I've been
sleeping in my car for about a month now. I recently moved up to
Santa Barbara,
California so I could go to
Santa Barbara City College. However, I don't have much money. Instead of blowing it all on rent for an apartment, I was thinking, "What the heck? I'll just stay in my car." I'm getting an apartment with a few other people in June, so if I saved money for a few months, I'll be rich enough to not have to worry about money next school year.
However, last night I turned my car lights off, and attempted to turn off my car. You see, sometimes my car just pu-putts when I turn the car off, and it doesn't actually stop for a few minutes. Add the fact that one of my windows is broken because of
this, and a cop just happened to be driving by, and I end up having to deal with said cops because they think maybe I stole my car.
They tell me to get out of the car, into the rain when all I have on is a pair of shorts, and they start searching my car (looking for
drugs or whatever, I don't know). I couldn't even put on a shirt. (They were probably worried I was going to hide the drug "evidence" or pull a weapon on them.) Pretty much I found out that in Santa Barbara County, sleeping in ones car is illegal. I was wondering why, and this theory popped into my mind.
They don't want
poor people in the city. A person who can only afford to live in his car has to live in their car somewhere else, just not in Santa Barbara. Which I guess makes sense since all the rich people here prolly think that if one can't pay for rent, they don't deserve to live within 30 miles of the
cool beach people dirtying up the scene and lowering
property values. Personally, I don't think beachfront property values are ever going to go down, but I guess I'm not
aesthetically pleasing either.
Ah well, I don't know what I'm going to do now, I guess I could just try to find a really cheap place to stay for a few months and just deal with a money problem, or maybe I'll just take my chances, hope the
police don't bother me again, and continue
sleeping in a car parked on the side of the road.