"Stealth" type van living

In My Humble Opinion
21

If this was 10 years ago when Walmart let you set up in their parking lots - ok.

If this was 10 years ago when people first started making videos of stealth vans before they became commonplace- ok.

But now Walmart and other places dont allow this and they became so common they are now easy for police and security to spot so I dont think there are as many places to “hide” so to speak. You would have to stay in just commercial or public camping areas (which isnt a bad idea). But then no need for stealth anymore and you can just have a normal commercial small RV.

22

I expect it’s a lot harder to live in a van stealthily in most places than people are suggesting.

You really want to have solar panels on the top of your van so you aren’t constantly having to plug in somewhere or running the motor. But electrician’s vans don’t have solar panels, so that will immediately out you.

It’s reasonably hard to seal a van against light and noise. It’s not impossible by any means, but unless you have tightly sealing blackout curtains, people will notice that the van that’s parked in their neighborhood obviously has someone inside of it. You pretty much want to drive it somewhere that you’re planning to sleep then go to sleep. And some fraction of the time someone is going to notice the van that pulled up, parked, and had no one get out, so expect to get woken up by the cops telling you to move along every once in a while.

Living in a van is vastly cheaper than living in an apartment, especially if you want to live in a temperate beachside locale where rents are very high.

I can imagine being young and single and childless and choosing this life. Join a gym so you have some place to shower. Spend your time away from the van and enjoying various interests. Come back to sleep. “Livable” really can just mean a mattress to sleep on and some place to keep your stuff. A years rent will pay for the van and then it’s all profit.

23

The only person I know who did this was working for and parking at . . . a very large tech firm in Mountain View. He had access to bathrooms inside.

24

I’m interviewing for a position in Santa Clara. This has occurred to me as an option as the average price of rent is $2900. I would likely choose a 2-3 bedroom apartment with roommates, making the rate I personally have to pay only ~$1500, so I probably won’t be actually doing this. (mostly because I like being able to sleep in a place I feel is safe and I have a pet cat)

Still, it’s worth a thought. I buy some van somewhere, spend $10k outfitting it. Assuming I was avoiding the average price of rent, that means I break even on the outfitting cost in 3 months.

The van itself doesn’t gain much mileage so when I sell it somewhere, if the improvements don’t raise the price it goes for, I sell it for about what I paid for it.

There are obviously no utility costs living in a van powered by solar panels. I would have a monthly gym membership - about $30-$50 a month - so I can work out and shower every day.

Note you can hide the solar panels by using a van/box truck with a high roof, and then using the flexible kind that are flush with the roof. Passerbys of normal human height (under 7 feet tall) are not going to be able to see the panels.

Now, yes, people will still know what you are doing, but if it isn’t obvious, and you park somewhere you have tacit permission, you might not be bothered.

Santa Clara is kind of a sausage fest anyways, so I wouldn’t be deferring much dating life.

So in 2 years, I have $60,000 more than if I didn’t do this. More, even, since I also save on utilities and gain interest on the money.

It honestly depends. At some of these California employers, you can eat and even play video games or watch movies in the office after hours. Or post to straightdope. Some of them have showers and on-site laundry. So every waking hour, you’d either be working or messing around on a computer in the office anyways.

You just go back to your van once you’re tired and beat off and go to sleep. Same as you’d be doing if you had an apartment, just cheaper. (there’s a serious shortage of women in Silicon Valley, from what I have read, so this is going to be true for most people. Gender ratios are 1.5:1, aka sausage party)

25

So the only amenities your van actually needs is some power to keep your laptop charged and a few lights, somewhere to piss, somewhere to sleep, maybe you use some of the power for an electric blanket when it’s cold, and you store 1-2 weeks of clothes.

Every couple weeks you bring your laundry to a laundromat.

A more extreme version of this is I just live in my Prius. Prius has the advantage of heating and A/C without using more than a trickle of gas, and since it doesn’t look like a van, it’s even more “stealth”. With tinted windows and those inner window curtains it’s possible to make it where it’s very difficult to see inside the car from the outside. Then I just need a few bottles to piss in, some tubs to store 1-2 weeks of clothes, and place to sleep. Also the Prius would be more efficient when you need to drive it to the gym or laundromat (if the employer doesn’t have showers)

In the super unlikely event that you get a romantic engagement, you rent a place to hook up at through airbnb. So you only pay for an actual bedroom when you actually have a use for it.

26

Going back a number of years now - a person I ‘know’ from a different board I also hang out upon was so stressed trying to make enough money working full time at his job that he bought a retired extra long white cargo van and fitted it out inside for living. He has some sort of battery arrangement to provide lighting, keep his cell and laptop charged, has a gym membership for showering and working out, does his laundry in laundromats and is perfectly happy making more than enough for that lifestyle. He disliked working a full time job and not being able to live alone, and apparently had several bad roommate situations. He parks overnight in business areas so he is just another of many generic white business vehicles parked for the night.

27

I know quite a few people who’ve lived in these, mainly fairly short term. In an area that tolerates it it is a viable option.

In the street I use to live on in Bristol (UK), it was pretty common to have people living in this sort of van, often for 6 months+ at a time. Some were pretty nice, neighbours tended to just leave them be, some were arseholes who came back drunk all the time, littered and made excessive noise, so got reported. They just got moved on and found somewhere else, for the most part, so long as the van was street legal.

Friends who did it mostly had arranged to stay close to friends’ houses or flats; I think some chipped in for bills so they could use the kitchen and bathroom, and maybe watch TV with their buddies in the evening. Basically using the van just as a kind of extra street bedroom most of the time, though they often had minimal kitchen facilities and suchlike in there as well for trips and festivals. There was a guy clearly doing this in a converted… well… I’m English so I’m gonna call it a lorry, for the whole 5 years I lived in that house in Bristol (though looking at Google streetview, it looks like he went shortly after I did). It was insured, street legal, but never moved. You could see the TV on in there at night sometimes, and the guy was running a cable from an upstairs window in the house it was parked outside. More room than a van, admittedly.

My Dad actually kitted a stealth camper out as a retirement project; he doesn’t live in it, but my parents do go for extended trips in it (they’re driving round, I think, Scotland in it right now). It’s got a bed that folds up into a sofa, a shower, toilet in its own little closet, kitchen with sink, fridge (which was tripping out if you turned the lights on as well last I heard, but he’s working on it). It does have solar panels, but they only work as supplementary power, you can’t run more than the lights just on them, at least not over here.

I borrowed it for 10 days this summer for a festival, fine if you’re planning on spending a fair bit of the day outside, especially for one person. It wouldn’t be ideal, but I’d rather live in something like that than in an apartment with some of the housemates I’ve had, if I could get a good spot to keep it.

28

At the GM plant you have some guys who lived more than 50 miles away so they had a camper in the parking lot and only went home on weekends.

29

Couldnt your employer allow you to park/leave/campout with one of these in their parking lot? If anything they would know your not going to be late for work because of traffic issues.

30

I personally know a handful of tooling integrators who do this on new model launches. Their companies pay them IRS per diem rates, which they pocket while living inexpensively in their RV’s.

31

“Attractive women<anything>” is a gene. Surprised there is no “attractive women executioners”, genre.:wink:

32

Executioners wear hoods and black robes :wink:

33

Which is a shame, because at night, pretty much anyplace in America outside of urban centers has this huge surplus of empty parking spaces in outdoor lots.

34

Just graduated college, had my Dodge orange van. Tooled around the Western half of the country for 6 weeks never paying for a place to stay.

I’d bathe as best I could in rivers, or where I could find water, slept near river accesses, wildlife areas, ‘hidden’ pullouts on country roads.
If I couldn’t find a place I’d sleep for a few hours in a rest area, or I’d find a park in a city neighborhood and spend the evening and night there…moving on the next morning to not arouse too much suspicion.

I liked Long View Washington so much and hung out with some people that I decided to stay a second night. That night the cops came to check me out, then after talking, led me to a nearby baseball park that had better facilities and (I’m sure) made the locals more comfortable.

One of the best experiences of my life, I think of that trip every month or so…second time I’ve thought of it in 3 days…Highly recommend.

35

These van conversions are pretty popular on Reddit, on r/DIY. I feel like I read one once a week or so. This is the one I read this week, an extremely nice converted ambulance. He mentions in comments somewhere that he used to live (or hang out) in a converted bus, but he liked the ambulance better because it was much easier to drive. He also said he’s already eyeing another ambulance to convert and will sell this one.

I get the impression that the people who do these aren’t trying to live in these things permanently. They’re like **Signe **and are off on a long trip, or use it for excursions on the weekends. For the most part they have access to quite a good stable of power tools.

36

Some long distance hikers live in a similar manner for years. I have met several AT thru hikers and Camino de Santiago pilgrims who have been pretty much on trail since they did their thru hike. Some will get a place for the winter, others will find other ways of weathering it. They are pretty much self sufficient on trail while their supplies last, but will come into town for resupply and also shower/laundry. They will usually at times ‘stealth camp’ in or near towns. As for mooching, I guess one can say that, though with the AT most of the times that is freely given to thru hikers out of kindness and perhaps in exchange for one’s story, but this may go beyond the line as they are not so much thru hiking anymore but living on trail. The thru hikes are seen by many as a doorway to a better life, or a pilgrimage, and one is not suppose to get stuck on it.

37

Decades ago I saw a cartoon with this very theme. It was a beautifully rendered pic of a class-A parked in the dark on a lake shore with a full moon making a path in the water and silhouetted pine trees. The caption was And he-e-ere’s Johnny!

38

I saw that in my job. In the NY prison system, new employees started out working at prisons in downstate New York. They’d typically be down there for a year or two before they had enough seniority to transfer back to their upstate hometown.

Some guys brought RV’s down and parked them in the prison parking lot. A group of them would live in the RV during the week and then drive their cars home on their days off. The RV would stay in the parking lot.

39

I could envision living like that being fun for a while, but using Chicago winters as my guide, I could also see it being very cold. Like, cold enough to kill you cold.

40

I dont know how they would keep an RV winterized though. Pipes can freeze and break. I guess you do normal winterization and just not use the plumbing in the winter?