CORRECTION

An article Sept. 24 about a Chapel Hill woman who parked her camper in neighborhoods and on private property mischaracterized the woman's criminal record. Janet Bratter has been convicted of stalking and violating a protective order. She has been accused of trespassing but not convicted.

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CHAPEL HILL -- Janet Bratter lives in a camper covered in peace signs, religious symbols and liberal slogans.

And she ticks people off.

Bratter, who turns 61 today, is a serial overstayer and trespasser who parks her 1983 GMC Leisurecraft motor home wherever she thinks she can stay a while, often a long while. In the past year, at least a half-dozen people have complained to police about her camping in their neighborhoods or on their land.

"People get so bent out of shape if they think you are not kowtowing to their little bit of power on their turf," she said.

The Leisurecraft, streaked in pale yellow and marked with a yin-yang symbol, the Star of David and the Islamic star-and-crescent, no longer runs on its own. Bratter finds friends to tow it when she moves.

A New Jersey native who grew up in Florida and near Washington, Bratter has traveled the country playing her music, which weaves traveling songs, ballads of broken love and political commentary.

A regular sidewalk singer and open-mic stalwart, she would like to have a permanent address in the town she has called home for 15 years, but she can't afford an apartment or land to park her camper.

"She just has the unfortunate circumstance of living in a camper in a town where that's a challenge," Chapel Hill Police Capt. Chris Blue said.

Bratter taps into electricity, water and Internet service when she can. She sponges off of those close to her, living on about $150 per month in food stamps and whatever money she can make as a performer.

She can turn any parking lot or driveway into a full-service campsite and sound stage -- just until she wears out her welcome with her friends or their neighbors.

"She's right out of the Kool-Aid Acid era, but property values are what they are," said Bratter's friend Judy Bosniadis, a real estate agent. Bosniadis raised the ire of her neighbors at the Finley Forest condos when she invited Bratter to dog-sit. Bratter decided to make the neighborhood her home. She set up camp on their sidewalk with her guitar and a lounge chair under her camper's awning.

With help from police, Finley Forest residents ran Bratter off after a few months. She tried the driveway of an abandoned house on Barbee Chapel Road and then a Citgo station nearby, but the owners shooed her away.

"The real problem was that she did it without contacting anyone," said Carrboro resident Cinnamon Weaver, who owns the house.

At the moment, Bratter is living in some friends' backyard in Carrboro, but they've also asked her to move on.

"They're saying things to me like, 'You know, you can't stay here forever,' " Bratter said. "Gee, thanks for rubbing my nose in that. Leave me an illusion of a little stability just for a couple of months, for goodness' sake."

She was only supposed to be dog-sitting for a couple of weeks.

In the past few years, Bratter has been kicked out of the Timberlyne Shopping Center parking lot and the secluded Village Green condos as well as private property along Seawell School Road, including the parking lot of the New-Age church that first attracted her to Chapel Hill in 1992, Unity Center of Peace. She still gets her mail there.

"Her approach as an artist expecting to survive through the support of a patron, that fits more with Europe in the 16- or 1700s, because that's how they treated artists back then," said Barbs Burman, a lay minister at Unity who recently served as Bratter's advocate in her legal troubles. "It doesn't fit here and now."

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