Those with steady jobs cannot afford rent.
People who can’t afford rent are living in their cars, and cities aren’t sure what to do about them
An increase in the number of the “vehicular homeless” gives governments a dilemma: Should they provide safe spaces for car living or enact policies to discourage the practice? While they ponder, faith groups have stepped in.
ALT LAKE CITY — When Micki Denis first moved to Seattle, she tried to find a studio apartment she could afford — nothing fancy, just a warm room for sleeping and a small kitchen so she could have her son over for dinner. Instead, the mother of five and grandmother of 14 is sleeping in her car, a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser.
She is not alone. Each night, Denis shares a parking lot outside a Methodist church with as many as 50 cars, vans and trucks, some housing entire families. In the morning, kids spill out and go into the church to get ready for school.
But Denis — the 64-year-old cousin of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and sister of a Nevada state senator — wakes up each day in disbelief that this is her life now.
She lived in nice homes for decades, until her divorce in 2003. From 2005-07, she served a mission in Florida and El Salvador for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just last summer, she traveled around Europe.
Coming from Utah, where despite rising rental costs Denis could live on a variety of part-time jobs — like being an interpreter for a school district and a cafeteria cashier at her church’s Salt Lake Temple — she was shocked by the Seattle-area housing market.
She found a part-time job to supplement a pension and Social Security, but it’s not enough. “I thought I could get something for about $700, a nice studio, but I can’t. I don’t know what’s going on here,” Denis said.
What’s going on is that low- to moderate-income Americans who don’t own their own homes are being hammered by skyrocketing rents, stagnant wages and a shortage of affordable housing. Applicants for subsidized housing face years on a waiting list. Those in need of emergency shelter find beds are often full while people sleep in the streets.
No state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which recently released a report that examined the increasing gap between wages and rent.
https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2019/10/19/20897026/living-in-car-seattle-homeless
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