Mobile homeless: A view from living at the 'Walmart Hotel'

Jan. 7—TRAVERSE CITY — It's nearing 11 p.m. — Chris Pearce's bedtime at the "Walmart Hotel."

Because the windows in his room — a rusty 2012 Ford Escape — lack curtains or blinds, Pearce covers them with pizza box tops and prepares to bed down for the night in the rear of the Walmart parking lot. It's 32 degrees outside and not much warmer inside.

If the cold wakes him up, Pearce will fire up the engine and flip the heat on high for 15 to 20 minutes. Otherwise, he has a sleeping bag, a couple of blankets, and a traveling companion, a 70-pound, 5-year-old yellow lab beagle mix named Maxwell who, on this one-dog night, will plop himself onto Pearce's lap.

Pearce, 40, is a member of the so-called "mobile homeless," a subclass of unhoused residents who, often for reasons of safety and privacy, shun crowded shelters and tent encampments in favor of living in their cars, even during the winter.

Nationally, according to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report that was issued to Congress last month, homelessness increased by an alarming 12 percent in 2023, with more than 653,000 people in the United States living without a permanent roof over their heads. Of that number, the report said, six in 10 people lived in shelters or transitional housing, while the remaining four in 10 "were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in places not meant for human habitation."

Places like The Pines homeless encampment on Division Street and Pearce's beat-up SUV.

Homeless and unemployed since he was fired from a construction job at the end of 2022, Pearce is spending his second consecutive winter living in his car. Last winter, he parked at a small truck stop adjacent to the Shell station at Chum's Corner. He said the Walmart parking lot at Grand Traverse Crossing is a far better location and said he shops at the store nearly every day.

According to an imprecise estimate offered by the National Vehicle Residency Collective, an organization that advocates on behalf of homeless people who live in their cars, there are tens of thousands of people like Pearce who are living in their vehicles.

Locally, among the approximately 250 people who are homeless in this region, roughly 30 of them live in their cars, according to Ashley Halladay-Schmandt, director of the Northwest Michigan Coalition to End Homelessness.

"Generally, they're parking in parking lots or at trailheads — places where they can try to be as safe as they can," she said.

That includes busy and well-lit locations like the Walmart parking lot, where Michael Charles Martin, a 52-year-old homeless man who had been living in his Toyota Tacoma, was found dead last March 4. Grand Traverse County Sheriff's Capt. Brandon Brinks said Martin died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl.

Nationally, Walmart has a reputation of permitting overnight parking at its stores, although the policy varies from store to store. Trying to determine the Traverse City store's policy proved difficult.

Asked whether the Grand Traverse Crossing Walmart permits overnight parking, a Walmart manager said she couldn't comment and referred a reporter to Walmart's corporate media relations office. In turn, Walmart spokesman Robert Arrieta responded via email that Walmart "adheres to local and state guidance regarding overnight parking on private property."

According to Brinks, "We do not have anything specific to overnight parking on a business's private property. We would enforce trespassing if they called and requested us to respond to enforce a trespassing issue."

'I really can't complain'

As a young man, Pearce said he lived a self-destructive and desultory lifestyle. He said his father died when he was 14 and that he was "not a good teenager," getting into fights, skipping school and finding himself homeless at age 19. Later, he found a girlfriend, got married, had two sons — now aged 19 and 14 — and got divorced.

He said he became homeless again in June 2022, when his mother sold the home he was living in near Silver Lake to help pay her medical bills. Pearce said she died in November of that year, bequeathing to him her dog, Maxwell, who also became homeless.

As an adult, Pearce said, his temper also got him into trouble. In 2018, he said, he was charged with malicious use of a telecommunications device after getting into a verbal altercation with a school principal over the behavior of one of his sons. In 2022, he was convicted of assault and battery after he pulled a knife on a guy who threatened him in a road rage incident. Pearce maintains that the guy was the aggressor and that he never unsheathed the knife, but he was found guilty nevertheless.

Pearce said his work history is similarly checkered. He said he was fired from his last job over a disagreement with his uncle, who owned a construction business. Although he said he has applied for a variety of jobs since then — including in the construction industry, as a dishwasher and as a janitor — he said prospective employers have been reluctant to hire him.

"I believe it's a mixture of my work history, my criminal record and my agoraphobia," he said, adding that he takes anti-anxiety medication to treat his fear of being in crowded places.

Nevertheless, he said, he is ready, willing and eager to work.

"If I could get a line on a job, that would be great," he said.

Pearce blames no one but himself for his homelessness.

"I didn't think I'd be homeless again, but it is what it is," he said. "I really can't complain. There are much worse things that can happen. I could be incarcerated. I could be dead."

A diet of sandwiches and Freevee

Asked what his typical day is like, Pearce said he gets up sometime between 8 and 10 a.m. "depending on how cold it is." He said he scans job postings, fills out job applications and takes Maxwell for walks.

Living on $200 a month in SNAP food-program benefits and the generosity of a few friends who occasionally give him money for gas, Pearce said he buys dog food for Maxwell and, typically, bread and lunch meat for himself. Later in the day, he said he watches "random TV" on his phone, including "The Big Bang Theory," World War II documentaries and whatever he can find on Amazon Freevee.

He showers and does laundry at the homes of friends, none of whom, he said, have room for him to crash.

He said his sister and two brothers, all of whom live near Detroit, don't have room for him either.

Asked why he doesn't stay at Safe Harbor, Traverse City's homeless shelter, he said: "One, I have my dog and, two, I'd rather stay in my car. Places like that, you get stuff taken. I lived in a shelter in Tennessee for a little while and I left with almost nothing. Everything was stolen."

He also cited his agoraphobia.

"Crowds of people are hard for me to be around," he said.

There is another reason as well. Living in his car, Pearce has a place to store his clothes and other worldly possessions, locking the doors when he's away or when he tent camps in the warmer months.

This past summer, Pearce said he camped on state land near Lake Dubonnet in Interlochen, making sure to obtain a camping permit from the Department of Natural Resources. DNR regulations require campsites to be located at least one mile from developed campgrounds — there is a state campground on Lake Dubonnet — and camping is limited to no more than 21 consecutive nights, depending on the time of year.

Asked how he has adjusted to a lifestyle that is both physically challenging and lonely, Pearce is characteristically matter-of-fact.

"I've always been a private person," he said. "Growing up, I had friends, but I usually chose to do things on my own. I'm alone, but I'm not lonely."