How many homeless here live in cars ?

   I have sent you a series of short letters describing the plight of a homeless friend living in his car. I wonder just how many homeless people in Rhode Island are  invisible to the authorities . Has anybody  here been able to estimate the number of homeless individuals or families living in motor vehicles ? According to reports on You Tube,  many of these people represent the American middle class in free-fall.
              Unable to accommodate a 66 year old friend in my  cramped  studio apartment,  I sent him with ten dollars worth of quarters to the Warwick Public Library-which still has a public pay phone ( his cell phone is missing in the chaos of this life-style) . He got in touch with some senior center which misdirected him to a non-existent shelter on Howard Road in Warwick. He stopped his junky old Lincoln Town Car in front of a nice home in the neighborhood. Looking like an escaped convict, he rang the doorbell and asked the resident for directions to the shelter. He was redirected to  Howard Avenue in Cranston. This might have been all that is left of the old Welcome Arnold building. He spent a wretched night in that depressing place with some 100  bunk beds.
             Part of my friend's problem in finding subsidized housing is his vagabond history. Presently he has a Washington state license plate.   It struck me while reading a sign on a RIPTA bus this morning :  "  Please offer these seats to the elderly and persons with disabilities ".  My friend is elderly with disability. Should not public housing apply the concept of priority  here ?  " Am I going to die in my car ? " , my friend asks.
           In many ways he is the anti-character of Horatio Alger's " Ragged Dick ".   The theme of " Ragged Dick " is the rise of a young pleasant fellow -by luck and pluck-  from slum life to social respectability. " Ragged Dave " is a story of a precipitous fall in early old age from prosperity to squalor. Such " luck " as Dave encountered on his way down to the lower depths is best described by a Thomas Hardy - not an Horatio Alger.  Alger's universe was fundamentally benevolent. Hardy's was either indifferent or malevolent.  No, everything is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds .