|
Author
|
Topic: Mom forced to live in car with dogs
|
nattie33
Knowflake Posts: 539
From: USA
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted May 20, 2008 01:09 PM
 
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/19/homeless.mom/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
SANTA BARBARA, California (CNN) -- Barbara Harvey climbs into the back of her small Honda sport utility vehicle and snuggles with her two golden retrievers, her head nestled on a pillow propped against the driver's seat.
Californian Barbara Harvey says she is forced to sleep in her car with her dogs after losing her job earlier this year.
A former loan processor, the 67-year-old mother of three grown children said she never thought she'd spend her golden years sleeping in her car in a parking lot.
"This is my bed, my dogs," she said. "This is my life in this car right now."
Harvey was forced into homelessness earlier this year after being laid off. She said that three-quarters of her income went to paying rent in Santa Barbara, where the median house in the scenic, oceanfront city costs more than $1 million. She lost her condo two months ago and had little savings as backup.
"It went to hell in a handbasket," she said. "I didn't think this would happen to me. It's just something that I don't think that people think is going to happen to them is what it amounts to. It happens very quickly, too."
Harvey now works part time for $8 an hour, and she draws Social Security to help make ends meet. But she still cannot afford an apartment, and so every night she pulls into a gated parking lot to sleep in her car, along with other women who find themselves in a similar predicament. Watch women who live in their cars »
There are 12 parking lots across Santa Barbara that have been set up to accommodate the growing middle-class homelessness. These lots are believed to be part of the first program of its kind in the United States, according to organizers.
The lots open at 7 p.m. and close at 7 a.m. and are run by New Beginnings Counseling Center, a homeless outreach organization.
It is illegal for people in California to sleep in their cars on streets. New Beginnings worked with the city to allow the parking lots as a safe place for the homeless to sleep in their vehicles without being harassed by people on the streets or ticketed by police.
Harvey stays at the city's only parking lot for women. "This is very safe, and that's why I feel very comfortable," she said.
Nancy Kapp, the New Beginnings parking lot coordinator, said the group began seeing a need for the lots in recent months as California's foreclosure crisis hit the city hard. She said a growing number of senior citizens, women and lower- and middle-class families live on the streets. See how foreclosure filings are up 75 percent »
"You look around today and there are so many," said Kapp, who was homeless with her young daughter two decades ago. "I see women sleeping on benches. It's heartbreaking."
She added, "The way the economy is going, it's just amazing the people that are becoming homeless. It's hit the middle class."
She and others with New Beginnings walk the streets looking for people and families sleeping in their cars. The workers inform them about the parking lot program.
New Beginnings screens people to make sure they won't cause trouble. No alcohol or drugs are allowed in the parking lots.
"What we are trying to do is we pull bad apples out, and we put good apples in the parking lots and really help people out," said Shaw Tolley, another coordinator with New Beginnings.
Most of the time, the lots are transition points. New Beginnings works with each person to try to find a more permanent housing solution.
"It saddens me when they live in their vehicles," Tolley said. "It is not the most ideal situation for senior citizens and families, but it is reality."
He added, "We need to engage this problem. This is reality."
John Quigley, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said the California housing crisis has left many middle-class families temporarily homeless or forced them to go to food banks to feed their families.
"Part of the reason why it's so painful in Santa Barbara is there's so little in the way of alternative housing," Quigley said. "If there were alternative low and moderate housing and rental accommodations that were reasonably close by, you can imagine it wouldn't have this desperate look to it as people living in their cars."
At the only lot for women in Santa Barbara, it's a tough existence. There are no showers or running water. On the night CNN visited, a half-dozen women already were in the parking lot before nightfall.
Linn Labou, 54, lives in her car with four cats. She used to be in the National Guard and is on a waiting list for government housing, but the wait is a year long.
"I went looking for family, but I couldn't get them to help me," she said.
As for Harvey, she begins each day by walking her two dogs before going to her part-time job. She leaves the dogs in her car with its windows cracked while she works.
It's another chapter in her life that she's certain she'll get through, even though she said she knows it pains her children. Her 19-year-old daughter moved in with friends to avoid being homeless. Her other children live overseas.
"My daughter especially is very unhappy. Sometimes she'll cry and she'll call and say, 'Mom, I just can't stand it that you are living in a car,' " Harvey said. "I'll say, 'You know what? This is OK for right now because I'm safe, I'm healthy, the dogs are doing OK and I have a job and things will get better.' "
.
IP: Logged |
thirteen
Knowflake Posts: 1134
From: Rochester Hills, MI USA
Registered: May 2004
|
posted May 20, 2008 01:19 PM
i wonder why some of the other people that stay in their cars at this parking lot don't join forces and get an apartment together. Surely that would be better than living in a car. Sounds like they have money, just not enough on one persons social security to afford one alone.IP: Logged |
blue moon
Moderator Posts: 1709
From: U.K
Registered: Dec 2007
|
posted May 20, 2008 01:56 PM
For a while I worked at our local council, dealing with housing and welfare, that kind of thing. There was a large percentage of enquirers who had hit problems because they had been made redundant, or their businesses had failed. In one case, his business problems were because people owed him money. It could happen to anyone so it says in your story, Nattie, it certainly could. Or as a friend of mine said (of people who won't speak to her because she is a single mother on welfare) ~ their partner runs off leaving them without any money they are going to be the same as me ~ IP: Logged |
nattie33
Knowflake Posts: 539
From: USA
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted May 20, 2008 02:58 PM
That's right Blue Moom it can happen to anybody it's scary.
Thirteen lots of people want to keep there pets and can't take them to an apartment, i just posted a story inn Heathcliffe's Corner about what happens to pets when people face foreclosure.IP: Logged |
blue moon
Moderator Posts: 1709
From: U.K
Registered: Dec 2007
|
posted May 20, 2008 03:20 PM
Pets ~ that was a complaint I heard from people who didn't want to go into private rentals. Also, the cost. Next door is rented ~ no pets, children, smoking, welfare applicants, etc, etc. I don't mind living next to anyone of those categories! The last couple left because they couldn't stand not having a pet any longer ~ they were both vets. IP: Logged |
thirteen
Knowflake Posts: 1134
From: Rochester Hills, MI USA
Registered: May 2004
|
posted May 20, 2008 03:31 PM
yeah, were dog lovers in my family so i can relate.IP: Logged |
zenwarner
Knowflake Posts: 419
From: tx, usa
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted May 20, 2008 04:25 PM
She spent three fourths of her income on her condo. Thats insane. Thats asking for trouble. You have got to be prepared for things like loosing your job.
Why do people put themselves into these siuations? I dont understand. I know several people in a similar predicament. Though not homeless. My sister is one of them.
Knowing how the economy is, and how gas prices are, she just bought a new suv. She had just had her last new vehicle reposessed. My step mother gave her three thousand to buy something to get her back and forth to work. What does she do? She puts in all down on a new suv that gets 17 miles to the gallon. Because it was pretty. Because it was red.
Im not putting down this woman for the situation she's in. Im just saying, if she hadnt been paying so much for a fancy condo she wouldnt have been in this situation to begin with. She obviously wasnt making enough to pay for it to begin with.
If there isnt reasonable housing prices there, then you move to somewhere there is. I've done it in the past. My family has done it many times.
You should always be prepared for the worst.
I feel like I'm coming off harsh. But I know what it's like to loose everything I have. And it infuriates me that people arent preparing themselves.
IP: Logged |
Dervish
Knowflake Posts: 355
From: California
Registered: Nov 2006
|
posted May 20, 2008 07:08 PM
I know people who can't afford rent, so they live together. But they have to do it in secret or the landlord will jack the rent up. Or government regulation (you know how often those mix with reality) will forbid it. Pets are often denied in rentals because they're seen as messy and destructive. I found it ironic when I lived in Frisco (named after the patron saint of animals) and found that finding an apartment that allowed pets was difficult. Many smokers don't seem to realize it, but the smoke of their cigarettes gets into EVERYTHING, and can be hard to clean out, and it's also a fire hazard (especially when you got someone who drinks AND smokes). HUD is essentially a scam, and even when a landlord agrees to it, a great many people (who are, by definition, long term--even indefinite--welfare recipients) on welfare turn out to make lousy tenants & neighbors. (One person I know even shared how he was living in a duplex that just went HUD and the other side got a welfare family, which included a guy who was often violent and got a free pass at it due to his being diagnosed as mentally ill. The first day the violent one tried beating down his door, but was instantly cured of his "mental illness" when he faced the business end of my friend's shotgun. After that, my friend was invisible to him, though he continued to menace everyone else with the police doing very little about it, which the entire neighborhood got sick of.)
Oh, and it's often illegal to sleep in one's cars because motels and the like campaign against it. It's bad for their biz.
Ah well, after they've been unemployed for awhile, they'll no longer be counted and the "economy will be excellent, which very little unemployment." Back in the first depression, didn't they use tent towns instead of sleeping in their cars? Oh wait, we have those, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnnOOo6tRs8
But I am agreeing with the one who was harsh. I see people everywhere putting themselves into debt. No one is forcing them. I see the same ad campaigns they do and I don't blow my money and credit on everything I see like they do. And if I'd been in that person's position, I wouldn't have been living in a condo in the first place. That was insane, and I wonder what Roy Rogers would've made of it. (One possible way is if the condo really wasn't that much more expensive than much less ostentatious housing, though even then I'd be looking to get the heck out of dodge as my nerves wouldn't be able to stand living like that.)
IP: Logged |
lalalinda
Moderator Posts: 3438
From: nevada
Registered: Jun 2005
|
posted May 20, 2008 08:26 PM
wow, Santa Barbara
thanks for posting this nattie
IP: Logged |
BlueRoamer
Knowflake Posts: 4427
From: Calm Blue Ocean, Calm Blue Ocean
Registered: Jun 2003
|
posted May 20, 2008 11:36 PM
 for all the homeless people in the world. I hope someone can take care of them.IP: Logged |
Charlotte
Knowflake Posts: 1445
From: USA
Registered: Apr 2004
|
posted May 21, 2008 07:35 AM
 IP: Logged |
praecipua
Knowflake Posts: 611
From: england
Registered: Aug 2007
|
posted May 22, 2008 05:23 AM
this should be in GU.the US, shining as a beacon for the rest of the world? hmmmmm.... where's jwhop and his objectivity to explain the situation or he'll probably explain me that people didn't adapt to the fair but harsh reality of the real world? every reality is different. guys, nobody knows why she didn't organise herself differently, but i bet it wasn't just to be noticed in an article and get this kind of comment about her.
IP: Logged |
zenwarner
Knowflake Posts: 419
From: tx, usa
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted May 22, 2008 06:00 AM
I dont think anyone is suggesting she wanted attention with this article. Im just pointing out that this is a typical example of an American who is living beyond their means. It happens all the time. And while she certainly has my pity for the situation she is in, I still think it was largely due to bad decisions on her own part. I can only hope that her story may help someone else who is in a similar situation realize how precarious this type of lifestyle is. Like I said, I have lost everything before. Including my apartment, car, job, savings, etc. I know what its like. And thats why it frustrates me, because sometimes it's preventable. It just is. IP: Logged |
praecipua
Knowflake Posts: 611
From: england
Registered: Aug 2007
|
posted May 22, 2008 06:22 AM
and it happens that she's US citizen but she could be from somewhere else. that's my dad's experience, and it happened in france.my problem is that society creates needs, put people in this situation of dependency, then misery, and discard them as irresponsible. i could develop but my point is clear. i cant wait for that to change... IP: Logged |
zenwarner
Knowflake Posts: 419
From: tx, usa
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted May 22, 2008 06:25 AM
So you think its society that put her in this position?IP: Logged |
praecipua
Knowflake Posts: 611
From: england
Registered: Aug 2007
|
posted May 22, 2008 07:01 AM
i guess you are asking me if i dont recognise her part of responsability; i do, and i assume she does take her responsability a minimum too when she endures sleeping and living in her car. so i dont see her as a person who's not responsible. by living in her car, she takes responsability of herself the best way she can in the conditions she find herself in. the problem from the society comes from the fact that it simply doesn't do its job. when men got together thousands years ago to form a society it was to be protected. cities were initially created to protect isolated human beings from nature. a society that doesn't do its job has no reason to exist. a society that is ok with people being disrepected is, to me, more the signs of a decaying society than a strong, healthy one. i need loving, helpful human contacts, not a structure that control me through my needs.  edit: ps: it's only my idea; i dont mean to preach. IP: Logged |
zenwarner
Knowflake Posts: 419
From: tx, usa
Registered: Aug 2005
|
posted May 22, 2008 04:21 PM
praecipua,
I understand what you are saying. And thanks for the reply 
I may not make sense here, but I'm going to try to explain what I'm thinking...
I get that society was created by men. And that it has a certain responsibilty to keep them safe.
But when it comes down to it, society is just a group of individuals. And I just feel that if anything, its the individuals who have the responsibilty to society. And their biggest responsbility is to make sure than it can function and that it can continue to help those who cant help themselves.
And how can society do that when people dont prepare themselves? It isnt just this woman. Its happening everywhere. How can society possibly take care of everyone?Dont you believe that the people who are able, have the responsibilty to take care of themselves? Thats the only way they can help others. And what if everyone made the same mistakes as this woman? Once again, I want to say that I honestly do feel for this woman. And I agree that she is taking responsibilty for herself now. Im not putting her down as a person. I'm just upset that it even had to get this far. I guess Im just not good at expressing it. IP: Logged | |
Lindaland
UBBFriend: Email This Page to Someone! 
