Every evening at 8 p.m., an otherwise inconspicuous parking lot in front of an old red brick building on the steep hill above downtown Duluth is transformed into an affordable place to stay overnight.

A line of minivans, pickup trucks, SUVs and Toyota Prius pull into numbered parking spaces. People get out and start getting ready for the night.

Mike Lane opened the back door of his 2005 Ford Escape, which is also his current home. Inside are his clothes, a television, some prescription drugs and other odds and ends.

When he sleeps, he leans the driver’s seat as far back as possible. He hangs towels in front of the windows to avoid the glare of a street lamp on the ceiling.

“Because this light really drills into my brain, even with my eyes closed,” he said. The towels also provide a semblance of privacy.

Lane is 65, a retired truck driver. He has been sleeping in this parking lot since it opened for the season in June, after leaving the one-bedroom apartment he rented across the bridge in Superior, Wisconsin.

The rent was only $400 a month, but there was a shared bathroom and a common room. After four and a half years, living together had become unbearable, he said.

“It was like a prison cell for me,” he said. “I prefer being out here in the fresh air.”

He uses the money he now saves on rent to pay off debt while he looks for a new, affordable apartment, and he supplements his monthly pension by conducting political polls on his cellphone for $10 an hour.

Lane moved to Duluth from Florida 35 years ago. He has two grown children who live in Duluth and six grandchildren. He has dinner with them most Sundays, but he has kept his living situation a secret.

“If they knew I was in this situation, they would want me to come back and live with them,” he explained. “And I don’t want to disturb their household. I don’t want them to worry about Grandpa. Because I’m really a pretty tough old guy.”

Instead, Lane came to Safe Bay, next to the Damiano Center in Duluth, which provides free meals and a variety of other services for those in need.

Lane said he feels safe here because there is staff there all night. He has a washing station in a mobile trailer with showers and toilets. And he appreciates the sense of community.

As the evening progresses, people sit in a circle, drink coffee and chat.

Natasha Lindberg, 28, a Safe Bay aide who was homeless herself, sits in a lawn chair and checks on them. She lived in a tent in Duluth for a time and also slept on couches.

“I’ve been through all this, you know, and it’s nice to be able to work with the people here to give back and show them that they’re not alone.”

Lindberg said it is important that people have a safe place like this to go.

“Here you can shower, relax and rest without having to worry about the police knocking on your window or people coming up to you, scaring you and stuff like that. It’s nice. I guarantee it helps a lot of people,” she said.

A coalition of service providers in Duluth opened Safe Bay last year. It’s part of a growing nationwide trend as the homeless crisis worsens. Dozens of approved parking spaces have sprung up on the West Coast. But there are only a handful in the Midwest.

Records show that 241 different people used Safe Bay during the first pilot season. This year it has been even busier, with many working during the day and sleeping there at night.

There are parents with children, and even multi-generational families living in several vehicles.

“Everyone’s story is unique,” says project organizer Joel Kilgour, who says he gets at least two calls a month from people in other cities interested in starting a similar safe parking program.

They may be leaving a bad or unsafe relationship, he said. They may have had to move for work reasons and couldn’t find housing in Duluth.

Sitting in his 2007 Dodge Caravan, 70-year-old John Amren says this is his second summer sleeping in Safe Bay since selling his previous home in Duluth in 2022.

Amren ran a kayaking business in Grand Marais for years. Last winter, he drove his van to Central America. He made himself a small bed with a four-inch piece of memory foam on the back.

He returned to Duluth this summer for medical treatment, but he plans to return to Costa Rica and apply for residency after he leaves Safe Bay, where he hopes to retire.

“I want to climb volcanoes and stuff. Even though I’m 70, I still want to do some things,” he said.

Ascend

Many of the people who park and sleep at Safe Bay have never used homeless services before. Many would not feel comfortable in a homeless shelter, Kilgour said. Some may not even consider themselves homeless.

By providing these people with a safe, central place to sleep, service providers also have an important opportunity to build relationships with them.

“And those relationships are critical because that’s the only way to get access to services,” says John Cole, executive director of CHUM, which runs the largest emergency shelter in Duluth and is one of Safe Bay’s partners.

Everyone who checks in at Safe Bay meets with a social worker. Kilgour said in the last year they have helped several people move into permanent housing.

“We’ve seen pretty high success rates here compared to emergency shelters,” Kilgour said.

Safe Bay is part of a larger initiative called Stepping on Up, led by 13 service providers in Duluth, aimed at developing a new solution to chronic homelessness.

Duluth’s shelters are full and often overcrowded. Tent camps have become increasingly common. The situation came to a head in Duluth this summer during a controversial debate about whether camping on city property should be made a misdemeanor.

Duluth is currently making several efforts to create permanently affordable housing throughout the city.

In the meantime, the Stepping on Up initiative focuses on meeting immediate, urgent shelter needs. Two years ago, the first permanent warming center opened in Duluth. Last winter, over 1,100 people used the facility.

Groups are working to establish a triage center in Duluth. The City Council recently allocated an additional $500,000 toward the effort. There are also plans for additional shelter space, including adding a second floor at CHUM, which would double the shelter’s capacity.

Cole said the project is currently in the design phase. He hopes to begin construction next year.

Kilgour expects a permitted outdoor campground to open next spring as well, with staff, security and access to resources for people sleeping in tents, similar to how Safe Bay operates.

The goal is to “create a path out of homelessness and into stability,” Kilgour said, so that people do not get stuck in a bottleneck where they sometimes have to wait up to three years for affordable housing.

Mike Lane is confident he won’t have to wait long.

“I’ll be back in an apartment soon,” he said. “I’m a veteran and have everything in the pipeline to find a home before it gets cold.”

But Safe Bay closes for the season at the end of October, so if he hasn’t found shelter by then, he’ll likely have to go to the warming center, he says.