Youth pedals 18,000 miles for the half homeless

SALT LAKE CITY — There is a forgotten segment of the population that has come to be known as the half homeless: those whose only home is on wheels, who have a vehicle to drive to work or on the hunt for work but at night have no home to return to.

When dark comes, they try to find a place to sleep where they'll be under the radar of both the police's good intentions and of those more nefarious. Sometimes they park in a campground or parking lot; sometimes the shoulder of the road is the best option available.

For some, the best they can do is continue to wake up every morning, doing what they can to care for themselves or their children while trying to escape their unenviable situation. For others, the experience is enough to awaken a desire to effect lasting change — not only for themselves, but for an entire class of people whose best has not been good enough.

Thomas Jessop found himself in that situation eight years ago when he and his family were forced to live in their car for years. His father had been the CEO of a successful dotcom company, but when the dotcom bubble burst, the family's wealth — more than $30 million — shrunk to nothing.

"A lot of people think the half-homeless are just drunks in an old van," Jessop said. "But a lot of the time, they are the middle class, those hurt by the housing crisis who just need a hand up. These are people who have lost their homes and don't live around friends or family, who are just moving into their cars until they can get back on their feet."

From years of moving with his family from parking lot to parking lot, the Santa Barbara teen, now 16, gained an appreciation of what it means to be "half homeless," a term coined by PBS during a special on Santa Barbara's Safe Parking Program, which the Jessop family participated in for years.

The program converts parking lots volunteered by office buildings, churches and businesses into a safe place for the half-homeless to park their vehicles at night. Where the average amount of time it takes someone in a homeless shelter to get back to fully independent housing is four years, the average amount of time for someone participating in the Safe Parking program is 8–12 months.

"You have to help people while they still have a car, before they are too far down," Jessop said. "These people are avoiding going to shelters and don't know what's out there; they don't know what help they can get. If it wasn't for this program, they wouldn't get help at all."

At 14, Jessop decided to get even further involved with the organization that had been such a help to his family. He was competing in triathlons scattered throughout the country, and his father had a crazy half-joke of an idea that the teen could ride his bike between competitions.

He decided to do so to raise awareness for the cause, and at the end of the trip, Jessop pedaled an extra 1,000 miles from Florida to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress to reappropriate funds within the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

"This is a segment of the homeless population that no one is doing anything with," Jessop said. "They have a budget of $4 billion a year and not one dollar goes toward helping them, because even though they fit the requirements to be considered homeless, programs don't exist to help them."

The trip did not see drastic reform in Washington, but the seeds of change were planted. Jessop repeated the experience the next year.

Now, for the third year in a row, Jessop has set out on a trip that will take him throughout the country and ultimately to its capital. He will ride 6,500 miles, with his father, 17-year-old brother and three dogs in front of him in a converted school bus.

He started in San Francisco and spent this weekend in Salt Lake City. At the end of the journey, he will have pedaled 18,000 miles over the course of three years.

The rides are intense: 100– miles per day at about 35 mph. He has only been cycling for two years, but already sees a promising career as a professional cyclist. And after retirement, he will turn to politics. Jessop, who graduated from high school at the age of 12, hopes to start college soon at Georgetown University, studying political science.

"I never would've thought of doing that before all of this, but I think I could make a big difference," he said. "I know how hard it is for these people because I've been through it. It's not easy. It's not something you want to do."

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