For many years, the New Beginnings Safe Parking Program has partnered with private businesses, local government, and religious organizations to repurpose unused parking spaces to provide a safe haven for low income community members without permanent, stable housing. Our program, the first of its kind, has been wildly successful and replicated all over the country. The Safe Parking Program takes an intersectional approach to solving homelessness by providing a safe haven for clients while acting as a support network while they transition back into stable housing. In facilitating a marriage between different sectors of society, we achieve a common goal of increasing the safety and security of our community.
Since 2016, it has been illegal to park an oversized vehicle on any street in Santa Barbara. To ensure that our clients who live in oversized vehicles are not ticketed, New Beginnings created a day-time version of our Safe Parking Program. The new waterfront parking lot ordinance that went into effect in January has resulted in a reduction of the number of available daytime spaces for our program. We are in urgent need of identifying five parking spaces where our clients can park during the day.
Our team has been working for months looking for lots to accommodate program participants who were displaced by the ordinance, but we have not been able to find spaces for the five remaining vehicles. We are now down to the wire, with an imminent deadline. We need your help in securing five daytime parking spaces for our Safe Parking RV clients by April 30. We are asking parking lot owners in the downtown Santa Barbara area to make one or more spaces available for our clients to safely park during the day. We make the lot owner’s needs a top priority by offering insurance, lot monitoring, and a communicative staff on hand 24/7.
This is a very time-sensitive issue as our clients will be required to leave their current daytime lots on May 1. If you or someone you know is interested in partnering with us to support our fellow neighbors, please reach out to Jordan Thurston, at jthurston@sbnbcc.org or at (805) 570-3494. Please consider partnering with the innovative program that creates a model for the rest of the country in paving a road to permanent housing for families and individuals forced to live out of their vehicles.