In a city in Colorado, people who live homeless people can sleep in the car – if they have a job
On the side of a highway that leads to some of the most coveted slopes in the world, in a covered parking space, a form of accommodation at affordable prices emerged.
Here in Cars, Trucks and Vans, Behind Foggy WindShields and Zipped in Sleeping Bags, Those Who serves The Vacationers Who Come to Enjoy the Snow Tries to Fall Asleep On A Recent Night – Two Ski Instructors, Two Snow Plow Drivers, A Ski Lift Operator, An ICE, Fishing Guide, A Dog Sledding Guide, The Employee of a Ski Resort Whose Job Includes Scanning Ski Passe, Two Er Nurses Who Treat Their Injuries, a Cashie At a Drugstore, more servers in local restaurants, as well as Kristine Litchfield, who earns $ 24 24 in a ski shop that adapts to people for their boots.
At 6 in the morning, the 62 -year -old woke up under several covered in the bunk bed that built on the back of her Ford T250 van. It was negative of 8 degrees. “He didn’t seem cold at all,” he joked.
What Mrs. Litchfield and the most of two dozens of others sleeping in their vehicles that night really needed – the requirement for the right to sleep in the cold sub -zero in a landscape that looks like a snow globe – was a stub of local wages.
While the homeless people increase at the highest levels, parking lots like this have opened from Costa to Costa, offering a refuge to those who no longer have a house in which to sleep, but still have a car.
But the reinforcement of the neighbors has often been fierce and to get around this, the municipalities have imposed an increasing number of rules on Parker. The lot in the city of Frisco-a pendularism of 30 minutes to Vail, 14 minutes from Brekennridge and nine minutes from the Copper Mountain dust, where the American ski team trains-to be the only lot in the country that requires those who sleep there to demonstrate that they are part of the local economy.
In public imagination, the homeless people resemble man in dirty clothes that sleeps on a subway grid or the woman who scrutinizes from a tent from under a highway overpass. But in the cities and cities that have the highest concentrations of homeless, many – and sometimes the majority – of those who do not live in the shelters are by car, not on the streets, according to the annual census known as “counting of time”.
In County of Los AngelesFor example, two thirds live in vehicles. In County of San MateoWhich includes part of Silicon Valley, it is even more: 71 percent.
“The American dream of possessing a house died unless you gain dollars,” says Mrs. Litchfield, sitting on the front seat of her van.
His turn to the ski shop starts at 7:30 in the morning in a nearby shopping center. Customers are already making the line, hoping to hit the slopes of some of the most coveted slopes in the world. The vacationers are waiting for a cord as in an airport line, then they go up a small platform that towers Mrs Litchfield above that measures the feet and proposes a size of the boot.
Mrs. Litchfield spends another part of her seven -hour round to redo a demonstration of North Face jackets, then sells hand warmers and a pair of glasses to the other before returning to the lot.
Although it earns more than the minimum wage of the Colorado of $ 14.81 per hour, the $ 2,874 that earns every month are not enough to afford more than a windshield between itself and the majestic snow. According to Zillow, the studies here rent for $ 2,500 per month, which means that Mrs. Litchfield should have spent 87 % of her rented entries, leaving too little to pay her other needs.
The ownership of the house is even more out of reach since the median sale price is around $ 1 million.
“We cannot afford to buy a house, and so people started thinking, well, to screw themselves,” he said. “Why should I put myself in that debt just to live in a house? And so that’s how people are ever here,” he said pointing to the frobborn to the covered asphalt covered with snow. “This It is the American dream. Live in a van. Living in the car, “he said.
Housing activists at affordable prices are joined by employers in pushing for parking lots such as the one in which Mrs Litchfield lives. Local entrepreneurs struggle to hire and retain workers in the Summit County, where Frisco is and that the Sixth richest county in the United States.
The waitresses live three and four in an apartment and at the ski resorts, the owners of Visa J-1, designed for guest workers from abroad, share bunk beds.
Andrew Aernson, A former board member of the Frisco Town Council Sees The Parking Lot As Having Created Created Affordable Housing at Virtually No Cost to the City: “We Sit Around and Have Constant Conversations ABOT Work Force Housing,” Says Mr. Aernson, A Retired Lawyer and A Ski Instructor AT AT Brekennridge, Who estimates that it cost the Town $ 150,000 in Subsidies to Build a single unit of affordable housing, a process takes years either when the fundi are available.
“This is a kids game for me,” he said of the parking lot where workers pay $ 75 per month to rent their place, a commission that compensates for the costs including the portable bathroom. “We want these people here.”
The lot here has existed for almost six years, its position moves from a church to a tourist port to a library.
Although his model has been copied elsewhere, other communities were not so welcoming and similar programs failed after the rejection of the owners of houses.
After the opposition of the neighbors, two similar lots, one who opened in 2022 in a city in rafting of the river in Colorado, and the other that should have opened in 2024 in a hiking destination In Arizona, they were closed. Both lots requested the test of employment.
“Imagine talking to your grandmother about this thing you want to do, and every single small fear that her brain does, suddenly you have to face,” said Salty Riggs, who helped create the lot in the city of the Rafing of the Salida River, in Collo. The location next to a park with space for 15 The vehicles were approved in 2022 and operated for two years before closing in silence, after the list of rules became so long and onerous that Parker began to feel unwelcome, he said.
In Sedona, after the City Council approved a change of division into areas in the spring of 2024 that would allow workers of the homeless to park in a public lot, the raged residents organized a referendum that closed it a few months later, before anyone parked there.
To survive Frisco, the organizers of the lot of a group called Unselted in summit have trampled slightly and tried to make sure that the lot is based in the landscape.
His discretion is outlined in a presentation of PowerPoint according to which the organizers bring out when necessary for elected leaders or members of the local Rotary Club. The first slides show a drug addict collapsed on the sidewalk and an abandoned van with embarked windows. A subsequent slide shows one of the lots ordered and ordered to Frisco. One of the areas used also acts as a parking lot for the city’s utility vehicles, therefore a visitor who occurs in the lot would have difficulty distinguishing which cars are inhabited and which are not.
On the side there is a portable bathroom. A new painted bin has a combined block. Parker is given the code only if they are approved.
Another slide stresses that the organizers want to cross more: the parking lot at noon is empty, because its residents are working.
Paul Minjares, the 41 -year -old guitarist, is working on the organization of an “open house” with the members of the community. “Basically, to show that it is not Skid Row,” he said.
It does additional money by working as a coordinator of the hiring, whose tasks include the management of candidates. It leads a long interview process, first by phone and then in person, looking for a red flag indicating that the person does not work. The applicant can provide a stub or a work letter.
Mr. Minjares lived in the lot for three years and, like some of the other inhabitants of the cars, said that there is a new freedom in not having to pay the rent, allowing him to save at the same time that he is able to live in a place of extraordinary alpine beauty. A nearby recreational center offers Parker a place to take a shower, as well as multiple swimming pools, a whirlpool and a Turkish bath.
When he interviewed Mrs. Litchfield two years ago, she sat in her van to get to know her, and later provided an and -mase from the ski shop indicating her start date.
Before going to sleep, Mrs. Litchfield makes the hot air explode in the van. A piece of velcro through the ceiling of the van allows it to hang a curtain, trapping the fire in the back. “I warm the van, and then I was telling you about the fabric I put? So, it’s right above your head, here. So he lowers,” he said, explaining how the space moves.
He puts his blurred socks and more layers of clothes. “Once I crawled in my berth, I close the curtains. So now you have all the hot air that rises in the back of the bunk with me there and I with my sweat and my blurred covers and a feather duvet and a federa fuzzy and are really cold and here. I get up, letting it fall, lighting.
An electric blanket
Next to her, Mr. Minjares is also preparing for the bed. An intricate gadget that he created using a hitch on the back of his Rav4 hot air pump from a diesel heater, through a duct, in one of the windows of his car, opened wide enough to pass the duct. It is toasted inside.
But when the snow fell, he realizes that a woman in a pickup is struggling.
The 45 -year -old cashier of target ended in his Toyota Tacoma after his building has been sold and his rent was doubled. Now, Maegan Depriest Striscia in the bed of the truck covered by a shell of camper, her fiberglass skin the only barrier that separates it from the wind ululating outside. A small propane heater allows her to warm up, but is afraid of falling asleep with it – could it be the victim of carbon monoxide poisoning?
To do it all night, Mr. Minjare lent her an electric blanket, which she connected to a current strip, powered by a rechargeable battery. “He helped a lot,” he explained. “As I said, it wasn’t easy.”
The next morning, he wakes up to go to his work in target, where he earns $ 22 per hour.
