Living out of your car: Seniors talk to NPR reporter in Santa Barbara, CA

    

All THINGS CONSIDERED (Sept. 18 online coverage)

   Marge Giaimo makes her way to a picnic table under the shadow of an oak tree. Santa Barbara's trees, like its oceans and mountains, are one thing she says she never tires of here. After losing her senior housing three years ago, this table is where she does her painting these days.
"I feel very fortunate to have my car," Giaimo says. little cramped, but it's softer than cement."
Of all her once-valued possessions, today her 20-year-old, gold Oldsmobile is her most important one. It is her home, and she keeps it as neat as a pin.
"And then this is where I sleep," she says. "I have the three pillows and I have sponges under there or foam to sleep on."
In the wealthy coastal city of Santa Barbara, north of Los Angeles, the demand for senior housing is so great the wait list is now closed. After all, California's senior population is expected to grow by 50 percent in the next decade.
For the seniors left out in the cold, their only option is living in their cars.

"It is a hidden population and a growing population," says Cassie Roach, who oversees Safe Parking, a city-funded program at the New Beginnings Counseling Center. "And it is quite different from the street homeless."
Safe Parking has designated 115 parking spaces in church, county and city lots where people living in their cars — such as Giaimo — can park safely overnight.
Roach says many of those living in their cars have fallen upon hard times for the first time in their lives.
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/18/490677146/for-some-seniors-without-housing-a-parking-lot-is-home