They had us in the first half, ngl.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Is sleeping in your car being illegal some sort of FREEDOM©®™ thing that I'm way too European to understand?
Sleeping in a car isn't illegal necessarily, but there are increasing popup communities that settle in empty/low traffic lots and live out of their vehicles. Like most of America's problems, our politicans are sending police forces to "clean up" the effect, instead of trying to solve the cause.
Here's an article on Vehicle Residency https://www.thenation.com/article/society/homelessness-vehicle-residency-housing/
Sleeping in your car is actually illegal in a lot of places.
In Ohio I'd have to wake up every couple of hours to switch parking lots to avoid cops/loitering charges
Not Ohio, but I did sleep on my car on the West Coast on and off for about a year and only got into trouble once. And I didn’t even get a citation, just an oral warning that this wasn’t permitted in that particular town despite there being no signs anywhere (it was written in the city code).
I will say, for all the shit that private property owners get on this site, Walmart is actually one of the places where this is the easiest and least problematic to do. I always tried to avoid private property in favor of more inconspicuous places but I frequently saw quite a few motorhomes parked on their lots after dark and they were still there in the morning, and I’ve heard from others that they’ll generally let you be unless you are causing some sort of ruckus there. Same goes for just sleeping in the car.
In general, if you’re not making a nuisance of yourself or parking right in front of a sign that prohibits overnight parking, you’ll most likely be okay.
I slept in my car for a bit and Walmart was the best place, followed by Home Depot.
The worst places? Believe it or not, truck stops and rest areas. I was asked to leave multiple locations. You couldn't tell I was living out of my car and I looked like I was just on a road trip.
Sleeping at rest stops is literally stealing money from hardworking hotel owners! /s
I slept in my car on public rest stops while on a road trip in Norway.
IIRC you can sleep in your car there for two nights, which I never ended up doing anyway because I was travelling.
Public rest stops are amazing, there's usually pretty clean toilets, benches for picnics and sometimes even showers or a lake to bathe in.
The US has such places along highways also.
Yeah, check local ordinances this is not legal or universal advice lol
Sleeping in your car in public is not allowed in Germany either
Afaik it is allowed as long as its only to regain your driving capabilities and not for multiple nights I'm a row on the same place. The Straßenverkehrsordnung does not state otherwise.
Interesting, I've been told that it's illegal to sleep in your car in Canada when drunk because being in a car with possession of the keys is enough to show intent to DUI and get arrested.
I imagine it's something you could fight in court and win with a good lawyer, but it always seemed counter intuitive to me.
IIRC that's how it works in the US, too. Apparently you're supposed to leave your keys outside the car if you're drunk and want to sleep in it (and even then it's only a court defense, not something that would stop you from getting arrested in the first place).
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In some places, parking lots are monitored by security and you'll be kicked out if you're sleeping in your car in the parking lot.
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I see a lot of areas with "No Overnight Parking" signs or something similar, so they don't make sleeping in your car illegal technically, but you can't stay there over night.
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Often times it's loitering charges, loitering being a fancy term for "being out in public whenever it displeases a person of authority". Sitting on a public bench, having a picnic, walking on a sidewalk, sleeping in your car, whatever, all of those can and will get you loitering charges depending on your exact location in the United States.
Then you have public intoxication charges which on paper are only supposed to apply if you're causing a public disturbance (despite disorderly conduct already being a charge for that, public intoxication just makes it more severe), but in reality it's mostly used to harass drunk people who couldn't get a ride home, or uber home, and decided not to drive while drunk. I wouldn't be surprised if you had a higher likelihood of getting arrested for public intoxication while drunk walking/public transporting home than of getting arrested for DUI while drunk driving home. But public intoxication and even DUI can also be used if you're sleeping off drunkenness in your car, while the car is turned off.
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Less actually illegal and more that the lots are privately owned and the owning companies can have you removed from the lots of they don't like what you're doing.
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There should be secret laws you have to unlock by doing unfathomably inhumane things.
"You chased a homeless person in their own car off your completely unutilized property for no reason other than malice. You've been sentenced to 12 hours of fighting a flock of geese naked while locked in a middle school gym."
First time I’m rooting for the geese, usually they’re the assholes.
There should also be some extra sauce on the sentencing for anyone who carries a badge or position of legal power and abuses that.
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Solo Leveling Penalty Game huh? Damnit, I'm in! What do I get for being someone in HR denying someone a job for reasons of "I just wasn't feeling it."?
You? Nothing, you're just being a good cog in a bad machine. Bossman? Rashes, but on the inside of their skin, but that's likely compounded by numerous other crimes.
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It should be illegal to force people to sleep in their cars because a depraved system has deprived them of decent housing..
Yeah, in an article talking about how news stories about crime often show pictures of tents, they pointed out that the photo is of a crime scene, but the crime was not committed by those living in the tents.
I hate Walmart, but they let people sleep in the parking lot there. Cars, RVs, whatever. So if you're ever unfortunate enough that you're stuck sleeping in your car, you can park at Walmart without getting harassed.
Actually Walmart does not allow it, but most stores don’t care. My local one had a guy unalive himself in his car surrounded by other multi day parked cars. It took them 3 days to see all the others cars leave and he was inside. So now they enforce it. Understandably so.
Why say "unalive" here on lemmy?
It has to do with property and liability. All digital landowners including Lemmy, Mastodon and other social media work very hard to make sure they don't get sued by lazy users 'unaliving' themselves looking to sue for perceived damages and or promoting illegal content by their presehahahaha im just fucking with you but could you imagine some fucking boomer writing something like this
Culture behaves like a gas and expands to fill any space it is provided with
it's Gen Z slang, might have started as evading censors but it's just how they talk now, just like OK started as a joke abbreviation but now everyone says it unironically
Aliven't
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When I was in this position in my life I used parking lots of 24 hour gyms never once got hassled or disturbed.
No one should have to be forced to sleep in a car in the first place.
Unless it's one of these
No one has to be forced to sleep in something that rad.
https://odditymall.com/adult-race-car-beds
They make them with LEDs
I had a monster truck bed but I broke my nose falling out of it one night.
Lazy people in houses doing drugs and drinking...
Whoa, all of us lazy people doing light drug use catching strays
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Gas Station Dick Pill Official made me lol
Imagine what some places would be like if you could sleep in your car.
They had me in the first half not gonna lie
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