From The Archives: The Many Faces of #VanLife
Some people sleep in a van for freedom. Others have no choice.
Welcome to another edition of Willoughby Hills!
This newsletter explores topics like history, culture, work, urbanism, transportation, travel, agriculture, self-sufficiency, and more.
I am still busy with our move, but we also decided to take a little break this weekend and take our RV out for the first time this season. I am writing to you from a Cracker Barrel parking lot in New Jersey, which allows free overnight parking for RVs.
Since this newsletter has grown pretty significantly over the last few years, many of you may not have read some of my older work. Today, I wanted to share a piece that was originally published on July 31, 2022 about the glamour and the truth of “Van Life.”
The Many Faces of #VanLife
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any length of time, you know that I purchased a used RV last summer and have made extensive use of it. As of this writing, we have camped in 13 states. At times, we are fortunate to stay in picturesque campgrounds or on small farms. We have also occasionally bunked up in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. It’s not the most glamorous, but it’s a relatively safe and quiet place to rest for the night and be on our way.
We use our RV as a vacation home, but I’ve been thinking about how RVs and other vehicles can serve as temporary housing or even a permanent place to live. #Vanlife is a popular hashtag on social media. The people tagging their posts with it have usually opted into this lifestyle, hoping for adventures and to see the world. Their photos are glossy, the landscapes breathtaking, and the inside of their vehicles well decorated.
Of course, there is another side to #vanlife that doesn’t get shared as much on social media- the people that are living this way out of necessity or desperation.
This has been on my mind for a while, so when this tweet went viral recently, it immediately sparked my curiosity:
It links to an incredible story by Gillian Graham of the Portland Press Herald describing a family living in a conversion van at a rest area in Maine because they are unable to find affordable housing.
Roger Cannell, 72, and his wife Jeanie, 63 used to live in a second floor apartment until Roger got injured moving a washing machine a few years ago. His pain was so severe that he was no longer able to work as a dump truck driver and had trouble even accessing their home.
His daughter Margaret Belanger, 50, moved in to help care for her dad. The three of them relocated to a first floor apartment that was more accessible, but their new complex housed drug dealers and was not a safe situation.
According to Graham’s reporting, they moved into a vacation rental home during the winter off-season when rates were low and began to search for a more permanent solution. After months of looking, they couldn’t find an apartment to meet their budget. When their vacation rental rates went up in the spring, the family had nowhere to go and bought a used conversion van that had a mattress in the back, parking it at a campground for a time.
After the campground rates went up during the summer tourist season, they were forced to sleep in their van at a travel plaza, where they have been living for three months. They continue to look for permanent housing.
Roger suffers from bladder cancer and receives chemotherapy weekly. Both Jeanie and Margaret have jobs at the local Cabela’s. They have the money to put into an apartment, there just have not been any vacancies that are within their budget.
What struck me in reading this story was just how normal their lives continued to be, even as their circumstances seemed dire. Because their van has no kitchen, they are forced to eat in restaurants for every meal. They could be the family eating at the table next to you and you would never know their story.
It’s also a good reminder how many Americans are one accident or medical condition away from living in a desperate situation.
There was at least one other person mentioned in the article that was also living at the highway rest area in a car, but I wonder how many more families are in this situation, sleeping in parking lots at rest areas or big box stores.
I recently watched a documentary (originally released in 2012) looking at the problem of homelessness in America. The full film is on YouTube:
America’s Broken Dream from the European distributor Java Films, starts by looking at the people living full-time in motels around Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. Many of these motels were originally built to serve tourists, but have become semi-permanent homes for families, including people that work in the theme parks. In a similar vein, The Florida Project was a fictional film that explored this topic a few years ago, but this documentary shows that the movie wasn’t far off.
Housing construction has soared in Orlando in recent years, but housing demand has outpaced inventory. Affordability is a concern, as many jobs are in the service industry. Disney and Universal are building affordable housing for workers and some old hotels have been fully converted into affordable apartments.
America’s Broken Dream also profiles Amber, a 21 year old mother of two living in her SUV in San Diego, CA. There is nothing about her Dodge Durango that is set up for full time living, yet it’s where she sleeps with her one year old and three year old every night.
Sometimes, Amber is able to stay in a church parking lot, which has been set up as a de-facto homeless shelter. People are able to park their cars in the lot and sleep. There are restrooms, and at one time, there were health and social services as well.
It’s sad that here in America we don’t have enough housing for people that need it, but ironically we have more than enough places for them to park.
At the other end of the spectrum are the people that opt into living in a vehicle as a preference, but are otherwise still parking in a parking lot to sleep most nights.
In this video from Tiny House Giant Journey on YouTube, Jason shows how he converted an old box truck that probably belonged to a contractor or delivery company in a past life into a beautiful tiny home. He attends graduate school in Colorado and built this truck as an apartment so he could live in the city without paying rent.
He parks it in pubic parking lots most nights, going so far as to leave a neon work vest on his dashboard to convince any passersby that this is a contractor’s work truck and not a home (he also has no visible windows on the sides, furthering the illusion).
Jason has had no issue parking in the city undetected, at least at the time of the release of the video. Ever since I watched his story, I’ve been thinking about his unassuming truck and why it doesn’t draw attention.
Imagine Amber and her kids, in their Dodge Durango trying to park in a public place and spend the night. They may be overlooked in some parts of California, but in most other places, they would draw immediate scrutiny.
Yet Jason, and the many other people that are living in converted campers on urban streets, draw no attention and are admired on social media for their lifestyle. On the surface, Jason’s story seems to be about freedom and choice, but he’s living in a truck because the rents are too high in Colorado.
Homelessness often gets framed as a failure of the individual- it’s the result of addiction, mental illness, or poor financial management. Perhaps it’s time to realize that homelessness no longer looks like a single man with a scraggly beard pushing a shopping cart- it’s the family seated next to you at a restaurant, the man scanning your tickets at the Magic Kingdom, or the college student that can’t balance the cost of tuition and the cost of housing.
When people are sleeping in motorhomes, minivans, and converted trucks at the side of the road, it’s a policy failure. When motels that can no longer trade in tourism become defacto apartment complexes for people with nowhere else to go, it’s a policy failure. When “starter homes” cost upwards of $500,000 and the neighborhoods most accessible to jobs and public transit are out of reach of families, it’s a policy failure.
Let’s hope that the more stories like these are told, the harder it will be to deny the problem and we can start working towards a solution.
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Related Reading
If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.
appreciated this (still) timely piece. It's been on my mind so much lately that we have money & will to co commit a gen0cide, but we don't seem to believe all Americans deserve to be housed, covered by healthcare, and paid a living wage.
I recently read (then watched) Nomadland for the first time. It doesn’t critique the glamorized view, but does tackle the social causes and many faces of #vanlife. Thanks for this piece.