Cash for Safe Parking Spaces? About Time, Says Das Williams

Santa Barbara County Supervisor Das Williams remembers being in the room more than 20 years ago when the idea for the Safe Parking program was hatched to provide managed care for people living in their cars. This Tuesday, the county supervisors heard a progress report on Safe Parking’s success getting people out of homeless car encampments, onto managed parking lots, and finally into housing.

The news was pretty good. In the past five months, the program — funded by more than $7 million in federal grants — has enrolled 173 homeless people living in their vehicles. Of those, 48 have gotten into housing.

Williams’s take? “More needs to be done.”

More specifically, Williams argued, the Safe Parking program — run by the nonprofit New Beginnings — needs to start offering financial compensation to entice property owners to rent a few parking spaces out so that homeless people can sleep on the lots overnight. To date, Safe Parking has relied upon the kindness of churches, government agencies, and strangers who over the years have donated the space free of charge.

The number of new spaces coming under Safe Parking’s management over the years has hovered between the marginal and the minimal. If local governments are serious about clearing out homeless encampments, Williams repeatedly argued, they’d better find places where they can go.

“Otherwise, you’re just moving them around,” he said.

In terms of bang for the buck, the Safe Parking approach can’t be beat. But there’s not a single parking space under Safe Parking management in the City of Santa Maria.

About 50 percent of the spaces exist on church properties. The rest lie in government agency parking lots, though state government agencies have been notoriously non-engaged. Private parking lots — largely empty at night when the program is in effect — are similarly not involved.

Williams suggested that more spaces might be made available in private lots if there was some modicum of money on the table. For New Beginnings, this would mark a major shift in policy. Williams was joined by Supervisor Joan Hartmann and the rest of the supervisors in asking county staff to come back with a proposal to at least look into offering money.

On an adjacent note, the supervisors were informed that New Beginnings has used the grant money to help homeless people get their vehicles repaired, smog-checked, registered, and insured. That’s helped bump the numbers up. One of the factors limiting the program’s reach has been the requirement that participants’ vehicles must be functional and insured. For the program to work, the evening lot dwellers need to be offsite by the break of dawn. For that to work, they need vehicles that work.

While no specific dollar amounts were discussed, Williams pushed to get the idea of compensation back before the board before his last session later this year.

“The season is upon us,” he said. “It’s getting cold. And wet.”