Dan and Karen Grier are at home in their Dodge American Clipper parked on Northwest Leary Way. It's October 2009, and a faint autumn light is streaming through the window. A bowl of fruit sits on the table. The TV is on. The cats are curled up on their bed, which sits above the vehicle's cab.
The couple had never dreamed they'd live in an RV. Medical bills from eight eye surgeries piled up, forcing them out of their Seattle apartment, into a motel and, eventually, out of that, too.
Moving into a motor home seemed like the best idea.
"It's quiet, you know. It serves its purpose. It keeps us out of the weather," Dan Grier said.
For 18 months, they parked the Dodge in Ballard and called it home, or close enough.
Then everything changed.
A knock at the door
One afternoon while Dan and Karen were watching TV, a police officer banged on the door and told them they had to move on, saying someone had complained about the small generator that the Griers were running.
They were parked in an industrial area next to a vacant building.
"Yeah, right," Grier said. "Who's going to walk down the street and complain about that noise?"
The incident was part of a crackdown on car campers in the area that began in the summer of 2009, Grier and other car campers say. The city installed signs that read "No Parking 2-5 a.m." along the 4600 block of 11th Avenue Northwest, prohibiting overnight stays.
Between the signs and a 1979 oversize-vehicle law that Seattle police started using last year to ticket motor homes on residential streets, there's fewer and fewer places, car campers say, where they can go in Seattle.
"They keep putting up No Parking 2-5 everywhere," Grier said. "They're basically corralling us ... and now that they've got us corralled, they're telling us to move, but they're basically eliminating every place that we can move to."
Within a month, Grier had gotten two tickets for parking more than 72 hours (the city's limit for street parking).
They weren't the only ones. Parking and patrol officers were banging on the doors of other campers and having vehicles towed without warning, says Gene Benn, a motor home neighbor of the Griers who works at the 7-Eleven on the corner of Leary Way and 11th Avenue Northwest.
One night while Benn and his daughter were watching TV, an officer even entered his motor home and demanded identification, Benn says.
The Seattle Department of Transportation says it installs "No Parking 2-5 a.m." signs at the request of property owners. Since the start of 2009, public records from SDOT show, at least a dozen business owners along or near Leary Way -- including the 7-Eleven that Benn works for, Mars Hill Church and a workshop of glass artist Dale Chihuly -- have requested the signs, more of which have just gone up around the City Light station on 8th Avenue Northwest.
Bad neighbors?
Good riddance, says Dick Jones, owner of Phoenix Enterprise Auto Sales, a vehicle restoration business on Northwest 49th Street just off 11th. Before the signs went up on 11th, he says, the motor homes were bumper to bumper. Their owners all cooked meth at night and sold it on the street, he says, and when their bins and holding tanks were full, they'd dump their garbage and waste right on the curb.
"Eleventh was like a cesspool," Jones says. "All you could smell was urine and feces."
He says he's never met and doesn't know any of the car campers by name. He just wants to see them go. He filed a request with the city to get the overnight no-parking signs installed on 49th.
Drugs and alcohol are an issue, says Victor Hansen, manager of the Chihuly glassblowing studio around the corner on Northwest 50th Avenue, but it's only three or four motor home owners who are consistently a problem. Another issue, says David Entrikin, owner of Ballard Bookcase and a longtime photographer of out-of-doors homeless campers, is how long many of motor homes stay.
"The people who are camping, who are sleeping-bag kind of camping, actually move more frequently than people who have RVs and campers," he says. "Most of those people are looking for a place they can park that baby and leave it forever ... but there are rules that people have to live by and I'm a big believer in those rules."
Entrikin has exhibited his photos and donates one each year to create posters for Seattle's annual One Night Count of the homeless. But he, too, filed a request for the no-parking signs. There had been a couple living in a motor home across the street from his shop for a long time, he says. The final straw, he says, was the day a customer came running back into his shop after she saw the man beating his wife's head against the pavement.
The man would just drive off if the police were called, Entrikin says, so he had to request the signs. It affected Dan and Karen Grier, who would often sit in the shop and pour her heart out to Entrikin's wife, but if all the motor home owners had been like the Griers, he says, there wouldn't have been a problem.
"They took care of their own business, just like rest of us," Entrikin says.
That is, until they couldn't anymore.
Saying goodbye
Dan repaired boats, and Karen was lead inspector at Boeing until she was laid off in the 1990s. She took up house cleaning.
They fell on hard times. They lost their house in Seattle, Karen developed glaucoma. They moved into a motel in SeaTac. It was too far from the Ballard boatyard where Dan, now the sole provider, worked, and too far from Karen's doctor's appointments.
Last fall, Dan Grier said he didn't like to move the motor home because it was old and he was afraid it would break down. If that happened, he said, he and Karen would really be homeless. In the end, however, it was the cold that got them. On Dec. 9, 2009, a month after giving a second interview to Real Change, Karen Grier, 53, died of pneumonia.
Dan Grier still camped with a small band of cars and RVs on an unregulated block of 9th Avenue Northwest by the Ballard Fred Meyer. He was alone and became depressed, a camper from the group says. He started giving away his money and, at one point, signed over the title to the Dodge to a friend.
In late February 2010, he was asleep in the motor home when one of the cats knocked over a space heater and started a fire. Dan Grier, 57, died of his injuries a few days later at Harborview Medical Center.
What's driving off car campers?
Last year, the Seattle Police Department started a nighttime parking unit to ticket motorhomes using a 1979 law that prohibits vehicles over 80 inches wide from parking on residential streets between midnight and 6 a.m.
Larger vehicles are allowed to park in industrial areas, but, in the past two years, residents and business owners have gotten the Seattle Department of Transportation to install a wave of No Parking 2-5 a.m. signs that ban overnight car camping in those areas.
Since the start of 2009, SDOT says, it has put up 82 block sides of signs, including 31 block sides from the Ballard Bridge to a City Light station on 8th Avenue Northwest.
A list of those who requested signs, including a millionare, artist and a mega-church was obtained from SDOT:
7-11/Jack in the Box, 999 N.W. Leary Way
Ballard Bookcase, 4611 11th Ave. N.W.
Dale Chihuly Studios, 4911 11th Ave. N.W.
Lesser Woodworking, 940 N.W. 49th St.
Mars Hill Church, 1411 N.W. 50th St.
Phoenix Enterprises Auto Sales, 936 N.W. 49th St.
Office Max, 1135 N.W. Leary Way
Rudd Co., 1141 N.W. 50th St.