70-year-old woman living in her car: “I’m a survivor”

Life is full of ups and downs, you never know when things might take an unexpected turn for the worse. In Arizona, Beth had spent most of her life working in tech then held a post in a public library before retiring in 2019.

Skyrocketing rents adding to the homeless crisis

She was looking forward to enjoying her time without the stresses of working and everything was moving along fine - right up until the Covid-19 pandemic. Apartment rents where she lived doubled within the space of months and Beth, who had always rented, found herself priced out.

“I always made a good income and I was very grateful for that, but I didn’t save enough,” she explains. “I floated along, living in one apartment after another. I was moving every year, and that was costly too because you have to pay security deposits, moving costs. I had to move from neighborhoods that I felt comfortable in to locations where I didn’t to get lower rents. Even then, the rents were near $1000, and they weren’t very safe neighborhoods.”

Struggling with mounting debts, she decided to move into her Chevrolet Equinox to help her save on rent and get her finances back in order.

However, living inside a car presents a whole range of other problems - such as simply keeping warm when the temperatures drop. “I had a serious moment of giving up and throwing in the towel, but I persevered,” she admits. “But I’m a survivor, I feel like one. I deal with what is going on.”

In spite of her current circumstances, Beth is confident that things will soon turn around. After recently turning 70, she has started to document her nomadic life by publishing short videos on her Youtube channel Clouds and Sky in which she expresses the joy she finds in the small things that she encounters in her everyday life.

Each morning, she smiles and tells her small community of YouTube followers, “I’m doing good. My rest indoors has really helped me and I’m ready to go back into my vehicle. On the credit card debt, I started out at 6K and now it’s at $4,484. It’s going down. I’m so grateful and so happy. I really feel I have an optimism I haven’t had for a while”.

Homelessness in Arizona

While Arizona is one of 10 states where homelessness has decreased in recent years (a 35 percent drop since 2010 according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the number of individuals categorized as chronically homeless increased by 136 statewide over the past year.

In Phoenix, the Street Outreach Program engages with people who are unsheltered, offering them resources to get them rehoused. Over the past 12 months, it has served over 3,000 individuals, getting 156 (5.76%) into permanent housing and another 65 (2.4%) into temporary housing.

Looking ahead, Beth hopes to upgrade her Chevrolet Equinox for second-hand van that will give her more room. In the meantime she is looking for advice about what to do with her car.

“I am not sad. This is born of necessity and choice. I like to stay on the optimistic side if I can. I know there are others in my age group doing it. And I know that younger people are struggling in these times as well,” she told her 15,000 subscribers on Youtube. “Everyone should be able to have a safe place to live, but maybe in these scary times that’s not something that can always happen.”

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