Living in her car, she was afraid and harassed. Then she found an unexpected refuge

Lauren Kush started sleeping in her car when she could no longer afford an apartment in Los Angeles, where median rent for a one-bedroom is $2,350 per month. She's now among more than 16,000 people in LA County who live in their vehicles -- about a quarter of the nearly 60,000 homeless people here.

California's rising homelessness problem has led to an overall increase of 2.7% nationwide this year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said in a press release Friday.

But while cars, trucks and RVs can be cost-effective alternatives in places with some of the nation's steepest rents, they lack bathrooms and showers -- key amenities for people with jobs but no home. Beyond that, sleeping in them on most city streets is illegal. And they often leave inhabitants vulnerable.

"I was harassed constantly," Kush said of nights spent parallel parked. "People were screaming or there was a fight."

Many of those obstacles vanished this year for Kush, however, when she started overnighting in the Prius in a parking lot monitored by a security guard hired to keep watch over an impromptu neighborhood of makeshift shelters.

"I don't have to worry about being raped," she said. "I don't have to be worried about being robbed in the middle of the night."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/23/us/homeless-living-in-vehicles-los-angeles/index.html