I have been hearing that they are less tolerant of it these days, because homeless people started using RVs to live there.
Where would the homeless get a running RV? Or are these “homeless” in the nomadic sense?
Got a link?
It (RV based homelessness) is becoming pretty common on the West Coast. Here’s a news segment about it. You can find a lot of youtube videos about homeless RV-ers.
If you’re interested, Without Bound is about/by a sort of homeless RV guru. He produces quite a few videos with tips about living nearly free in an RV.
There’s a really interesting book called Nomadland about the large numbers of people surviving (sometimes just barely) in their RVs while wandering through a series of gig jobs. Amazon even has a name for them: Workampers. They occasionally provide RV space for their seasonal workforce. Ditto (apparently) for the companies involved in the annual sugar beet harvest. I was surprised by this as well.
Anyway, not trying to lecture about it, but it’s apparently a very large, somewhat underground population that are managing within the gig economy. A surprising number are seniors as well.
I think our WalMart had a sign on their perimeter fence that said “no overnight camping” or something to that effect. They don’t seem to enforce it, I see campers there all the time. I’m guessing as long as the campers are quiet and don’t cause problems they let them stay. It seems like it’s mostly older people. I’ve never seen families with kids parked there.
In an insanely expensive real estate market like the SF Bay Area, there are plenty of employed people who can’t really afford to buy a house but could afford a (perhaps used) RV or motor home, particularly if they’re not paying for the real estate it’s on.
There’s an online list of Walmarts that do allow RVs Walmart Locations Store Details & Parking | Walmart Store Locator
My younger brother has been homeless for 15 years +/- several. My mom supports him. He has PTSD and other issues. He gets junkers and lives in them. If he’s lucky he can stay in the same spot for a while. He shower at the university sports facility, gets food from homeless centers.
I can see where people who are marginal could get a beat up RV or camper and live out of that.
People living in an RV are considered “homeless”?
Well, that explains some of the photos at People of Walmart.
I know a few of them. Some are younger vagabond younger hippies. One guy lives in Thailand for nine or ten months a year and comes to California and works construction for to pay for the Thailand time. One is an older retired guy in a very nice RV who gets Social Security a military pension and has a 401k.
You kind of have to figure out how to do it and where you can part. There are plenty of resources for that including the RV community of people that you meet along the way.
People living under bridges are considered “homeless”?
I would assume so, since they have no protection from the elements, nor a bed, nor a bathroom.
You think differently about people living under bridges?
I was watching a show about leisure time on the Smithsonian channel last night. Apparently, during the depression, people were selling their homes and moving into mobile homes so they could look for work. it was seen as a big problem. I don’t think you would call them homeless; rather “of no fixed address.”
I took a trip with a friend in his nice Class A. We overnighted at a couple of Walmarts and also the Iowa 80 Truckstop. Very handy for stocking up and it’s free, but spending the night in a giant parking lot–even with all the comforts of home in a nice big motorhome–is not my idea of fun.
It depends.
The guy working odd jobs and living in an old $5000 motorhome (that he got with his last bit of savings)? He’s homeless.
My cousin who sold his water front home in SoCal and travels North America in a $500,000 Tiffin and had his lawyers set up a domicile address in South Dakota for tax reasons? Probably not. Even though he technically doesn’t have a house.
“Homeless” != “flat-ass broke.” Work a few odd jobs, scrape together a few thousand bucks, and buy a piece-of-shit 30-year-old RV.
I’m more wondering about how they get it registered and insured without a permanent address. :dubious:
What kind of mileage would a 30 year old RV get? Heck, what kind of mileage does a 2019 RV get? I mean, if the price of gas goes up by a couple of cents a gallon, then the operating costs go up.
Provided the parking lot is big enough, I think Walmart welcomes this. Well, at least they used too. The RV folks are basically captured customers that will be buying a bunch of stuff and restocking.
It may become a problem if the RV folks get rowdy, take up too much room, start using the Walmart bathrooms as it they are their own, start dumping trash etc.
I lived in a small RV for about 2 months. Hated every second of it.
So drive it as little as possible. Park it at Walmart, and then walk, bicycle, or take the city bus as much as possible to get wherever you need to go.
The alternative is renting an apartment. What’s the cheapest apartment someone’s likely to find? $300/month? Living in an old RV parked in a Walmart lot is probably cheaper, if you can minimize how often you actually drive it anywhere.