OAKLAND — Four Oakland churches will allow homeless people living in cars to park overnight in their parking lots with the hopes of leading them toward options for permanent housing.
Williams Chapel Baptist Church in the Clinton neighborhood will spearhead the program — which is being funded with a $50,000 grant from Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan’s office — this week, reserving 10 spots in their parking lot for car-dwellers to park overnight for up to three months. By mid-April, West Side Missionary Baptist Church, Corinthians Baptist Church and Mount Zion Baptist Church also will offer spots to accommodate a total of up to 65 vehicles.
“The goal isn’t just to have them live in their cars forever; the goal is to get people the permanent housing that they deserve,” Chan said.
Students and families will be given priority for the first 10 spots, Chan said. The Interfaith Council of Alameda County will work with the city to select people who will be allowed to stay in the parking lots. Those taking part must be the registered owners of their vehicles.
“It’s a tragedy that young people who are trying to further their education have nowhere to lay their head but in a car,” said Williams Chapel Baptist Church pastor Kenneth Anderson. “As a millennial pastor, my goal is to make sure that those college students have a safe place to park so they can further their education.”
Similar safe parking programs have popped up throughout the region. Fairmont Hospital, in the unincorporated hills above San Leandro, is prepping its parking lot to house people overnight. Union City established a safe-parking program for people in cars and trucks in 2016. Mountain View and Santa Clara County teamed up last year on a pilot program to provide overnight shelter for RV owners in parking lots, and San Jose is studying new city codes for residents who live in vehicles.
RVs will not be included in the Oakland program.
In 2017, Alameda County reported that 9 percent of its 5,600 homeless residents lived in vehicles. Santa Clara County, that year, reported that 8 percent of its homeless population of 7,400 lived in vehicles and San Mateo County estimated 33 percent of its 1,250 homeless population were sheltered in cars and RVs.
Security guards will oversee the parking lots, where people will stay from around 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m., said the Rev. Ken Chambers of the West Side Missionary Baptist Church and president of the Interfaith Council of Alameda County. Each of the four sites will have two coordinators who will oversee the sites, and connect the car-dwellers with resources.
The program’s participants will be required to sign a conduct code that, among other things, prohibits drinking or doing drugs on the premises, Chambers said. The code of conduct will also require those taking part to leave the parking lot on time in the mornings.
“We’re expecting them to be the best of the best, in light of the circumstances they’re in,” Chambers said.
Barber, laundry and shower services will be offered, as well as job development and recruitment resources. Program coordinators also will try to find more permanent affordable housing solutions for them.
Each parking lot will have portable toilets and hand-washing stations, Chambers said. People won’t be allowed to cook at the parking lots, but food banks that work with the churches will provide food, he said.
Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church Pastor Jim Hopkins, at the news conference, said the group is aware that opening church parking lots to car-dwellers won’t solve the region’s staggering homeless problem. But it will help address the issue, he said, by providing people some security.
“Admittedly these safe parking lots are a Band-Aid — nothing more, nothing less,” Hopkins said. “But hopefully they are a gateway to the healing of the community.”
Staff writer Louis Hansen contributed to this report.