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Real Estate|In a Snow Paradise, They Live in This Parking Lot
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/realestate/colorado-homeless-parking-lot-affordable-housing.html
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On the side of a highway leading to some of the most coveted slopes in the world, in a parking lot covered in snow, a form of affordable housing has emerged.
Here in cars, trucks and vans, behind foggy windshields and zipped in sleeping bags, those who serve the vacationers who come to enjoy the snow tried to fall asleep on a recent night — two ski instructors, two snow plow drivers, a ski lift operator, an ice fishing guide, a dog sledding guide, the employee of a ski resort whose job includes scanning ski passes, two ER nurses who treat their injuries, a cashier at a drugstore, multiple servers at local restaurants, as well as Kristine Litchfield, who earns $24 an hour at a ski shop fitting people for their boots.
At 6 a.m., the 62-year-old woke up under multiple blankets in the bunk bed she built in the back of her Ford T250 van. It was negative 8 degrees. “It didn’t feel chilly at all,” she joked.
What Ms. Litchfield and the more than two dozen others sleeping in their vehicles that night really needed — the requirement for the right to sleep in the subzero cold in a landscape that looks like a snow globe — was a local pay stub.
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As homelessness soars to the highest level on record, parking lots like this one have opened from coast to coast, offering a refuge to those who no longer have a house to sleep in, but still have a car.
