I guess there have been several occurrences in the area recently in which people have been spotted sleeping in their cars. In some places this is a regular occurrence, though it is surprising to see this in a wealthier neighborhood. It might be the broader streets and deeper shadows, who knows.
There were two people this morning laid back in their seats in a white sedan, bundled up in blankets. There was a dog thrashing about on top of the poor people, barking at passerby.
The risk of sleeping like that in a neighborhood like this has to do with the disposition of many of the wealthy. They like their streets looking clear and clean and nice, without troubling reminders of the state of the economy and the fate of the less fortunate. Perhaps this is a neighborhood of sympathetic citizens, but who knows how long this will last. It only takes one person to call, someone who is perhaps a little more particular about how their street looks.
Sleeping in one's car is illegal in many cities, as well as other forms of public sleeping, loitering, and general vagrancy. Homelessness has gradually and systematically become a form of crime in this country. They are passed along from city to city. This refusal to accommodate introduces a consistent logic that becomes increasingly difficult to resist as the flow of homeless increases: less cities accept their homeless so that the homeless traffic itself becomes an increasing burden on wherever it happens to end up, so that all cities must close their doors lest they are left with an environmental disaster.
The homeless are passed along until they are gathered in some shanty town like refuse. Or of course they are arrested and absorbed back into the system via incarceration, though our prisons are desperately overcrowded, just like our homeless shelters. The homeless population increases. So does the prison population. An increasingly expensive and energy-intensive mass of dead weight...not good. And do we need to mention the inhumanity?
