ADAM ON HOMELESS SPACE

GOING HOMELESS. GOING MOBILE.

In a city that’s crazy about cars, it seems only fitting that people who are often thought of as “crazy in the head” should make their car their home. I’m referring to those Angelenos who are said to be, “living out their cars”. They are the homeless with a set of wheels. In a sad and ironic sense, they combine the American love affair of the car and the open road, with the American dream of homeownership. It’s a curious space, where many of the shining values and norms driven by our society crash head-on into the darker side of our collective fears and failures.

The other day, while driving during the evening rush hour on a jam-packed east-west LA artery, I came to a red light and noticed a car up ahead struggling to make a left into the parking lot of a bank. This can be a tricky maneuver even for the most accomplished drivers in LA. The fact that no oncoming car was going to yield wasn’t what caught my eye. After all, during gridlock, space becomes a premium for LA drivers – even if that space is just a few inches. And of course, going to the bank is still common practice even in the age of online banking. What made me get out of my own space (the comfort zone of my own car), put the brakes on my normal behind-the-wheel brain and take notice, was a set of unsettling signs indicating that the car (now just off to my side) was a rolling wreck with a lost soul inside.

Unlike a shopping cart, which is easy to identify as a homeless person’s home on wheels, a car is far less recognizable as someone’s “home-sweet-home”. Everything is concealed inside the cabin, as opposed to being out in the open. That said, if CAR & DRIVER magazine were to do a feature story on such an auto, it would be a late model Buick or Pontiac riding on balding and under-inflated tires. The enigmatic car would have a faded paint job with an array of bumps and bruises. Its pitted body would be hovering just a few inches off the ground, its engine able to generate only enough power to always travel well below the speed limit, and its tail pipe would constantly be spewing a cloud of noxious exhaust. But the most important feature would be its semi-opaque windows consisting of a layer of caked-on dust, dirt and grime. In effect, creating the poor man’s version of the rich man’s tinted windows.

As a result, it’s nearly impossible to tell who’s behind the wheel. Is that a woman or a man? Are they young, middle-aged or senior citizen? Nor is it easy to make out exactly what’s piled high throughout the cabin. Are those old newspapers and magazines, or a decade worth of dirty laundry? Is that a cat, a dog, or a bird sitting in the back window? Or just a stuffed animal? Or a pillow that looks like a stuffed animal? Perhaps all those seemingly soft and plush items tightly packed together are part of makeshift airbag safety system, providing a life-saving cushion during a collision. Whatever is in there (and there’s always plenty of it), surely has taken years to amass. And isn’t likely to be brought out any time soon.

After inching my way forward at the remarkable speed of about 2 miles an hour, I looked through my rearview mirror and saw that the homeless mobile home had finally turned into the bank’s parking lot. Of all the things that flashed through my mind at that instant, a torrent of unanswerable questions and profound uncertainties, the one thought that parked in my brain was both banal and bold.

I envisioned this person pulling their mobile homeless home in front of the convenient drive-up ATM. And then depositing all their misfortunes into it with the touch of a button.