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NYT

Like several others interviewed, Mr. Chaney said that when he lost his trucking business after Hurricane Katrina and was evicted from his home, he was lucky enough to have already paid for a yearlong gym membership.

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Related: Anya Peters, who has been living in her car in London since August, started a blog where she discusses her daily struggles.

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"That was probably the most important thing I had for keeping up appearances," said Mr. Chaney, who moved to Pennsylvania to be near his son, who was in college there.

Mr. Chaney said that while he looked for work, he did not reveal his situation to his son, who was going to school on a basketball scholarship, because he did not want to become a distraction.

While pride is usually the motivation for not telling friends or family, worries about the law and harassment are more often the reason people give for keeping their situation hidden. Safety is also a concern, advocates say, since homeless people are frequently targets for crime and physical abuse.

"A lot of what people do to keep the secret sounds paranoid, and some of it probably is," said Michele Wakin, who wrote her doctoral dissertation about people living in their vehicles in California and who is now a professor of sociology at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. "But when you're trying to be discreet and you're spending a lot of time in one area, little things get noticed."