The Michigan Department of Transportation is proposing a new rule that could make it harder for people without housing to find a safe place to sleep.
The rule would prohibit extended stays at MDOT rest areas and carpool lots—spaces where some unhoused residents have sought refuge.
Of Michigan’s 33,000 individuals experiencing homelessness, roughly half are placed in shelters. The other half sleep outdoors, in hotels, or in their vehicles.
Lindie, a mother of five, has been living out of her SUV in the Lansing area for the past four months – moving between rest areas, campsites and parking lots.
“My oldest is seventeen. I have a 16, 15, 13, and 11[-year-old too],” she said. “I was homeschooling my kids, but when school starts back up, they're gonna have to go back to school.”
WKAR News is withholding Lindie’s last name to protect her family’s privacy.
She lost her Lansing home in March after it was shot at—an incident that left her youngest son, then twelve, injured. Since then, she’s been unable to find shelter that will accommodate her whole family.
“I’ve called shelter after shelter,” she said. “They won’t accept me because of my family size and also 'cause I have older kids over the age of twelve. They want my two boys—my 17-year-old and my 13-year-old—to go stay at a men’s shelter by themselves.”
To avoid being noticed or forced to move, Lindie says she and her kids are constantly on the move.
“Pretty much every day, we try to find areas that are open,” she said. “We’ve been put out of other places... basically we have to sneak and sleep places.”
That includes MDOT rest areas—facilities that could soon be off-limits for people like her.
According to MDOT’s University Region Engineer Greg Losch, the proposed rule is part of a broader effort to respond to complaints from travelers. It would prohibit staying longer than 48 hours and also ban activities like vehicle sales or equipment staging at MDOT facilities.
Right now, there are no public rules or enforcement to deal with these issues.
Losch couldn’t give an exact number of people living in vehicles, but said most MDOT facilities have long-term residents—some staying for weeks or even months One of them is Paul Bodie, who spoke to WKAR News at a rest area along I-75, just south of Grayling.
“I’ve been homeless for going on 11 years,” Bodie said. “I just don’t stay in one area a lot. Officers told me, move around. Don’t stay in one spot too long.”
Bodie purchased his SUV six years ago with money from his Social Security checks. He now splits time between MDOT rest areas in Grayling and Alger, and when he receives his monthly check, he rents a motel room to clean up.
“I stay in a hotel [for] four days—I pay for three and get one free at the Woodland Motor Lodge in Grayling,” he said.
The rest of the time, Bodie lives out of his vehicle. He believes the proposed MDOT ban unfairly targets people like him.
“Most places people don't want you around. There ain’t a lot of living spaces,” he said. “And right now I’m just surviving, doing the best I can... I think it’d be petty to throw everybody out, especially the ones that don’t cause any trouble.”
Advocates say cases like Lindie’s and Bodie’s highlight a broader issue in Michigan: a lack of affordable housing. Eric Hufnagel, executive director of the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, said banning long-term parking isn’t a solution.
“This is a crisis that's a much bigger issue than how many days somebody is living out of their car in a public rest area,” Hufnagel said. “That’s not to castigate MDOT. I’m not saying they’re a villain in this. I’m saying we need to have our priorities straight. We need to be focusing on the issue, not the symptom.”
Hufnagel said rules that make unhoused people less visible do nothing to resolve the root causes of homelessness.
“Just because you move people out of a rest area doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist,” he said. “It means it’s just not visible to you. And unfortunately that happens quite frequently where communities are focused on the kind of superficial concerns that they have about aesthetics or about discomfort that business patrons may have”
The proposed MDOT rule is currently moving through the state’s rulemaking process. Losch emphasized that the regulation would apply to all travelers and would not criminalize homelessness. MDOT, he said, is not the agency to fix this issue.