With an eviction crisis still on the horizon, sanctioned overnight parking lots provide temporary relief by Emma Athena

Yolanda Crist sits on the curb beside her two-door Hyundai as the sunset gilds nearby treetops. Between drags on a cigarette she says, “I was thinking about this the other day — you know, not caring about yourself — once somebody starts caring about you, you start caring about you.”

She gestures behind her, to Longmont’s Westview Presbyterian Church, which transforms every evening into the headquarters of Boulder County’s inaugural “SafeLot,” a sanctioned parking lot where people living in vehicles can stay overnight. Having access to SafeLot has helped Crist turn her life around. For more than a year, she’s been living in her Hyundai, lowering the seats back at night, snuggling beside a cooler and the steering wheel. In the beginning of her homelessness, Crist would roam the county at dusk, searching for obscure places to park. She routinely experienced the unpredictable “bang, bang, bang” on her windows and wake-up calls from the cops. Though it’s illegal to sleep in vehicles in most places across the seven-county metro-Denver area, there are as many as 1,000 people doing so, according to the Colorado Safe Parking Initiative (CSPI), a local group advocating for more sanctioned overnight lots.

Prior to discovering SafeLot — opened by the nonprofit Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement (HOPE) in June —  Crist spent many nights this spring sleeping in St. Vrain Canyon. “I’m an elderly woman, not real old, but being by myself, I was always aware, not really sleeping at night,” Crist says. But sleeping on and off for three or four hours a night felt preferable to the confines of a shelter, with dozens of other snoring people (she snores plenty, she says). And how could she occupy one of the county’s few shelter beds when other people without cars needed a place to go? At the moment, there are fewer than 200 shelter beds in Boulder County. 

One morning Crist noticed a flyer tucked under her windshield wiper, advertising HOPE’s SafeLot. She applied, was accepted, and started driving to Westview Presbyterian each night, where a crew of volunteers provide hot dinners and breakfasts to look forward to every day. “All of a sudden I found myself feeling better about myself,” she says. “I started to step up, say, ‘Yeah, I can do this. I can finally get a job again.’” 

And she did — three weeks ago she started working at a manufacturing plant in Longmont. 

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