocates for low-wage workers and communities that are economically disadvantaged. The group is hoping to encourage more churches, temples and other places of worship to offer similar parking programs.
Rabbi Jonathan Klein, the group’s executive director, said their goal is to get safe parking sites set up “anywhere and everywhere” around the city.
“This is a great opportunity to do a tangible thing to support people who are struggling right now,” he said. “There are churches all over the place with parking lots.”
He noted that such programs usually start small, and add only a few extra spots to deal with a large need, But they represents a “step in the right direction” toward creating a “culture shift” in fighting the stigma faced by people experiencing homelessness, he said.
When people experiencing homelessness are invited into a church parking lot, they are brought into a community where there are opportunities to build relationships, he said.
Spreading the word
Klein’s group works with Safe Parking L.A. which also has its roots in the faith community. It was started by Scott Sales, a lay member of Leo Baeck Temple in West Los Angeles who was part of a group interested years ago in creating a safe parking program there. While that effort never got off the ground, similar programs in Santa Barbara and San Diego were implemented and have since become the models that people in other parts of Southern California, such as the city of Los Angeles and Orange County, are now hoping to replicate.
The launch of safe parking at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church has some hoping that it is only the first of many more safe parking programs. Several additional sites are already in the works, according to Safe Parking L.A. representatives.
One of those sites launched last week at the VA campus in West Los Angeles serving homeless veterans. It is also run by Safe Parking L.A.
“We need to start it. Otherwise we’re going to have another fatality if we don’t get going.”
— Paul Leon, president of Illumination Foundation, on the need for safe parking lots for the homeless
The San Fernando Valley is among the areas that could soon see safe parking sites getting rolled out over the next month. Temple Judea in Tarzana recently voted to operate a program in its parking lot, while a city program is expected to be launched soon in the Valley.
L.A. City Councilman Paul Krekorian said he is planning to launch the city program on a piece of city property that is relatively out of the way from residential areas in his southeast Valley council district. It will initially offer 15 parking spaces, but there is the potential to expand it, he said. Safe Parking L.A. will be running that program as well, he said.
City and county leaders have noted the important role faith communities, which have long been the force behind shelter and food pantry programs, might be able to play in safe parking programs. Krekorian has sent a letter to faith groups in his district asking them to consider setting up safe parking programs. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office has also worked to promote the Safe Parking L.A.’s program to the faith community.
County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl has also worked behind the scenes to help provide discretionary funding to Safe Parking L.A. and their pilot programs in her district, some of them at places of worship.
Interest in safe parking programs appears to be growing not only in Los Angeles, but also in Orange County, which has been grappling with its own growing homelessness crisis that has lead to contentious fights over where to shelter homeless individuals who were cleared out of a massive encampment near the Santa Ana River. At last count in January 2017, Orange County had more than 4,000 people who were experiencing homelessness; about 460 were counted sleeping in vehicles.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County is working with a homeless services and housing nonprofit, Illumination Foundation, to finalize plans for a pilot program at a church in north Orange County.
The discovery in March of a family of four, including two young children, that died of apparent asphyxiation while sleeping in their van at a Garden Grove shopping center adds a sense of urgency to the effort.
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“We need to start it,” said Paul Leon, president of the Illumination Foundation. “Otherwise we’re going to have another fatality if we don’t get going.”
Leon estimates more than 1,000 people are living out of their vehicles in Orange County.
The diocese is not disclosing the exact location and other details until a meeting for parishioners at the church takes place this week. But based on existing concern about homeless people on the streets and informal feedback from church members, the diocese expects a full endorsement for the project, said Greg Walgenbach, director of Life, Justice and Peace for the Orange County diocese.
The ball got rolling in September when a deacon at the church where the pilot project will be located contacted the diocese.
“This is one of many parishes seeking a compassionate way to respond,” Walgenbach said.
Other Catholic churches around Orange County, already expressing interest in safe parking, are likely to follow quickly once they see how the pilot works, Walgenbach added, “We want to make sure we have places to take care of people where they are, and to get them into that referral process.”
‘Where can I park in L.A.?’
Back in Los Angeles, 45-year-old Catherine is scrambling to get by on the streets. She stays in her purple Dodge Charger in the same West Los Angeles neighborhood where she once lived. She recently lost her husband abruptly to cancer, the latest in a string of losses she has suffered of loved ones in the past six years.
“Just almost my whole support system passed,” she said.
Catherine found herself homeless in March, after she lost her apartment. Prior to that she had been having trouble finding employment, and was feeling increasingly depressed living by herself.
On the first night she was homeless, she stayed in a hotel room, but the next was spent driving around town until she found an underground parking lot for a supermarket and stayed the night.
“I’ve never been through something like this,” she said. “I was just Googling homeless this and homeless that, and where can I park in L.A.?”
She finally stumbled onto the St. Mary’s parking during one of her online searches, and she stayed there for a few weeks, before returning to the Westside where she could be near her son.
“This place has been a godsend, big time.”
— Catherine
Catherine said she is grateful that Safe Parking L.A. was there for her, and hopes more will be set up around the city. She said that she prefers living in he own car, to going to a shelter.
“This place has been a godsend, big time,” she said of St. Mary’s safe parking site.
“I really wish people would be open to it,” she added. “I could think of a lot more people who can use something like this.”
Staff writer Theresa Walker contributed to this story.