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It’s the first time, Joe said, that he’s had a true home after almost a decade of bouncing from one parking lot to another across southern Wisconsin, looking for a place to quietly blend in and be left alone.

Joe's camper and truck are now parked legally, off the street, in the driveway of an ancient wood-frame house in Look West, the city’s old west side. The camper with a leaky roof and collapsed accordion walls still hold some of his life’s belongings jammed inside. But it's no longer a public eyesore illegally cluttering up the Hedberg Public Library parking lot in downtown Janesville.

But the traces of dozens of chalk lines Janesville police had marked on the tires of the tow-along camper haven’t quite faded.

Just the rules

Joe didn’t break the law by sleeping overnight in the library’s city-owned parking lot. But he did repeatedly violate city rules by leaving his camper parked there during the day, when he’d drive his truck to a factory job secured through a local staffing agency.

He and at least half a dozen other homeless people at various times have used the back of the library’s parking lot along the Rock River seawall as a place to sleep. Some have used the lot like Joe did—to store personal belongings, either in tow-behind trailers or in caches covered under blue landscaping tarps.

Police say that had led to tent camping, fights and vagrancy by people who during the COVID-19 pandemic shifted toward using the library’s lot—one of just two designated in the city for overnight parking for the homeless—as a de facto public campground.

Joe remembers the daily turmoil of trying to keep a low profile at the library lot and elsewhere. He said he would ditch the trailer during the day to avoid showing up at work with a ramshackle tow-along full of his belongings. He would come back to the library lot at night to find police chalk marks all over the tires.

Joe said he would move the trailer around the lot or out to the street curb as best he could in a bob-and-weave around the city’s abandoned vehicle rules.

Abandoned vehicle ordinance

Now, the city of Janesville is considering a change to its abandoned vehicle ordinance. A recent memo signed by Police Chief David Moore indicates the change would more “efficiently” enforce a city rule that deems unlicensed vehicles left in a public parking lot or on a city street for 48 hours as “abandoned” and subject to removal.

Under the proposed rule change, police could slap a warning sticker on a vehicle or trailer deemed “abandoned” on a street or in a public lot after just 24 hours. That would allow the city to take action faster to remove offending vehicles.

If the vehicle or trailer wasn’t moved within another 24-hour span, the city could then have it towed away.

The Janesville City Council last week did not discuss the move. It was deemed procedural at last week’s council meeting—a first reading of a proposed ordinance change that would be set for hearing later this month.

The measure was a footnote on a council agenda dominated by a closed session to discuss City Manager Mark Freitag’s upcoming departure.

Janesville Deputy Police Chief Chad Pearson told The 69���� the proposed change is not intended to make it harder for homeless people to use the library lot to sleep in their cars overnight.

He said there is no limit to the number of nights a person can sleep in their car in the library lot, but he said people are expected to move their vehicles during the day, which is the current requirement on the city’s overnight parking program.

Pearson said the rule change is aimed at people leaving vehicles and storage trailers abandoned along the street in residential areas, but he acknowledged it would extend to inoperable vehicles or storage units deemed “abandoned” by homeless people.

Pearson said other than Joe leaving his camper illegally parked at the library, police have no record of any other misbehavior by him while he lived out of the public lot.

Pearson also said police recently asked a few other homeless people who are staying at the library lot to remove camping equipment and storage trailers from there.

Joe had found a place in June, prior to police stepping up enforcement at the library. He said he’s glad he’s no longer trying to live out of a city parking lot.

Last week, Joe helped a homeless woman at the library lot jump a car that had dead battery. The car had been stalled in the lot three days, which meant that under city rules, it was overdue to be moved. Joe said the city already had chalked the car's tires twice, flagging it for a violation.

“It’s pretty scary because if you were in the shoes of somebody like me, you’re risking your stuff just disappearing. Them guys who do the tows make money off towing your stuff away, and then you’ve got nothing. It’s gone. You can’t even afford to get it back out of the tow log. So your belongings, everything you got stored inside, is just gone,” he said.

Joe is in his mid-50s, but it’s tough to tell his exact age. His face is a roadmap of lines, the main ones running north and south, like dry riverbeds carved down the middle of either cheek. His shocking-blue eyes stare wide, piercing and wary—the look of a man who has spent years in a losing dogfight for security.

He doesn’t like to give out his last name, and didn’t want to for this news story because he said it always seems to get him hassled.

Joe said a third-degree sexual assault conviction in 1996 still dogs him. He served prison time but he's no longer under any probation requirement and he no longer is required to register as a sex offender. He said his name finally has dropped off local sex-offender registries—a designation that for years was one of many barriers that blocked him from stable housing, employment and normal human connections.

Joe said one neighbor at his new apartment used the name placard in his apartment’s mailbox to background check on him using the state’s online circuit court system. Joe said the neighbor learned of his earlier criminal record and immediately tried to make trouble for him.

Joe had waited more than a year for placement in the apartment through a social service nonprofit’s rehousing program.

Familiar situation

Jessica Locher, who directs ECHO, Janesville’s main food pantry and nonprofit social service group that deals with homeless clients, is familiar with situations like Joe’s.

She said 55 families are now waiting for an apartment to open up. That's compared to a waiting list of just five families in 2019. That's driven by an an uptick in need, she said, driven mostly by an ongoing affordable housing crunch.

Joe’s rent is $850 a month, but for now, it's paid for by a local nonprofit through a rehousing program that aims to help Joe to work and save money to get back on his feet. The last apartment Joe lived in, a decade ago, cost $400 a month.

If Joe works, he said the rehousing program requires him to funnel a third of his income into rent.

During an interview last week over a fast-food supper, Joe kept one tattooed arm hooked defensively around his burger and fries while he worked food around his mouth with worn-down teeth.

He talked about his past. He also talked about billionaire tycoons he reads about in newspapers who seek to send rockets and people to Mars. And he talked about his old camper and his pickup truck, which has 250,000 miles on it and a slipping transmission.

Joe's dream, he said, is to someday buy a little residential lot and build a small home there, maybe a modular house and a small shed to store his truck and other belongings.

He thinks a lot about a Biblical psalm he reads over and over.

“I’ve been trying to hold on to the bottom here. I’m trying to be righteous. That’s in the Bible. It says, ‘The righteous will never be moved,’” Joe said. “I’ve read that over and over, and I know what it means.”