The city of Beaverton is looking for more sites that would allow houseless residents to park safely overnight at facilities like churches — and a code change that would allow the one-year pilot to expand.

The city’s Safe Parking Pilot Program, a one-year initiative rolled out last April and coordinated by the nonprofit Just Compassion and several area churches, designates safe parking spots where individuals can park without fear of being towed.

In addition, campers have access to showers and garbage disposal, as well as case management to help individuals and families transition out of homelessness.

There are currently two sites participating in the program, each of which runs two spaces, Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle said.

The city’s pilot allows up to five sites, and the city has been working to find more sites within the city limits, but it has also been in conversation with Washington County to allow more parking sites outside the city limits.

This program stands in contrast to Beaverton’s 2018 decision to ban overnight camping in the public right-of-way.

“It’s really important that this is not just a place to park,” Doyle said. “We are able to bring people in to work with the families or the individuals who are the campers to try to connect them with housing, perhaps with jobs, perhaps with education.”

COMMENTARY: Without parking, car and RV dwellers have nowhere to go

The cost of the program is relatively low. When it approved the program, Beaverton City Council allocated $42,200 for a pilot year of operation — $30,000 for the contract with Just Compassion for program management and $12,200 for portable restrooms and onsite storage.

Vernon Baker, executive director of Just Compassion, said 17 individuals have gone through the program since May. Altogether the program has served 24 people, with still 15 on the wait list.

Of those, seven have transitioned into housing. Most of the remaining 10 have relocated to other areas, though two were asked to leave the program due to lack of compliance with its policies, Baker said.

Megan Cohen, cultural inclusion and community services director for Doyle’s office, said the program has attracted a mix of people who were on waiting lists for other programs — a problem exacerbated by the fact that Beaverton has no permanent, year-round homeless shelters — as well as individuals who have struggled with chronic homelessness.

It’s difficult to say how many unhoused people live out of their vehicles.

Snapshots from the annual Point In Time homeless counts conducted throughout the nation with oversight from the Department of Housing and Urban Development have been criticized for focusing on the most visible houseless populations — people sleeping on the streets.

Multnomah County’s 2019 count included people living in vehicles but did not break them out into a discrete category, instead including them in the category of people living outside or in any structure not meant for human habitation. That category made up 9.3% of people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County in January 2019, or 53 people.

Washington County’s 2019 count doesn’t mention people living in vehicles.

An idea with wheels

The Safe Parking program is new to Beaverton, but the concept is not.

In the late 1990s, the city of Eugene, in conjunction with St. Vincent DePaul, started a program coordinating permitted overnight parking that served as a model for Beaverton’s.

Keith Heath, who manages Eugene’s program, said Eugene runs 26 safe overnight parking spaces, and the program also partners with programs in Springfield, for a total of 98 spaces in Lane County.

Most of the parking spots are available temporarily, and Heath said several hundred people cycle through the program every year.

STREET RESPONSE: How Portland can learn from another Eugene program

A similar program would seem like a fit for Oregon’s largest city, which struggles with a visible homeless program, a shortage of short-term shelter space and a lack of affordable housing — and where complaints about RVs and vans used as residences are increasingly common.

And, it turns out, Portland has tried it. Twice.

The first time, advocates said, it was not popular with some permanently housed residents, and it was a struggle to find community partners. The second time, it was unpopular with a different group: potential campers.

In 2018, Multnomah County’s Joint Office of Homeless Services launched a year-long pilot program modeled after Eugene’s, rebooting a 2011 attempt, which drew interest from only one church.

The 2018 pilot, for which Catholic Charities received $100,000 for staffing, security and some administrative services for the sites, partnered with five churches but suffered due to lack of interest from campers, said the program’s coordinator.

“We had the interest, but it was hard to find parkers, honestly. We didn’t fill all the spots that we had,” said Kat Kelley, director of strategic initiatives for Catholic Charities, which oversaw the program. “We ended up with something like six parkers total.”

While safe parking has floundered in Portland, the idea is growing in popularity elsewhere.

Over the past 10 years, cities and counties up and down the West Coast, from Los Angeles County — where an estimated 16,000 people live in their cars — to Seattle’s suburbs, are trying programs that protect people sleeping in their cars.

RURAL HOUSING: Car-living in Coos Bay, up close and personal

Cohen said she’s been in talks with people in several counties in Northwest Oregon, and Baker said he’s also heard from representatives of municipalities in the Portland area, mostly in Washington County.

“We’re definitely seeing a lot of interest in hosting programs similar to this,” Cohen said.

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