12 ms·

Car campers in beach parking lots

therubberduckie 8y ago
>(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Looks like someone forgot to proofread.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  Prob warning the users :). Read it all the way but you're wasting your time.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  Looks like it's a story that came in from a wire service, particularly since the writer and story are both from San Diego, but this is an LA publication. I guess that's the risk of just mindlessly hooking up your CMS to someone else's feed. (Yup, there are lots of other hits for this exact story published elsewhere; other publications seem to have done a better job filtering out these notes to the editor: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22to+leave+its+usual+spot+in+a+public+parking+lot+beside+the+sand+dunes+of+Ocean+Beach%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22to+leave+its+usual+spot+i...)
  - ascorbic 8y ago
    This seems to be the original. It even has a picture! https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-living-and-parking-at-the-beach-20190317-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-m...
    - Jaruzel 8y ago
      Another 451 anti-EU block. ^sigh^ Here's the wayback link for us poor Europeans: https://web.archive.org/web/20190322191045/https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-living-and-parking-at-the-beach-20190317-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322191045/https://www.sandi...
      - disgruntledphd2 8y ago
        I read about the status code this week, but this is the first time I've seen one in the wild.
akerro 8y ago
> 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons > We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact webmaster@bakersfield.com or call (661) 395-7500. Another reason to support article 11, 13 or 17.
- mcorning 8y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.baker...
- ucaetano 8y ago
  How could those possibly solve the problem? They won't remove the cost of complying with GDPR. [Edit: sorry, I didn't get the sarcasm :) ]
  - akerro 8y ago
    It was sarcasm, all 3 articles once implemented on EU scale will make web even worse than GDPR made it.
    - blunte 8y ago
      Only when the politicians have a low enough average age that they actually use computers themselves (and find out how unusable the web is already) will they possible revise or eliminate the restrictions. One big problem with tech regulation right now, particular that which involves the internet, is that the old farts making the rules are barely skilled enough to send emails. Not only do they have no concept of how they're ruining things, but they don't have to suffer the consequences. Imagine if every time they changed the channel on their TV, they had to stop and drive a cursor to _somewhere_ on the screen to find the correct button to press to get past the popup and watch the channel they were hoping to watch.
jasoncartwright 8y ago
Here it is on the wayback machine for EU users getting a 451 error. https://web.archive.org/web/20190322180054/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322180054/https://www.baker...
- isostatic 8y ago
  So either 1) They are targetting EU users and serving to EU users and thus the block is pointless 2) They aren't targetting EU users and thus the block is pointless
  - tzs 8y ago
    Or (1) they aren't sure if they would count as targeting EU users, because the rules are fuzzy and might be interpreted differently by each country's regulators, and (2) they don't have any need to target EU users since their content, and their monetization, is mostly of interest to non-EU users. In that situation, there are two cautious ways to proceed. One approach is to assume that you might be targeting EU users and so comply with GDPR. Even if you aren't doing anything with data that would make compliance hard, this is somewhat annoying because GDPR requires that you have a representative in the Union as a point of contact for users and regulators. The other approach is to make a good faith effort to block EU users. If you have little or no income directly or indirectly from EU users, the second approach has a lot to recommend it, especially until there is a good body of regulatory rulings on what GDPR actually means.
travbrack 8y ago
Really disappointed there aren't any pictures
- IshKebab 8y ago
  They aren't just going to give a million dollar view away for nothing!
  - donkey-hotei 8y ago
    lol
- rwmj 8y ago
  The Daily Mail, not a reliable source in general, but today it does have an article on this topic with lots of pictures: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6839229/Thousands-California-families-living-RVs-exorbitant-rents-leave-facing-homelessness.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6839229/Thousands-C...
ryandrake 8y ago
> “If you allow people to sleep in their vehicles, you will eventually have open camping all along our view corridors“ Reminds me of the whole Vinod Khosla drama up in NorCal [1]. Seems like muscling in on access to a beautiful view / beach and trying to gatekeep it is a common pastime for more than one wealthy Californian. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-beach-access-khosla.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-bea...
- ip26 8y ago
  It's terribly phrased, but shanty towns present a host of problems no matter where they are.
mikeryan 8y ago
Living in Berkeley/Oakland area I'm torn on this one we have a growing problem with tent encampments (in SF too) I don't know if this is anything but a cosmetic solution but its an interesting tact allowing people to overnight in vehicles.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  It seems unambiguously better, since the alternative to living in an RV would in most cases be... living in a tent.
- jrowley 8y ago
  Lots of people (~10-100 cars) park at the Berkeley marina daily - it's a popular spot for those living vehicles.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  sucks for your property value. No one with a $million home wants a camp near it, lets be honest. The govt can move the hot potatoes around until someone gets stuck with it. I wonder what this does for crime rates?
  - seem_2211 8y ago
    Well maybe if the people with their million dollar homes let some more housing be built in the general area (shock & horror) there wouldn't be this problem. This is largely a self inflicted problem that California has caused for itself.
- pugworthy 8y ago
  Was just down in that area last week for vacation, and some areas just south of University Village (B) were amazingly packed with RVs. My daughter (who works near there) said that it's a mix of people sometimes - from the conscientious good (temporary) neighbors to the ones that leave a lot of trash and crap.
joe_the_user 8y ago
It seems like an organized approach to homelessness that allowed vehicle camping but put systematic restrictions on it could be fairly effective. There could even be something like a "white list" where people could apply for a camping permit and have it revoked for bad behavior. Of course, you could also allow camps on private property with provisions to meet basic health and conditions. Both these measures would undermine the scarcity of housing itself, which goes against the interests of both landlords and homeowners. So I doubt either will happen soon.
- scythe 8y ago
  People living in cars isn't so bad if they run on electricity. But having people heating their "homes" with a size-optimized ICE burning gasoline is terrible for air quality. Car engines aren't designed to be heaters. I had imagined at one point having parking garages constructed for this very purpose to be used as homeless shelters.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Obviously, if you were allowing camping in a regulated fashion, you would want to require motorhomes designed for the purpose of camping. These usually have propane furnaces. There would be quite a few considerations. I would pretty say that these hypothetically could be worked but in reality those who just didn't want this at all would object and the situation could never happen in modern reality.
HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
> In December, Cheatham, her children and their father qualified for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Mountain View. > The couple isn’t completely reconciled, but they came together to provide a roof — one that’s not welded to a chassis — over their children’s heads. > “We’re working things out,” said Cheatham, 37. “The most important thing is to have a stable place for our kids.” It's amazing to me to see / hear of parents, who even after disagreeing badly enough to divorce, are able to come together to care for their children. It's hard for me to even fathom how much work and humility that would take. That they were willing to talk to each other at all is, in its own right, remarkable. I have been fortunate enough to have always lived in a secure home, and I've never needed to sleep in a car out of necessity- the only times I've gone camping are as a Boy Scout (okay, Scouts BSA member), when a warm shower was only a day or two away. As for the policies: Cars are, besides being a little awkward to sleep in, a lot more secure than a tent is (and more fireproof, to boot). With the understanding that all it takes is one mistake for a poor family to become an even poorer, homeless family, I feel like a lot of these "parking overnight, or being homeless = vagrance = illegal = fines" laws can be a little out of touch- they're generally written by college-educated politicians, many of whom have never had to do anything of the like, and who don't understand that a $50 fine when you can't even pay rent is really bad. Why does it seem to be that we, at least in America, punish the poor for being poor, instead of, or even at the same time that we try to help them up?
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Why does it seem to be that we, at least in America, punish the poor for being poor, instead of, or even at the same time that we try to help them up? You could just say "authorities punish the poor for being poor while pretending to help them up". We have reached the point where courts demands that when police move homeless people on that these police offer them a place in shelters. So, you wind-up with a situation where phantom shelter-beds are created. The (mostly) fiction of attempting to help people has to be maintained while the primary intention to remove them as annoyance, knowing they'll reappear elsewhere. And yeah, allow tiny house camps on private land and you'll reduce the incredible pressure towards higher rents (or build public high rises like the old days or whatever). But then a whole lot of land value is threatened and so the concerned, naive homeowner becomes the threatened homeowner.
IronWolve 8y ago
Van Life is becoming super popular, not just for the homeless, but for a generation of people who want to live on a limited income and travel. Theres people building out buses/vans and living in california, working tech, banking their money to retire early. About 20 years ago, I was working at ATT and we had contractors living in their travel trailers parked in the work parking lot at our datacenters, so its not a new occurance. The big thing I found interesting was the lawsuit angle that it discrimination for disabled homeless, that living in a tent is legal, but living in an RV is illegal. RV's and Tents are spreading all around major cities, its getting quite bad up here in Seattle, tourists are mentioning it all the time, its visibile from the highways.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  Forget about the views for a second, even sq footage isn't lacking that much. Million dollar homes (that need to be demolished) with that sq footage cost probably millions in that area. So call it renting a small house with a $15 million view. Kinda. Oh, and you can move it.
- ip26 8y ago
  Van Life is becoming super popular I'm as intrigued as the next outdoors-loving fellow, but is it actually "super popular"? Do that many people, proportionately, take up van life? I suspect in the big picture it's still extremely niche, especially if you drill down to just people who are voluntary van dwellers.
  - driverdan 8y ago
    It's very niche but has grown significantly, both for the willing and unwilling.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - creeble 8y ago
    Yes,mit's getting pretty popular. I read Nomadland by Jessica Bruder earlier this year. A significant number of baby-boomers have taken to the road, often because of a lack of retirement funds. Having gotten a travel trailer 18 mos ago and travelled a bit in CAlifornia, it's amazing what you see when your eyes are tuned to it a bit.
ascorbic 8y ago
Could the link be changed to the original article? https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-living-and-parking-at-the-beach-20190317-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-m...
djakjxnanjak 8y ago
Our public policy often chooses to subsidize free parking by making large chunks of land available for free use by automobiles. Modern technology allows permanent structures to be much more space-efficient for housing by building many stories high. However, the use of such technology is often banned and structures are limited to one or two stories. Also, even for one-story structures, rules often require eg. 6000 sqft of land to be used for a 1500 sqft house. These rules all result in significant surplus land wealth being required (or expensively rented) for people to obtain permanent housing. Is it any wonder that, faced with these constraints, people are choosing to live in one-story homes on free land? Government policy is practically begging for it.
- lstodd 8y ago
  And this "technology" is banned for the right reasons. It is demonstrably harmful to the enviroment, physical and mind health and the society in general. I'm all for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtSf69vjrVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtSf69vjrVM
  - sankumsek 8y ago
    Do you have a source for that? Not disagreeing, but I'd be very interested in reading up on how a high-rise might negatively impact my health seeing as I live in one right now.
    - lstodd 8y ago
      Source? Hah. My life. I lived most of it in the high-rises, and not slums at all. "Respectable neighbourhoods". I'm not talking about slums. I pity the people who choose to live in those anthills. I hate people who advocate to force other people to live in those. I'm talking about overcrowding. Not enough private space, not enough public space, not enough transport. And it's a death trap if something goes just slightly wrong with the infrastructure. Have you witnessed shit fountains out of you r toilet? I did. Have you seen what a gas explosion does to those? A section or three just collapses, top to bottom, and everyone there is dead. What if water mains gets cut off because the electricity cut off and so there are no lifts? What if it's 15F outsite and the heaters die? This is no way to live.
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
Tried to visit the site from Europe: 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact webmaster@bakersfield.com or call (661) 395-7500.
- RoadieRoller 8y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.baker...
  - HenryBemis 8y ago
    I respect their (bakersfield.com) right to piss all over the regulation of 500 million people, and respectfully decide to ignore them and equally blacklist them. GDOR is the mitigating effor after years of abusing Safe Harbor both by state agents as well as from private companies. Instead of fixing their deal, they prefer to black list EU? Seriously? Go .... yourself, and I am returning the favor of black listing you 'dear' bakersfield.com. I know that this is not the first site to do this, but to give us this really shitty behaviour is just plain rude and arrogant.
    - wildrhythms 8y ago
      Can you blame them? EU traffic probably accounts for a tiny fraction of their overall traffic. Rather than pay their (probably minuscule) engineering team to fix it, bakersfield.com probably ran the numbers are realized it would cost much less to just not serve traffic to the EU. I'm sure this is hugely annoying and unexpected for EU visitors, but you gotta understand that you are not obligated to use their website, and the website is not obligated to serve its content to you.
      - 8y ago
ChuckMcM 8y ago
I talked with a guy living in a motorhome in Mountain View California, he works for Google. He could certainly afford an apartment but said his payments on the motorhome are about $600 a month, and an apartment close to Google would be $2500 a month at least, so he feels like its a free $2000 a month to save or spend. He's fortunate that Google also has nice showers, free food, and laundry. Things he might otherwise have to find other options for. I can't argue with the logic. It means $24,000 a year to apply toward student loans or what have you isn't a bad deal. And he will eventually pay off the motorhome giving him some security there. Sadly, most people won't talk about their situation (I tried by walking down a road and knocking on doors) I was hoping to get a sense of how many people were living in motorhomes because they wanted to (like the guy I talked to) and how many were there because they felt they had no choice. I don't have any good ideas on how to get that information. I did enough research to know that building a small lifestyle business out of offering black/grey water pumping and garbage collection services for the folks who were doing this by choice was probably viable. You would need a couple of custom trucks[1] that were capable of being mobile RV dumping stations and a business with sewer rights to dump (the City of Sunnyvale will license a business to have an RV dumping station on site, so starting there would work.) I think it would be a "pump and dump" scheme that would be both good for the neighborhood and probably make enough money to employ a few folks. [1] To be full service you'd probably want a fresh water tank, a propane tank, and a sewage collection tank. Then you could dump the grey/black tanks, refill fresh water and refill propane. Personally I think it makes way more sense than these companies that were sending trucks out to refill your gas tank.
- TomK32 8y ago
  > "pump and dump" scheme you win.
- rhacker 8y ago
  Actually a better business is to start having more RV parks in the SV. The last 5 years has been record breaking sales history for RVs. Yet the rest of the industry (RV parks specifically) isn't catching up. Most of the people buying RVs are now surprised that no RV parks have availability. I've watched for the past 5 years bay area periphery cities go from having tons of space any time of the year, to being completely full all the time, no matter what they do to their monthly price. It's kinda crazy.
veryworried 8y ago
I don't need to live in a van, but I have thought about building out a van that I could drive around the country to different cities and then leave there and fly home. This way, if I ever wanted to fly out to that city on a whim I'd already have a place to stay. Might even be useful to have two such vehicles on opposite ends of the country. I'd probably keep some cameras hooked up so I could drop in and see what's going on around the van remotely, and maybe a server I could ssh into and run some commands for the vehicle. Only question is finding suitable places to park it that don't require a long commitment.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  I think anywhere you could park a vehicle unattended for extended periods without fees/fines you could probably afford to buy a small plot of undeveloped land in cash instead. Then just build some small utility structures on your properties, they'll be more comfortable than a vehicle (and you could park vehicles on them if desired, without concerns for tickets). It's a far better investment IMHO, and as the years go by you may find yourself slowly adding infrastructure and before you know it you have multiple small off-grid homes. Also keep in mind a small shed requires a lot less maintenance than an automobile to serve its purpose. Leaving automobiles unused for months or years tends to break them. A shed needs a coat of paint or shingles replaced occasionally (corrugated metal roofs last > 50 years).
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  I know a guy (who has plenty of spare money) who lives in NJ but keeps cars in various garages around Manhattan, so that wherever he happens to be (he spends lots of time out late in the city) he can hop to his nearest car.
momentmaker 8y ago
There is whole subculture for this: #vanlife It's rather interesting. I had considered this lifestyle too. Freedom to roam. Digital nomad. https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/
homerhomer 8y ago
I'm against live-in vehicles and this life-style choice. On paper it sounds fine but in reality horrible for many reasons. For the most part, people in this situation are in a challenging state and the least of their worries is the environment around them. Is a mother of 2 living in a small RV who relies on donations going to pay for disposal service? I live in Portland, a city that used to known for being a clean city. In the last 8 years we have had a large increase of car live-in residents and homeless population. I would not call Portland a clean city anymore. In-fact it's far from it. Homeless make up about 3% of the population, but according to a recent article they make up half of the arrests. Personally I've had car camping people outside of my house and we've been afraid of retaliation for call them in and try not to make contact. I understand that these people have nowhere to go, but cities should create a homeless car shelter of sorts or some other solution other than just hoping for the best of people living on the edge. 2011 article on how clean Portland is(was) - http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/308068 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/308068 RV issue in Portland -https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-neighbors-fed-up-with-abandoned-rvs/431476525 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-neighbors-fe... Homeless issue -https://katu.com/news/local/neighbors-say-theyre-getting-nowhere-with-city-on-homeless-camp-cleanup https://katu.com/news/local/neighbors-say-theyre-getting-now... Half of the Police arrests are Homeless - https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/07/portland_mayor_ted_wheeler.html https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/07/portland_mayor_t...
- save_ferris 8y ago
  This comes off as super NIMBYish. The rise of this lifestyle is a direct result of rising inequality in our society. Yeah, that mother of 2 living in a vehicle probably has way bigger problems than paying for disposal service. But people utilizing services they can't pay for is what concerns you, not the fact that so many people are in such dire financial straits that living in a car makes economic sense.
  - throwawaysea 8y ago
    Use of the word "NIMBY", which is clearly a pejorative, is not an argument. I don't see why that diminishes the parent comment at all. The rise of this lifestyle is a direct result of people feeling entitled. Take the musician in the article ("Lily"). She's trying to make a career in indie rock, playing local gigs. That can't be your full-time job unless you are exceptionally talented, to a degree where others value your creation/contributions enough to pay you a lot for it. This takes more than just musical talent - it requires experience, marketing, networking, business, and other skills. And it is of course, a highly-competitive line of work - after all, who wouldn't want their work to also be their passion. Lily lived in Nashville before, which is a lot more affordable than California cities like San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. San Diego is a full 55% pricier than Nashville (https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-calculator.aspx https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-...). So in effect, Lily made a conscious choice to move to a pricier area without having a plan for how to live there. A responsible way of making that move would be to work for a few years in Nashville, build up savings, identify jobs in your destination that pay enough, and then make the move. What gives Lily the right to expect she'd be accommodated in whatever city she moves to? If her work is not producing enough earning to pay for housing locally, it is because her work is not valued by society to a great enough extent to live in a very desirable (and thus expensive) area. I don't think the local community is obligated to provide lower-cost housing (either through subsidy or greater supply) to enable her choices, which squarely fall under the realm of "personal responsibility".
newnewpdro 8y ago
It's great that this law has been struck down as unconstitutional. I've slept in my car numerous times along the PCH in the past, and in SoCal it's particularly irritating how much CHP harrasses folks just trying to get some shut-eye on a road trip. I've had CHP wake me at 3AM then force me to drive half asleep down a winding cliff-top road I had pulled over specifically to avoid driving sleepily down. But I fully expect there to be new laws introduced to prevent these streets from becoming trailer parks. The judge already criticized the vagueness, they'll just get more specific targeting persistent occupancies. The concern for sanitation is very legitimate. Especially for folks in cars and vans, there's no holding tank infrastructure in these vehicles. A person spending a day somewhere in a car with no public restrooms nearby is either urinating in a bottle or on the ground. And if in a bottle, the bottle is very likely getting emptied on the ground nearby. Even people in RVs and campers have fairly limited holding capacity. It doesn't take much laziness to exhaust the capacity and regress into the same pattern of a car/van-dweller. Not to mention those systems are failure-prone and often neglected because who wants to do maintenance on a sewage system?
breatheoften 8y ago
I rented one of those expensive Ocean Beach ocean-view houses right by the parking lot they are talking about for a few months once. I've also lived out of a van in San Diego for some range of years (I used to do Oceanographic research and traveled 3-5 months a year). I quite literally have lived both sides of this story -- although I never once stayed in the parking lot in question in my van. I honestly can't imagine why anyone would want to stay in a van in that parking lot -- it is much too exposed and intrusive both in terms of the outside world coming in and in your inside world going out. It would also be very annoying to comply with the parking requirements ... I think regulation to provide a path to legality for people to van dwell should happen but it should also take into account the needs of the communities and home-dwellers in an area. I never parked overnight in residential areas -- it seems to me a strange van parked overnight in a neighborhood could easily impact somebody who lived nearby, especially if they saw someone climbing in or out. Making someone nervous when they go for a walk in their own neighborhood is more than high enough cost to be worth avoiding. The reality though is that there is a _lot_ of space in a most American cities that _nobody uses at night_ -- and its often not far from desirable places to be. Opening up small pockets of space sufficiently close to desirable locations for legal and safe use by van dwellers, in conjunction with other regulatory approaches (special vehicle registration, possibly even innovation via things like ODBC-gps appliances to allow local municipalities to collect van-dwelling taxes) could really curtail the negative effects residents experience while also enabling people the freedom to pursue the lifestyles they are already pursuing ... Its possible to do all of (1) limit impact of van dwellers on communities (2) make van dwelling safer and more convenient (3) keep costs of van-dwelling lower than traditional housing and viable for people on a range of incomes
- pjeide 8y ago
  OBD-II :)
  - breatheoften 8y ago
    That's the one! I really hope that ODBC is not introduced as a required part of vehicle safety regulations!
jedberg 8y ago
Even back in 1999, rents were already high in the are compared to the rest of country. When I got my first job, rents for a 1br place were about $1,000/mo near Emeryville, where my job was. But it turns out boat payments were only about $525/mo. I did serious research and almost bought a boat, until I found out you aren't allowed to sleep on your boat in the dock without a special permit, and the waitlist for that permit was 10 years. I supposed I could have floated out in the Bay every night, but I suspect that would have made my costs go up significantly from the extra maintenance and fuel. But the point is, California seems to be very against alternate forms of housing, and this isn't a new thing.
jordache 8y ago
until you have to take a dump...
envoked 8y ago
I had a stint of about six months when I lived in a camper and worked full-time as an engineer. I was amazed at the kinds of places I could get away with staying for free (coast in oregon, ski resorts, national forests). I would drive around public lands looking for LTE on verizon/AT&T and then post up for days. It wasn't without its precarity. Sometimes I'd get woken up by sheriffs at 2AM, have mechanical issues, and generally struggled to conform and relate to friends and coworkers. Also, sleeping in SF was terrible. Buses waking you up at 2am, and after meeting others living living in their vans on Division due to hardship, I couldn't help but feel guilty and privileged in my solar paneled, cassette toiled equipped, expedition vehicle. People would joke that I was gentrifying the streets. Eventually I sold it and moved on. Worthwhile experience though.
throwawaysea 8y ago
This whole camping trend, whether on beaches or in parks or on other public property, makes no sense to me. Society is built on the expectation of protected property (reserved for certain uses), enforcement of laws (such as litter laws), and earning of privileges (rather than feeling entitled to live wherever one wants). I don't think it is fair that law-abiding residents who pay taxes and have worked to earn those pricey homes can have their public amenities, which are meant for day-use, instead crowded-up by transient residents. It just defies common sense. In Seattle, we see the effects of similar permissive laws all around us. Property crime has gone up significantly alongside our recent lax enforcement of littering laws and due to the allowance of "urban camping". We have induced a large homeless population from elsewhere due to our permissiveness - even from cities immediately next door (https://q13fox.com/2019/02/26/did-federal-way-bus-its-homeless-to-seattle/ https://q13fox.com/2019/02/26/did-federal-way-bus-its-homele...). The rise of RVs taking up parking spaces is another problem - it is essentially freeloading off of spaces meant for use by residents of that neighborhood and for temporary day-use. And of course, these RVs are a blight - they are often in shoddy condition, they make the neighborhood look less safe, and they leave trash all around them (or worse, sewage runoff). Many have needles around them and are clearly used to deal drugs. With burglaries happening often, I can't tell you how anxiety-inducing it can be to have someone pitch a tent on the sidewalk in front of your home, camping there all day everyday, watching all residents' movements, etc. This city used to be beautiful and it is trended towards a trashy Mad Max like situation. I don't agree with arguments that this is due to cost of housing or supply issues. This is due to people feeling entitled. If one can't afford to live in some area, then they should consider finding a different area to live in, or a different line of work that enables them to live in that area. No one is entitled to live wherever they want, doing whatever job they want (e.g. the musician quoted in the article), at whatever wages they are able to earn in that job. That's simply not tenable. There are plenty of affordable places in America where people can make a living and thrive. And yes, it may require that you look outside of the most-desirable locations, or that you do work that isn't your "passion", but that type of compromise is simply a part of life.
- kelp 8y ago
  I have a lot of sympathy for your argument that this problem is making it worse for everyone. I live in SOMA in San Francisco and regularly encounter many of the issues you describe. It makes the quality of living worse for the whole neighborhood, and I do think it is in part caused by very lax rules about what is acceptable in public spaces. That said, I think you under-estimate how hard it is for someone to move once they are experiencing homelessness. I doubt the majority of people in this situation are doing to to pursue a music career... This isn't about entitlement. If your only option is to live in a van, your day to day existence is going to be very stress-full trying to scratch out enough income for your basic needs, and parking tickets, impound, etc could put you into an even worse spot that you can't recover from. The idea that you should just up and move to a cheaper place to live sounds reasonable on the surface. But imagine all you have is that Van, you don't have enough money for any major repairs, let alone hundreds of dollars in gas to get to some cheaper place. You don't have a network there, and you don't know your way around, so what are your job prospects? The reality is that when you're living this close to the edge, you're only thinking day to day, because you're always one problem away from ending up in an even worse situation. Packing up and going some place cheaper is far from a viable option. Finally, most people who are now homeless in an area were previously housed in that area, so they probably know people there. They may also have some kind of public benefit, and have some clue about how to navigate that system. Packing up and leaving, especially to another state, starts them back at zero.
ReinholdNiebuhr 8y ago
Just an idea that popped up. One could probably develop a couchsurfing/airbnd style app so to speak where people with rvs/motorhomes could find rental spots to go hook up for the night. That probably wouldn't do much for people short on money, but it could be helpful for people traveling around the country and finding that RV parks have no vacancy. Just a thought.
- envoked 8y ago
  Not a super hip site but boondockerswelcome.com has been around for a while. It seems mostly targeted toward the boomer/florida snowbird crowd.
  - ReinholdNiebuhr 8y ago
    Neat. Thanks for sharing. If you look at airbnd, vrbo was around before just wasnt marketed the same way. So there probably is room for an additional competitor etc. Especially if done right.
driverdan 8y ago
I've been living in a shuttle bus I converted for almost two years. I'm fortunate enough for it to be a choice, many aren't as fortunate. I'm better equipped than an RV, hot and cold water, toilet, shower, 1600W of solar, AC, standing desk workstation. I'm very respectful of others. I never park overnight in front of a house and don't like parking in one street spot for more than 12h. I often pick up trash in the area I park. For those who complain about us, keep in mind there is a minority of assholes in every population. Don't judge everyone by the assholes. Feel free to ask me anything.
- hawkesnest 8y ago
  It seems like most van conversions are optimized to be inconspicuous. It's no schoolie, but a shuttle bus is certainly more eye-catching than an Econoline. Do you have issues blending in or getting additional (unwanted) attention?
  - driverdan 8y ago
    My bus is very obvious. In general it hasn't been a problem. I had someone complain once when I was parked somewhere I shouldn't have been but didn't know.
mirimir 8y ago
For EU users: https://web.archive.org/web/20190322233025/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322233025/https://www.baker...
wil421 8y ago
Why are some of these people staying in California? These people have cars and jobs. Why would they stay in a place they can’t afford to live? There are plenty of places in the US that have lower costs of living or better services for the impoverished and disabled. Not to mention the mother was going to college for acting while her 3 kids were living in a cockroach and bugbed infested car. Talk about priorities, there are plenty of majors people can take that actually have the prospect of a positive income.
lesdeuxmagots 8y ago
I lived in a van I converted for about 18 months, purely by choice. I had been living in luxury high rises in SF for many years before , excepting the 6 months I spent living in a house in South Bay while converting the van, and afterwards in on campus housing when I went back to graduate school afterwards. My van was nicer than may of the places one could rent around the bay area. Oak floors, oak countertops, modern high end sink and faucet, designer light switches, high gloss push open cabinets (with electromagnetic locks when in motion). I did it because I wanted to build something and I had the time to do it nights and weekends while working. There's nothing like learning multiple disciplines from woodworking to electrical, from insulation to plumbing, and applying it all to create something physical and comprehensive. I parked mostly in my company parking lot during the weekdays. On the weekends, I parked in the Mission, where many others in vans did as well. In SF, it was clear that I was abusing a public good, but couldn't easily find a way around it. I would have happily paid for a monthly parking spot if there was one around the area, but there was no monthly surface parking available in the area. I don't think van life is an answer to the untenable housing situation in california. It's a niche lifestyle, unsuitable and undesirable for most. However, I do think we need to get over this obsession with space. Space efficiency is something so entirely foreign to most Americans. Having excess space is culturally desired and fetishized. This is a cultural phenomenon, not necessarily good or bad. In a less densely populated region, having extra space is not a luxury. However, when space is so sparse, I do think we could, as a culture, benefit from a shift towards loving space efficiency more.
_ZeD_ 8y ago
451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact webmaster@bakersfield.com or call (661) 395-7500. fuck you.
wiseleo 8y ago
It's amazing how little I truly need. I haven't paid rent since 2015 by choice. I can afford it, but see no reason to. I went to a camping store and bought the most comfortable air sleeping pad and other gear. My 4" thick sleeping pad is more comfortable than my bed. My total spend was less than $500. While working on my software, I make money as a field engineer. I drive to my next client and just park nearby overnight. To the rest of the world, my minivan looks like any other parked vehicle. It's not an RV, so it's completely invisible. There are no signs I am there after I convert the interior into sleep mode. Since I have no commute, I don't waste fuel or time in rush hour traffic. You would never know I do this unless I told you. :) I met many others like me, usually by fixing their car.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Where do eat and bathe?
  - wiseleo 8y ago
    Gym membership to 24hour fitness. I have another $20/mo membership for Planet Fitness, for its massage chairs and in case I am in a state like Arizona without 24, but 24 is everywhere in California. 2 years for $650 at Costco. That's 2000+ options nationwide. Do a workout, go for a swim at 24 and chill in a massage chair at PF while my equipment recharges. :) Eat? Wherever. I have plenty of money.
newshorts 8y ago
my wife and i ran the numbers on living out of a van in Silicon Valley but found with a gym membership and the temptation to eat out all the time, we probably wouldn’t save as much as we thought. Van life is tempting though, the thought of saving an extra 24k per year sounds like the right path to eventual home ownership (obviously not anywhere near the valley).

>(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Looks like someone forgot to proofread.

onetimemanytime 8y ago
Prob warning the users :). Read it all the way but you're wasting your time.
mikepurvis 8y ago
Looks like it's a story that came in from a wire service, particularly since the writer and story are both from San Diego, but this is an LA publication. I guess that's the risk of just mindlessly hooking up your CMS to someone else's feed. (Yup, there are lots of other hits for this exact story published elsewhere; other publications seem to have done a better job filtering out these notes to the editor: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22to+leave+its+usual+spot+in+a+public+parking+lot+beside+the+sand+dunes+of+Ocean+Beach%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22to+leave+its+usual+spot+i...)
- ascorbic 8y ago
  This seems to be the original. It even has a picture! https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-living-and-parking-at-the-beach-20190317-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-m...
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    Another 451 anti-EU block. ^sigh^ Here's the wayback link for us poor Europeans: https://web.archive.org/web/20190322191045/https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-living-and-parking-at-the-beach-20190317-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322191045/https://www.sandi...
    - disgruntledphd2 8y ago
      I read about the status code this week, but this is the first time I've seen one in the wild.

> 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons > We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact webmaster@bakersfield.com or call (661) 395-7500. Another reason to support article 11, 13 or 17.

mcorning 8y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.baker...
ucaetano 8y ago
How could those possibly solve the problem? They won't remove the cost of complying with GDPR. [Edit: sorry, I didn't get the sarcasm :) ]
- akerro 8y ago
  It was sarcasm, all 3 articles once implemented on EU scale will make web even worse than GDPR made it.
  - blunte 8y ago
    Only when the politicians have a low enough average age that they actually use computers themselves (and find out how unusable the web is already) will they possible revise or eliminate the restrictions. One big problem with tech regulation right now, particular that which involves the internet, is that the old farts making the rules are barely skilled enough to send emails. Not only do they have no concept of how they're ruining things, but they don't have to suffer the consequences. Imagine if every time they changed the channel on their TV, they had to stop and drive a cursor to _somewhere_ on the screen to find the correct button to press to get past the popup and watch the channel they were hoping to watch.

jasoncartwright 8y ago

Here it is on the wayback machine for EU users getting a 451 error. https://web.archive.org/web/20190322180054/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322180054/https://www.baker...

isostatic 8y ago
So either 1) They are targetting EU users and serving to EU users and thus the block is pointless 2) They aren't targetting EU users and thus the block is pointless
- tzs 8y ago
  Or (1) they aren't sure if they would count as targeting EU users, because the rules are fuzzy and might be interpreted differently by each country's regulators, and (2) they don't have any need to target EU users since their content, and their monetization, is mostly of interest to non-EU users. In that situation, there are two cautious ways to proceed. One approach is to assume that you might be targeting EU users and so comply with GDPR. Even if you aren't doing anything with data that would make compliance hard, this is somewhat annoying because GDPR requires that you have a representative in the Union as a point of contact for users and regulators. The other approach is to make a good faith effort to block EU users. If you have little or no income directly or indirectly from EU users, the second approach has a lot to recommend it, especially until there is a good body of regulatory rulings on what GDPR actually means.

travbrack 8y ago

Really disappointed there aren't any pictures

IshKebab 8y ago
They aren't just going to give a million dollar view away for nothing!
- donkey-hotei 8y ago
  lol
rwmj 8y ago
The Daily Mail, not a reliable source in general, but today it does have an article on this topic with lots of pictures: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6839229/Thousands-California-families-living-RVs-exorbitant-rents-leave-facing-homelessness.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6839229/Thousands-C...

ryandrake 8y ago

> “If you allow people to sleep in their vehicles, you will eventually have open camping all along our view corridors“ Reminds me of the whole Vinod Khosla drama up in NorCal [1]. Seems like muscling in on access to a beautiful view / beach and trying to gatekeep it is a common pastime for more than one wealthy Californian. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-beach-access-khosla.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/technology/california-bea...

ip26 8y ago
It's terribly phrased, but shanty towns present a host of problems no matter where they are.

mikeryan 8y ago

Living in Berkeley/Oakland area I'm torn on this one we have a growing problem with tent encampments (in SF too) I don't know if this is anything but a cosmetic solution but its an interesting tact allowing people to overnight in vehicles.

ryandrake 8y ago
It seems unambiguously better, since the alternative to living in an RV would in most cases be... living in a tent.
jrowley 8y ago
Lots of people (~10-100 cars) park at the Berkeley marina daily - it's a popular spot for those living vehicles.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
sucks for your property value. No one with a $million home wants a camp near it, lets be honest. The govt can move the hot potatoes around until someone gets stuck with it. I wonder what this does for crime rates?
- seem_2211 8y ago
  Well maybe if the people with their million dollar homes let some more housing be built in the general area (shock & horror) there wouldn't be this problem. This is largely a self inflicted problem that California has caused for itself.
pugworthy 8y ago
Was just down in that area last week for vacation, and some areas just south of University Village (B) were amazingly packed with RVs. My daughter (who works near there) said that it's a mix of people sometimes - from the conscientious good (temporary) neighbors to the ones that leave a lot of trash and crap.

joe_the_user 8y ago

It seems like an organized approach to homelessness that allowed vehicle camping but put systematic restrictions on it could be fairly effective. There could even be something like a "white list" where people could apply for a camping permit and have it revoked for bad behavior. Of course, you could also allow camps on private property with provisions to meet basic health and conditions. Both these measures would undermine the scarcity of housing itself, which goes against the interests of both landlords and homeowners. So I doubt either will happen soon.

scythe 8y ago
People living in cars isn't so bad if they run on electricity. But having people heating their "homes" with a size-optimized ICE burning gasoline is terrible for air quality. Car engines aren't designed to be heaters. I had imagined at one point having parking garages constructed for this very purpose to be used as homeless shelters.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Obviously, if you were allowing camping in a regulated fashion, you would want to require motorhomes designed for the purpose of camping. These usually have propane furnaces. There would be quite a few considerations. I would pretty say that these hypothetically could be worked but in reality those who just didn't want this at all would object and the situation could never happen in modern reality.

HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago

> In December, Cheatham, her children and their father qualified for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Mountain View. > The couple isn’t completely reconciled, but they came together to provide a roof — one that’s not welded to a chassis — over their children’s heads. > “We’re working things out,” said Cheatham, 37. “The most important thing is to have a stable place for our kids.” It's amazing to me to see / hear of parents, who even after disagreeing badly enough to divorce, are able to come together to care for their children. It's hard for me to even fathom how much work and humility that would take. That they were willing to talk to each other at all is, in its own right, remarkable. I have been fortunate enough to have always lived in a secure home, and I've never needed to sleep in a car out of necessity- the only times I've gone camping are as a Boy Scout (okay, Scouts BSA member), when a warm shower was only a day or two away. As for the policies: Cars are, besides being a little awkward to sleep in, a lot more secure than a tent is (and more fireproof, to boot). With the understanding that all it takes is one mistake for a poor family to become an even poorer, homeless family, I feel like a lot of these "parking overnight, or being homeless = vagrance = illegal = fines" laws can be a little out of touch- they're generally written by college-educated politicians, many of whom have never had to do anything of the like, and who don't understand that a $50 fine when you can't even pay rent is really bad. Why does it seem to be that we, at least in America, punish the poor for being poor, instead of, or even at the same time that we try to help them up?

joe_the_user 8y ago
Why does it seem to be that we, at least in America, punish the poor for being poor, instead of, or even at the same time that we try to help them up? You could just say "authorities punish the poor for being poor while pretending to help them up". We have reached the point where courts demands that when police move homeless people on that these police offer them a place in shelters. So, you wind-up with a situation where phantom shelter-beds are created. The (mostly) fiction of attempting to help people has to be maintained while the primary intention to remove them as annoyance, knowing they'll reappear elsewhere. And yeah, allow tiny house camps on private land and you'll reduce the incredible pressure towards higher rents (or build public high rises like the old days or whatever). But then a whole lot of land value is threatened and so the concerned, naive homeowner becomes the threatened homeowner.

IronWolve 8y ago

Van Life is becoming super popular, not just for the homeless, but for a generation of people who want to live on a limited income and travel. Theres people building out buses/vans and living in california, working tech, banking their money to retire early. About 20 years ago, I was working at ATT and we had contractors living in their travel trailers parked in the work parking lot at our datacenters, so its not a new occurance. The big thing I found interesting was the lawsuit angle that it discrimination for disabled homeless, that living in a tent is legal, but living in an RV is illegal. RV's and Tents are spreading all around major cities, its getting quite bad up here in Seattle, tourists are mentioning it all the time, its visibile from the highways.

onetimemanytime 8y ago
Forget about the views for a second, even sq footage isn't lacking that much. Million dollar homes (that need to be demolished) with that sq footage cost probably millions in that area. So call it renting a small house with a $15 million view. Kinda. Oh, and you can move it.
ip26 8y ago
Van Life is becoming super popular I'm as intrigued as the next outdoors-loving fellow, but is it actually "super popular"? Do that many people, proportionately, take up van life? I suspect in the big picture it's still extremely niche, especially if you drill down to just people who are voluntary van dwellers.
- driverdan 8y ago
  It's very niche but has grown significantly, both for the willing and unwilling.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- creeble 8y ago
  Yes,mit's getting pretty popular. I read Nomadland by Jessica Bruder earlier this year. A significant number of baby-boomers have taken to the road, often because of a lack of retirement funds. Having gotten a travel trailer 18 mos ago and travelled a bit in CAlifornia, it's amazing what you see when your eyes are tuned to it a bit.

ascorbic 8y ago

Could the link be changed to the original article? https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-living-and-parking-at-the-beach-20190317-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-m...

djakjxnanjak 8y ago

Our public policy often chooses to subsidize free parking by making large chunks of land available for free use by automobiles. Modern technology allows permanent structures to be much more space-efficient for housing by building many stories high. However, the use of such technology is often banned and structures are limited to one or two stories. Also, even for one-story structures, rules often require eg. 6000 sqft of land to be used for a 1500 sqft house. These rules all result in significant surplus land wealth being required (or expensively rented) for people to obtain permanent housing. Is it any wonder that, faced with these constraints, people are choosing to live in one-story homes on free land? Government policy is practically begging for it.

lstodd 8y ago
And this "technology" is banned for the right reasons. It is demonstrably harmful to the enviroment, physical and mind health and the society in general. I'm all for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtSf69vjrVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtSf69vjrVM
- sankumsek 8y ago
  Do you have a source for that? Not disagreeing, but I'd be very interested in reading up on how a high-rise might negatively impact my health seeing as I live in one right now.
  - lstodd 8y ago
    Source? Hah. My life. I lived most of it in the high-rises, and not slums at all. "Respectable neighbourhoods". I'm not talking about slums. I pity the people who choose to live in those anthills. I hate people who advocate to force other people to live in those. I'm talking about overcrowding. Not enough private space, not enough public space, not enough transport. And it's a death trap if something goes just slightly wrong with the infrastructure. Have you witnessed shit fountains out of you r toilet? I did. Have you seen what a gas explosion does to those? A section or three just collapses, top to bottom, and everyone there is dead. What if water mains gets cut off because the electricity cut off and so there are no lifts? What if it's 15F outsite and the heaters die? This is no way to live.

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

Tried to visit the site from Europe: 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact webmaster@bakersfield.com or call (661) 395-7500.

RoadieRoller 8y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.baker...
- HenryBemis 8y ago
  I respect their (bakersfield.com) right to piss all over the regulation of 500 million people, and respectfully decide to ignore them and equally blacklist them. GDOR is the mitigating effor after years of abusing Safe Harbor both by state agents as well as from private companies. Instead of fixing their deal, they prefer to black list EU? Seriously? Go .... yourself, and I am returning the favor of black listing you 'dear' bakersfield.com. I know that this is not the first site to do this, but to give us this really shitty behaviour is just plain rude and arrogant.
  - wildrhythms 8y ago
    Can you blame them? EU traffic probably accounts for a tiny fraction of their overall traffic. Rather than pay their (probably minuscule) engineering team to fix it, bakersfield.com probably ran the numbers are realized it would cost much less to just not serve traffic to the EU. I'm sure this is hugely annoying and unexpected for EU visitors, but you gotta understand that you are not obligated to use their website, and the website is not obligated to serve its content to you.
    - 8y ago

ChuckMcM 8y ago

I talked with a guy living in a motorhome in Mountain View California, he works for Google. He could certainly afford an apartment but said his payments on the motorhome are about $600 a month, and an apartment close to Google would be $2500 a month at least, so he feels like its a free $2000 a month to save or spend. He's fortunate that Google also has nice showers, free food, and laundry. Things he might otherwise have to find other options for. I can't argue with the logic. It means $24,000 a year to apply toward student loans or what have you isn't a bad deal. And he will eventually pay off the motorhome giving him some security there. Sadly, most people won't talk about their situation (I tried by walking down a road and knocking on doors) I was hoping to get a sense of how many people were living in motorhomes because they wanted to (like the guy I talked to) and how many were there because they felt they had no choice. I don't have any good ideas on how to get that information. I did enough research to know that building a small lifestyle business out of offering black/grey water pumping and garbage collection services for the folks who were doing this by choice was probably viable. You would need a couple of custom trucks[1] that were capable of being mobile RV dumping stations and a business with sewer rights to dump (the City of Sunnyvale will license a business to have an RV dumping station on site, so starting there would work.) I think it would be a "pump and dump" scheme that would be both good for the neighborhood and probably make enough money to employ a few folks. [1] To be full service you'd probably want a fresh water tank, a propane tank, and a sewage collection tank. Then you could dump the grey/black tanks, refill fresh water and refill propane. Personally I think it makes way more sense than these companies that were sending trucks out to refill your gas tank.

TomK32 8y ago
> "pump and dump" scheme you win.
rhacker 8y ago
Actually a better business is to start having more RV parks in the SV. The last 5 years has been record breaking sales history for RVs. Yet the rest of the industry (RV parks specifically) isn't catching up. Most of the people buying RVs are now surprised that no RV parks have availability. I've watched for the past 5 years bay area periphery cities go from having tons of space any time of the year, to being completely full all the time, no matter what they do to their monthly price. It's kinda crazy.

veryworried 8y ago

I don't need to live in a van, but I have thought about building out a van that I could drive around the country to different cities and then leave there and fly home. This way, if I ever wanted to fly out to that city on a whim I'd already have a place to stay. Might even be useful to have two such vehicles on opposite ends of the country. I'd probably keep some cameras hooked up so I could drop in and see what's going on around the van remotely, and maybe a server I could ssh into and run some commands for the vehicle. Only question is finding suitable places to park it that don't require a long commitment.

newnewpdro 8y ago
I think anywhere you could park a vehicle unattended for extended periods without fees/fines you could probably afford to buy a small plot of undeveloped land in cash instead. Then just build some small utility structures on your properties, they'll be more comfortable than a vehicle (and you could park vehicles on them if desired, without concerns for tickets). It's a far better investment IMHO, and as the years go by you may find yourself slowly adding infrastructure and before you know it you have multiple small off-grid homes. Also keep in mind a small shed requires a lot less maintenance than an automobile to serve its purpose. Leaving automobiles unused for months or years tends to break them. A shed needs a coat of paint or shingles replaced occasionally (corrugated metal roofs last > 50 years).
InitialLastName 8y ago
I know a guy (who has plenty of spare money) who lives in NJ but keeps cars in various garages around Manhattan, so that wherever he happens to be (he spends lots of time out late in the city) he can hop to his nearest car.

momentmaker 8y ago

There is whole subculture for this: #vanlife It's rather interesting. I had considered this lifestyle too. Freedom to roam. Digital nomad. https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/

homerhomer 8y ago

I'm against live-in vehicles and this life-style choice. On paper it sounds fine but in reality horrible for many reasons. For the most part, people in this situation are in a challenging state and the least of their worries is the environment around them. Is a mother of 2 living in a small RV who relies on donations going to pay for disposal service? I live in Portland, a city that used to known for being a clean city. In the last 8 years we have had a large increase of car live-in residents and homeless population. I would not call Portland a clean city anymore. In-fact it's far from it. Homeless make up about 3% of the population, but according to a recent article they make up half of the arrests. Personally I've had car camping people outside of my house and we've been afraid of retaliation for call them in and try not to make contact. I understand that these people have nowhere to go, but cities should create a homeless car shelter of sorts or some other solution other than just hoping for the best of people living on the edge. 2011 article on how clean Portland is(was) - http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/308068 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/308068 RV issue in Portland -https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-neighbors-fed-up-with-abandoned-rvs/431476525 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-neighbors-fe... Homeless issue -https://katu.com/news/local/neighbors-say-theyre-getting-nowhere-with-city-on-homeless-camp-cleanup https://katu.com/news/local/neighbors-say-theyre-getting-now... Half of the Police arrests are Homeless - https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/07/portland_mayor_ted_wheeler.html https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/07/portland_mayor_t...

save_ferris 8y ago
This comes off as super NIMBYish. The rise of this lifestyle is a direct result of rising inequality in our society. Yeah, that mother of 2 living in a vehicle probably has way bigger problems than paying for disposal service. But people utilizing services they can't pay for is what concerns you, not the fact that so many people are in such dire financial straits that living in a car makes economic sense.
- throwawaysea 8y ago
  Use of the word "NIMBY", which is clearly a pejorative, is not an argument. I don't see why that diminishes the parent comment at all. The rise of this lifestyle is a direct result of people feeling entitled. Take the musician in the article ("Lily"). She's trying to make a career in indie rock, playing local gigs. That can't be your full-time job unless you are exceptionally talented, to a degree where others value your creation/contributions enough to pay you a lot for it. This takes more than just musical talent - it requires experience, marketing, networking, business, and other skills. And it is of course, a highly-competitive line of work - after all, who wouldn't want their work to also be their passion. Lily lived in Nashville before, which is a lot more affordable than California cities like San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. San Diego is a full 55% pricier than Nashville (https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-calculator.aspx https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-...). So in effect, Lily made a conscious choice to move to a pricier area without having a plan for how to live there. A responsible way of making that move would be to work for a few years in Nashville, build up savings, identify jobs in your destination that pay enough, and then make the move. What gives Lily the right to expect she'd be accommodated in whatever city she moves to? If her work is not producing enough earning to pay for housing locally, it is because her work is not valued by society to a great enough extent to live in a very desirable (and thus expensive) area. I don't think the local community is obligated to provide lower-cost housing (either through subsidy or greater supply) to enable her choices, which squarely fall under the realm of "personal responsibility".

newnewpdro 8y ago

It's great that this law has been struck down as unconstitutional. I've slept in my car numerous times along the PCH in the past, and in SoCal it's particularly irritating how much CHP harrasses folks just trying to get some shut-eye on a road trip. I've had CHP wake me at 3AM then force me to drive half asleep down a winding cliff-top road I had pulled over specifically to avoid driving sleepily down. But I fully expect there to be new laws introduced to prevent these streets from becoming trailer parks. The judge already criticized the vagueness, they'll just get more specific targeting persistent occupancies. The concern for sanitation is very legitimate. Especially for folks in cars and vans, there's no holding tank infrastructure in these vehicles. A person spending a day somewhere in a car with no public restrooms nearby is either urinating in a bottle or on the ground. And if in a bottle, the bottle is very likely getting emptied on the ground nearby. Even people in RVs and campers have fairly limited holding capacity. It doesn't take much laziness to exhaust the capacity and regress into the same pattern of a car/van-dweller. Not to mention those systems are failure-prone and often neglected because who wants to do maintenance on a sewage system?

breatheoften 8y ago

I rented one of those expensive Ocean Beach ocean-view houses right by the parking lot they are talking about for a few months once. I've also lived out of a van in San Diego for some range of years (I used to do Oceanographic research and traveled 3-5 months a year). I quite literally have lived both sides of this story -- although I never once stayed in the parking lot in question in my van. I honestly can't imagine why anyone would want to stay in a van in that parking lot -- it is much too exposed and intrusive both in terms of the outside world coming in and in your inside world going out. It would also be very annoying to comply with the parking requirements ... I think regulation to provide a path to legality for people to van dwell should happen but it should also take into account the needs of the communities and home-dwellers in an area. I never parked overnight in residential areas -- it seems to me a strange van parked overnight in a neighborhood could easily impact somebody who lived nearby, especially if they saw someone climbing in or out. Making someone nervous when they go for a walk in their own neighborhood is more than high enough cost to be worth avoiding. The reality though is that there is a _lot_ of space in a most American cities that _nobody uses at night_ -- and its often not far from desirable places to be. Opening up small pockets of space sufficiently close to desirable locations for legal and safe use by van dwellers, in conjunction with other regulatory approaches (special vehicle registration, possibly even innovation via things like ODBC-gps appliances to allow local municipalities to collect van-dwelling taxes) could really curtail the negative effects residents experience while also enabling people the freedom to pursue the lifestyles they are already pursuing ... Its possible to do all of (1) limit impact of van dwellers on communities (2) make van dwelling safer and more convenient (3) keep costs of van-dwelling lower than traditional housing and viable for people on a range of incomes

pjeide 8y ago
OBD-II :)
- breatheoften 8y ago
  That's the one! I really hope that ODBC is not introduced as a required part of vehicle safety regulations!

jedberg 8y ago

Even back in 1999, rents were already high in the are compared to the rest of country. When I got my first job, rents for a 1br place were about $1,000/mo near Emeryville, where my job was. But it turns out boat payments were only about $525/mo. I did serious research and almost bought a boat, until I found out you aren't allowed to sleep on your boat in the dock without a special permit, and the waitlist for that permit was 10 years. I supposed I could have floated out in the Bay every night, but I suspect that would have made my costs go up significantly from the extra maintenance and fuel. But the point is, California seems to be very against alternate forms of housing, and this isn't a new thing.

jordache 8y ago

until you have to take a dump...

envoked 8y ago

I had a stint of about six months when I lived in a camper and worked full-time as an engineer. I was amazed at the kinds of places I could get away with staying for free (coast in oregon, ski resorts, national forests). I would drive around public lands looking for LTE on verizon/AT&T and then post up for days. It wasn't without its precarity. Sometimes I'd get woken up by sheriffs at 2AM, have mechanical issues, and generally struggled to conform and relate to friends and coworkers. Also, sleeping in SF was terrible. Buses waking you up at 2am, and after meeting others living living in their vans on Division due to hardship, I couldn't help but feel guilty and privileged in my solar paneled, cassette toiled equipped, expedition vehicle. People would joke that I was gentrifying the streets. Eventually I sold it and moved on. Worthwhile experience though.

throwawaysea 8y ago

This whole camping trend, whether on beaches or in parks or on other public property, makes no sense to me. Society is built on the expectation of protected property (reserved for certain uses), enforcement of laws (such as litter laws), and earning of privileges (rather than feeling entitled to live wherever one wants). I don't think it is fair that law-abiding residents who pay taxes and have worked to earn those pricey homes can have their public amenities, which are meant for day-use, instead crowded-up by transient residents. It just defies common sense. In Seattle, we see the effects of similar permissive laws all around us. Property crime has gone up significantly alongside our recent lax enforcement of littering laws and due to the allowance of "urban camping". We have induced a large homeless population from elsewhere due to our permissiveness - even from cities immediately next door (https://q13fox.com/2019/02/26/did-federal-way-bus-its-homeless-to-seattle/ https://q13fox.com/2019/02/26/did-federal-way-bus-its-homele...). The rise of RVs taking up parking spaces is another problem - it is essentially freeloading off of spaces meant for use by residents of that neighborhood and for temporary day-use. And of course, these RVs are a blight - they are often in shoddy condition, they make the neighborhood look less safe, and they leave trash all around them (or worse, sewage runoff). Many have needles around them and are clearly used to deal drugs. With burglaries happening often, I can't tell you how anxiety-inducing it can be to have someone pitch a tent on the sidewalk in front of your home, camping there all day everyday, watching all residents' movements, etc. This city used to be beautiful and it is trended towards a trashy Mad Max like situation. I don't agree with arguments that this is due to cost of housing or supply issues. This is due to people feeling entitled. If one can't afford to live in some area, then they should consider finding a different area to live in, or a different line of work that enables them to live in that area. No one is entitled to live wherever they want, doing whatever job they want (e.g. the musician quoted in the article), at whatever wages they are able to earn in that job. That's simply not tenable. There are plenty of affordable places in America where people can make a living and thrive. And yes, it may require that you look outside of the most-desirable locations, or that you do work that isn't your "passion", but that type of compromise is simply a part of life.

kelp 8y ago
I have a lot of sympathy for your argument that this problem is making it worse for everyone. I live in SOMA in San Francisco and regularly encounter many of the issues you describe. It makes the quality of living worse for the whole neighborhood, and I do think it is in part caused by very lax rules about what is acceptable in public spaces. That said, I think you under-estimate how hard it is for someone to move once they are experiencing homelessness. I doubt the majority of people in this situation are doing to to pursue a music career... This isn't about entitlement. If your only option is to live in a van, your day to day existence is going to be very stress-full trying to scratch out enough income for your basic needs, and parking tickets, impound, etc could put you into an even worse spot that you can't recover from. The idea that you should just up and move to a cheaper place to live sounds reasonable on the surface. But imagine all you have is that Van, you don't have enough money for any major repairs, let alone hundreds of dollars in gas to get to some cheaper place. You don't have a network there, and you don't know your way around, so what are your job prospects? The reality is that when you're living this close to the edge, you're only thinking day to day, because you're always one problem away from ending up in an even worse situation. Packing up and going some place cheaper is far from a viable option. Finally, most people who are now homeless in an area were previously housed in that area, so they probably know people there. They may also have some kind of public benefit, and have some clue about how to navigate that system. Packing up and leaving, especially to another state, starts them back at zero.

ReinholdNiebuhr 8y ago

Just an idea that popped up. One could probably develop a couchsurfing/airbnd style app so to speak where people with rvs/motorhomes could find rental spots to go hook up for the night. That probably wouldn't do much for people short on money, but it could be helpful for people traveling around the country and finding that RV parks have no vacancy. Just a thought.

envoked 8y ago
Not a super hip site but boondockerswelcome.com has been around for a while. It seems mostly targeted toward the boomer/florida snowbird crowd.
- ReinholdNiebuhr 8y ago
  Neat. Thanks for sharing. If you look at airbnd, vrbo was around before just wasnt marketed the same way. So there probably is room for an additional competitor etc. Especially if done right.

driverdan 8y ago

I've been living in a shuttle bus I converted for almost two years. I'm fortunate enough for it to be a choice, many aren't as fortunate. I'm better equipped than an RV, hot and cold water, toilet, shower, 1600W of solar, AC, standing desk workstation. I'm very respectful of others. I never park overnight in front of a house and don't like parking in one street spot for more than 12h. I often pick up trash in the area I park. For those who complain about us, keep in mind there is a minority of assholes in every population. Don't judge everyone by the assholes. Feel free to ask me anything.

hawkesnest 8y ago
It seems like most van conversions are optimized to be inconspicuous. It's no schoolie, but a shuttle bus is certainly more eye-catching than an Econoline. Do you have issues blending in or getting additional (unwanted) attention?
- driverdan 8y ago
  My bus is very obvious. In general it hasn't been a problem. I had someone complain once when I was parked somewhere I shouldn't have been but didn't know.

mirimir 8y ago

For EU users: https://web.archive.org/web/20190322233025/https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/national/living-on-pennies-with-a-million-dollar-view-how-car/article_edf4971c-045a-5265-b772-b857df180d4b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190322233025/https://www.baker...

wil421 8y ago

Why are some of these people staying in California? These people have cars and jobs. Why would they stay in a place they can’t afford to live? There are plenty of places in the US that have lower costs of living or better services for the impoverished and disabled. Not to mention the mother was going to college for acting while her 3 kids were living in a cockroach and bugbed infested car. Talk about priorities, there are plenty of majors people can take that actually have the prospect of a positive income.

lesdeuxmagots 8y ago

I lived in a van I converted for about 18 months, purely by choice. I had been living in luxury high rises in SF for many years before , excepting the 6 months I spent living in a house in South Bay while converting the van, and afterwards in on campus housing when I went back to graduate school afterwards. My van was nicer than may of the places one could rent around the bay area. Oak floors, oak countertops, modern high end sink and faucet, designer light switches, high gloss push open cabinets (with electromagnetic locks when in motion). I did it because I wanted to build something and I had the time to do it nights and weekends while working. There's nothing like learning multiple disciplines from woodworking to electrical, from insulation to plumbing, and applying it all to create something physical and comprehensive. I parked mostly in my company parking lot during the weekdays. On the weekends, I parked in the Mission, where many others in vans did as well. In SF, it was clear that I was abusing a public good, but couldn't easily find a way around it. I would have happily paid for a monthly parking spot if there was one around the area, but there was no monthly surface parking available in the area. I don't think van life is an answer to the untenable housing situation in california. It's a niche lifestyle, unsuitable and undesirable for most. However, I do think we need to get over this obsession with space. Space efficiency is something so entirely foreign to most Americans. Having excess space is culturally desired and fetishized. This is a cultural phenomenon, not necessarily good or bad. In a less densely populated region, having extra space is not a luxury. However, when space is so sparse, I do think we could, as a culture, benefit from a shift towards loving space efficiency more.

_ZeD_ 8y ago

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wiseleo 8y ago

It's amazing how little I truly need. I haven't paid rent since 2015 by choice. I can afford it, but see no reason to. I went to a camping store and bought the most comfortable air sleeping pad and other gear. My 4" thick sleeping pad is more comfortable than my bed. My total spend was less than $500. While working on my software, I make money as a field engineer. I drive to my next client and just park nearby overnight. To the rest of the world, my minivan looks like any other parked vehicle. It's not an RV, so it's completely invisible. There are no signs I am there after I convert the interior into sleep mode. Since I have no commute, I don't waste fuel or time in rush hour traffic. You would never know I do this unless I told you. :) I met many others like me, usually by fixing their car.

saagarjha 8y ago
Where do eat and bathe?
- wiseleo 8y ago
  Gym membership to 24hour fitness. I have another $20/mo membership for Planet Fitness, for its massage chairs and in case I am in a state like Arizona without 24, but 24 is everywhere in California. 2 years for $650 at Costco. That's 2000+ options nationwide. Do a workout, go for a swim at 24 and chill in a massage chair at PF while my equipment recharges. :) Eat? Wherever. I have plenty of money.

newshorts 8y ago

my wife and i ran the numbers on living out of a van in Silicon Valley but found with a gym membership and the temptation to eat out all the time, we probably wouldn’t save as much as we thought. Van life is tempting though, the thought of saving an extra 24k per year sounds like the right path to eventual home ownership (obviously not anywhere near the valley).