A program offering a place to park and sleep in your car overnight in Indianapolis is returning.
Safe Park Indy is partnering with a church in the downtown area to provide 10 parking spots for people who are homeless and living out of their car.
Elizabeth Friedland, founder of Safe Park Indy, said the lot will open by June 1. The lot location will be shared if you’re approved.
Safe Park Indy closed last year after demand became too much for the program, which is run by volunteers. Friedland said the time off allowed the organization to come up with a more sustainable plan.
How to use Safe Park Indy
1️⃣ Apply. Applications are open online. You can also look over the organization’s code of conduct, which covers rules and eligibility. For example, you need a valid registration and insurance for your car.
2️⃣ If you’re accepted, you’ll be put on a waitlist. As of March 30, Friedland said there were already 35 people on the waitlist.
3️⃣ When a spot is available, Safe Park Indy will message everyone at the same time. The spot will go to the first person who responds.
Safe Park Indy will occasionally ask if you want to remain on the waitlist. That will allow the organization to remove people who don’t need a spot anymore.
If you get a spot, you can use the lot for 60 days. After that, you have to wait a month before applying again.
Lessons learned
Safe Park Indy opened its first parking lot in 2024 at a church on the northeast side. Even though Friedland knew demand would be high, the all-volunteer program couldn’t keep up.
At one point, there were more than 400 people on the waitlist.
Plus, some sites had an indoor space for people to use, which put even more responsibility on volunteers.
“We tried to do too much,” Friedland said.
Now, if a site host wants to provide an indoor space, it is the host’s responsibility to make that work. Lot hosts only need to provide the parking spaces and a spot for a portable restroom, which Safe Park Indy will pay for.
Another important lesson: Safety wasn’t an issue.
Friedland said there wasn’t a single safety incident at the previous lots. She also said people followed the rules, and no one showed up to a parking lot without first applying and being accepted.
If you want to learn more about being a site host, reach out to hellosafeparkindy@gmail.com.
Who’s living in their car?
There isn’t much data about vehicular homelessness, partly because there isn’t a uniform way to count people living in their cars.
Safe Park Indy analyzed application data from 475 applicants during the program’s first stint and found:
🛌 63% were experiencing homelessness for the first time.🏫 61% had never reached out to a social service organization.
👷 45% were employed, and more than half of that group had at least two jobs.
🎓 41% had attended some college or earned a degree.
“If you can help these folks,” Friedland said, “they can get out of these situations really quickly.”
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Mirror Indy reporter Tyler Fenwick covers housing and labor. Contact him at 317-766-1406 or tyler.fenwick@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @ty_fenwick and Bluesky @tyfenwick.bsky.social.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
