On any given night in California, estimates suggest, roughly 34,000 homeless people will take shelter in their vehicles. Tori Larett, a homeless rights lawyer in Sacramento, thinks the real number is double that. For half of them, their home is a recreational vehicle, converted bus or travel trailer parked on the street.<\/p>\n
In January, a new California law went into effect in Los Angeles and Alameda Counties, allowing the authorities to quickly demolish oversize vehicles worth up to $4,000, up from $500, if the owner cannot move the vehicle without help from a tow truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole state is waging a war on R.V.s right now,\u201d said Ms. Larett, who is also the research director at the National Vehicle Residency Coalition.<\/p>\n
For three cloudless days in March, Sam Lutzker and I crisscrossed Los Angeles hearing stories about life in R.V.s. Mr. Lutzker, 33, has weeks left before three years of field research for a Ph.D. in sociology at U.C.L.A. gives way to writing his thesis. \u201cI care about these individuals deeply,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The center of his field work is City Council District 11 in Los Angeles, where Councilwoman Traci Park spearheads towing sweeps. When R.V.s are removed, she publishes social media posts about her success cleaning the streets. Local businesses and residents organize against oversize vehicles and sometimes hire private security companies to press R.V. dwellers to move \u2014 even when the vehicles are legally parked.<\/p>\n
Ms. Park describes R.V. dwellers as living in mile-long encampments of dilapidated \u201cnuisance vehicles\u201d where crime and unsanitary conditions are rampant. \u201cThere\u2019s widespread illegal dumping, including of human waste,\u201d she said. \u201cThese encampments are a public health emergency, a public safety emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Lutzker, whose study includes about 90 people living in vehicles, places the population along a spectrum that includes economic hardship, drug abuse, personal trauma and a deliberate choice to live outside conventional housing. He said many were scattered solo or in small groups on side streets, not in encampments. <\/p>\n
Mr. Lutzker acknowledges it\u2019s a problem when homeless people live in unsafe R.V.s, but he disagrees with a regulatory approach that tickets, impounds and destroys vehicles \u2014 sometimes with the owner\u2019s possessions still inside \u2014 without providing services to their owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is currently a two- to three-month wait to be assigned a case worker to help you get into a shelter,\u201d he said. The people who are unable to move their vehicles are the poorest and most vulnerable. \u201cA lot of these operations will force, like, 15 R.V.s to move. They know they\u2019re not going to get all those R.V.s,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re doing it for the three or four that are left over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advocates say R.V.s are seen as an eyesore \u2014 the most visible sign of California\u2019s homelessness crisis. Neighbors and politicians want them gone. \u201cIt comes down to aesthetics,\u201d said Ms. Larett. \u201cCompassion fatigue around unsheltered homelessness in California has never been higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was riding shotgun as Mr. Lutzker turned the corner onto the industrial side street behind Google\u2019s Los Angeles office in the Venice neighborhood. I counted five oversize vehicles, including a 27-foot pale-yellow school bus. That\u2019s where we met its owner, Chanel Lara, 29, a Fresno transplant.<\/p>\n
Ms. Lara came to Los Angeles to avoid the oppressive heat in the Central Valley and to escape poverty. Her family relies on welfare, she said, adding, \u201cWhy not go somewhere where I have more opportunity?\u201d Five years ago, Ms. Lara drove to Los Angeles in a Nissan Maxima, even though it meant sleeping in it. The Maxima broke down, becoming a \u201cmetal tent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Since then, Ms. Lara has lived in various vehicles while working \u201csoul-sucking\u201d jobs in coffee shops and home care. She found her current home \u2014 the Freightliner school bus \u2014 through a Facebook group for \u201cskoolies,\u201d converted school buses used as homes, acquiring it for $3,500 including airfare to Washington State and the drive back. Her dream is to convert a mini school bus into a mobile salon selling her handmade spa products.<\/p>\n