City Vandwelling Guide Needed

[Van-Tramp]

Yes, the temps are lower, but 16-18 is not as cold as you may think. Actually, I am here in Crescent City, CA where it was 40 degrees today and I have more layers on me here than I would in CO at 18 degrees. And don't be fooled, those are the overnight temps when you are snuggled into a warm sleeping bag. The daytime temps still usually climb into the 40's an 50's which is very mild considering the sun's radiant heat is much more effective thanks to the altitude. The "sea breeze" of CA actually gives the air more a chill then the dry-cold of the high plains of Colorado. 40 in CA is about what 20 feels like in CO.

Don't let "57 inches" scare ya. That is really only the seasonal storm or two that passes through over 1-3 days each. Further down on that same page you can see that the single "biggest" storm of each year is responsible for the majority of the annual snow. In the 5 years I have lived there (just north of Boulder) the largest storm gave us about 14 inches. Most of the time it is 2-4 inches, and then that is only 3-4 times each winter with each storm lasting no more than 2 days. One day of sunlight after that and the roads are clear, dry, and comfy again.

If you think there is not enough here to keep you entertained, you are dead wrong. I'd be happy to show you around! Honest. But, if you are looking for big-city life, then van-dwelling is not going to be for you anyway. Van-dwelling is about simplifying, down-sizing, and solitude. Van-dwelling is not Broadway shows, bright lights, or fine dining. Heck, you will be lucky to have daily showers and enough solar power to keep your laptop charged. As you elude too in your first post, the majority of advice is for rural areas. It is that way because the majority of van-dwellers are wanting to escape the rat-race of those major metro areas.

Again, I'd recommend renting a room instead of van-dwelling in a major metro area. If you must live in the van, rent a parking space or garage then.

Or do what all us van-dwellers do... migrate with the season. Spend the summers in Montana and the Winters in Texas (camped on the beach I might add). Go visit Utah in the spring (amazing!) and the Rocky Mountains in Autumn (takes your breath away). You home has 4 wheels... use them. Again, I'd be happy to show you around, be it just Colorado or tag along for one of my 5000+ mile adventures.

 

[owl]

I wouldn't say VanT was getting angry, not at all. No one is saying you can't stay in Ca. I think what they are saying is be realistic about what is going on and don't believe the line the pols issue. Major hard times are coming for the folks of California there is no question about that. By the way, what do you do that you've been to all those cities if you don't mind sharing? I counted 48 cities in the U.S. you've been to, looking for somewhere, anywhere to get out of L.A. I wish you good fortune.

 

[citytravelfotos]

^ I do city photography for a living. I wouldn't be able to support myself If I didn't go to so many other cities in the U.S.

 

[Van-Tramp]

Sorry if I came across as angry Citytravelfotos. Not so, just trying to help by offering my opinion and experiences on the matter. Best of luck to you in your travels.

 

[citytravelfotos]

Anyway, back on the subject of City Vandwelling, the one issue that I do have about it is that It's not as cost effective as Bob puts it out to be.

1. It's pretty much impossible IMO to not have a storage as there are certain sensitive things that should not be left in a van, as well as other stuff that you just can't throw away (including records, heirlooms, memorabilia.) Cost: $25 in an interior city, about $50+ in a more expensive city for a 5x5.

2. You need a mailbox and a physical address, that's $15 to $20 a month for a mailbox at the UPS Store.

3. You need to take showers, Gym Membership (around $40)

4. It's not the best environment to store food and cook (and you can't cook outside in the city), thus having to eat out more hikes the cost of food. You can either have a refrigerator (a good dc refrigerator costs around $600) or pay for ice (which is as low as $1 in 99 cents only stores) which is $30 a month.

5. You need to pay for repairs, thats highly dependent on your vehicle. While it may be as low as $50 a month to save for repairs, it could be $150 or more. Compare this to living in a room and using a bike or paying for buses which you can avoid this cost.

6. You need to pay for gasoline, vs living in a room and using a bike and paying for buses, which costs actually less. The added lower mpg of a van vs a car makes trips to cost as much as 2X or more.


In a smaller big city like Columbus, Ohio, a room costs around $400 a month, and thus the combined savings on gasoline and food and car repairs and storage along with the increased comfort is enough to make it a no go. In a city like L.A. it may or may not be a significant savings.

However, I never liked renting rooms. It's nice to have your own place and it costs at least $900 a month in L.A. to have your own 1 bedroom apartment plus $100-$150 for utilities (and more likely than not you have to have a one year lease.)

 

[Van-Tramp]

City, Bob is not talking about urban van-dwelling. He lives well outside those metro areas where the costs are significantly lower.

Take a look at my signature below. I have been detailing my monthly expenses and I spend about $1000-1200 per month to van-dwell. It does not sound like much of a savings over an apartment, but I also travel each month at a tune of about $400-500 per month in gas and camping costs. Not all of my spending is "urban" camping, but I spend my fare share within the city limits. I spent 6 months urban camping (May-August) so you can view those months of finances if you wish.

If I sat still and took the fuel for the van and RV parks out of my budget, I could live on less than $500 per month and that includes my storage space and my gym membership... and I do tend to spend a few hundred on things I do not need (ammo, movies, dining, etc). I *could* survive on $300 or less each month if push came to shove.

It does take time (about 3 years for me) to streamline your belongings, and hence your finances. Currently, every single thing I own in my life, except for my 2nd car which is in storage, is with me in the van. Think on that... can you fit everything you own in your van? Most people have a hard time fitting into a full sized RV which can be 400 sq feet or more. My van is less than 90 sq feet including the driver and passenger seating areas.

But you are right. Van-dwelling in an urban area may not be as much of a savings as someone like Bob or even myself. Add to it the added stress of always having to move around to bypass the police and neighbors, it may not really be worth it (that is up to you of course).

 

[owl]

city, Based on what I'm hearing you say, van dwelling is not for you. You have priorities which don't work well with this lifestyle. Life is a give and take, sometimes more take than give. What you want out of life is great. This choice, vandwelling, may not be conducive to your choice of career. I would encourage you to follow your heart, but don't leave your brain behind. You have choices. Look into them, don't lock yourself into something you won't be happy with. What makes one person happy can be hell for another. You are smart, that's obvious, you can find a way for your life to unfold as you want. Those of us who have responded here have done so because we've made mistakes and are hoping that giving advice will be helpful. I don't believe there's one person here that isn't pulling for you and hoping you figure out a way. I know I am. Please take care and be well. Michael

 

[owl]

citi, one other thing, if you google vandwelling positives and minus. Things will come up that far predate Bob and his forum, many which have to do with city dwelling. I first bought and lived in a van in 1972. Many others did also. This wasn't discovered 10 years ago. This lifestyle was pioneered many, many years ago. Again, I wish you continued happiness. Michael

 

[cerenatee]

Hi, I'm going to be vandwelling in urban areas/cities so I would love to have information specifically directed at urban vandwellers. I'm fine with society and I love the city life - the people, the action, the vibe. I like the thought of vandwelling because I'm a gypsy at heart. Plus I'll also be researching material for two books while I travel, and my research sources are located in cities. That being said, I also need my alone time so I'm guessing I'll do 50% - 50% between urban and rural.

I first got interested in van dwelling fulltime through Ken Ilgunas's blog (he use to be a member on here also). He lived on the Duke University campus. Then I did some research and found a lot of blogs and Youtube videos on urban vandwellers. I was already crashing in my car whenever I needed too - long road trips, too drunk, too tired, etc - but they taught me a lot more, like where to cook (the park), where to sleep, how to handle condensation, cold, and heat, etc. This was all before Bob's book. Most of my information for living in the city was obtained over 2 years ago but here are a few decent blogs I use to follow and a few I currently follow (just do a google search, including #vandweller #vandwelling and #vanabode, and I'm sure you'll find a lot more):

http://www.vagabloggers.com/
Current - They're half in the city, half in rural areas

http://mochagypsy.wordpress.com/
Current - she lives at Walmart, I think, and works in the city

http://www.ayearinacar.com/
Old blog but good posts

http://urbanvandweller.blogspot.com/
Old blog but good posts

thetuckerbag.blogspot.com/
Old blog but awesome

 

[citytravelfotos]

Actually there are reasons beyond cost savings why I'm into van dwelling. First is that a part of my spirit is rebellious. I just don't want a society that doesn't deserve respect to have control over me. Neither society nor anyone who I live with. If I want to live in an apartment, it's my choice, not because society says I must. If I make a lot of money, it's because its my choice, not because society is forcing me to and threatening me with the extreme harshness of being homeless on the streets of a city if I don't make a lot of money. Society doesn't give a damn about my well being, why should I care about it and let it to control me?

Other reasons are for strategic purposes of my photography (much easier to photograph the sunrise and throughout the day sleeping near the city center rather than having to go back and forth between a motel that's 10 miles away from the city center) as well as perhaps for balloon aerial photography (I'd store the balloon in my van, helium's too expensive to have to inflate and deflate a big balloon.) Plus, I've never had my own place where I have total freedom to modify.

 

[angeli]

Hi Citytravelphotos,

I'm late to the discussion, but that's nothing new. I'm also a CA native born and raised. Los Angeles raised to be exact. I loved it. I miss it terribly, and if I could raise the funds to get there, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Sadly, my fifth generation LA family can't afford to live there anymore, and everyone has moved north to a small town just south of the Oregon border. It's still pretty up there.

I spent a lot of years reading palms and cards on the Venice boardwalk, and lots of the folks I worked with and around were living in their vans. I fondly remember the 'Surf Guru', his great dog, and his van. He used to park a short distance away from the beach, and then in the am he'd fire up his van and drive the mile or so to Venice and park in the early morning. Set up and work the day away, and then drive off to dinner and the evening. We all did it. My van in those days was an old boat top 69 VW, painted white on top and black on the sides. I hung lace in the windows, it was so girly! Stealth schmealth! LOL!!

This was in the 80's and way pre-911. Nowhere near as much cultural paranoia. But I think the reality is probably much more mellow than the intensity the discussion gets on this board sometimes.

I think a book on daily living, urban vanstyle is a wonderful idea! Go for it! Cooking is great in the van if you do it like truckers do - RoadPro rules. Sponge baths were the rule of the road for hundreds of years. Mix that with overhead showers once a week or month - depending on how good you are with a sponge - from a gym or truck stop, and cleanliness is limited to how much water you want to carry. Plumb a small drain that extends down under the van behind a rear wheel, and rid yourself of grey water at night. You can dump a good porta potty in any corner store bathroom.

There are plus's to not being cut off from culture. Imagine being able to van-dwell in DC with all the free museums. Heaven!! I don't think one has to be intellectually dead to be a van dweller, on the other hand, nor do I think you are intellectually dead if you prefer to live simply and rurally. That's where I am now, after all. But I dream of returning to CA. And then I go out and look at the bald eagle flying over that lives in the oak stand to the rear of the property I'm parked on. It's all good.

 

[lbowden]

There was a rash of California bashing earlier in this thread. Some
things need to be corrected:

- 1 of 8 Americans lives in California
- 1 of 5 dollars in the US economy is in California
- California doesn't rank in the bottom for schools, those spots
belong to Alaska, Mississipi, North Dakota, Alabama and so on
- California does have overcrowded prisons
- the sheer size of the economy in CA and the way the tax system
works makes the state gov't revenues more variable. In bad times
it rapidly gets bad. In good times it does great.
- a large proportion of our exports originate in California

Don't bash it just because you don't understand economics.

 

[owl]

Pointing out problems does not equate to bashing. That's like saying if you disagree with the current president you're a racist. The fact that California has an unemployment rate higher than the national average is due primarily to the anti business climate which is well documented. The abysmal conditions of roads, bridges and other infrastructure is evident to anyone willing to look. Cities going bankrupt, unfunded pension liability to the tune of $640 billion. State debt $27 billion.
lbow, you are exactly right, there are people in California who don't understand economics, they are called politicians.

 

[Van-Tramp]

In 2008, when I left CA, 10,000 teachers were laid off across the state. Every single year since then, thousands more have been laid off too... every single year. Just this year, 2600 more were laid off EVEN THOUGH Prop 30 was to prevent those very layoffs. Prop 30 increased taxes to ensure no more layoffs, yet they are still being laid off. Where is that money going?

In 2008, California ranked in the bottom 10% of all states for the public school system. My son was in grade school in a city (Vallejo, CA) that laid off teachers (even though the classes already had more than 40 students in each classroom), filed for bankruptcy, laid off the ENTIRE police and fire forces, and closed all libraries.

I lived there lbowden, 37 years I lived in that economic s**thole. I went to school there myself. I have had family members killed in cities that no longer fund police investigators to solve a murders (It's been more than 2 years, still no investigator assigned to my brother's case). I have family members there with mental illnesses that have had their state-run homes de-funded and then kicked on the streets (mentally ill homeless is just dandy isn't it?).

A state that releases 10,000 prisoners (we are not talking petty-crime prisoners, these were 10,000 serious crime offenders, and the prisons are still 37% over capacity) to save money clearly does not know up from down. Lay off cops, release prisoners, all while reducing your 2A rights to protect yourself.

Oct 2013 report shows CA has a 443 Billion debt... having a lot of cash flow does not equate to an "economy".

 

[cerenatee]

I don't know about individual cities/towns in California, but for public high schools and colleges, California is in the top of every ranking. Even with less teachers, California overall kicks butt.

High schools --> http://www.usnews.com/education/hig...ompare-in-the-2013-best-high-schools-rankings

Colleges --> http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandr...ges/rankings/national-universities/top-public

I think you can always look at individual areas and say they suck - especially if that's the area you lived in - but there are always areas, in every state, that rock. It really just depends on where you live. That's my experience anyway.

PS I love California overall and will spend a lot of my time there when I'm finally free to leave this life draining state I live in (since others love it, I won't mention names but IT FREAKING SUCKS!!)

 

[citytravelfotos]

It seems that Van Tramp has plenty of reasons to hate California, but these reasons are based on personal experience for the most part. It doesn't mean that everyone's experience is the same.

For that matter, I had a mysterious gastrointestinal illness, I was suffering with it for months in 2011. I went to doctors but they had no idea what I was suffering with, and just ordered testing. I moved back in with my mom in Arizona because I couldn't handle the sickness. I dreaded the cost of testing and treatment ($1,500 just for an endoscopy) and being branded as someone with preexisting conditions (and thus would be hard to get insurance.) Arizona has no laws regulating what insurers can ask on the application. California though does. If I stayed in California, I would have been able to get insurance because the laws are much more restrictive on what insurers can ask of me. In Arizona, as well as many other states in the U.S., they use the "prudent person" standard, as in that even if you didn't go to a doctor and have it diagnosed, you must disclose as if you had it. If you have anything that doctors discover later, you could be in trouble. They also ask for EVERYTHING you have had for 10 years, really tough for me to do. I feel like as if I'm walking on pins with that, because if you don't disclose one thing and you become a "burden" to the insurance company later on, they could've claimed that I committed fraud and not only take away my coverage but bill me for all the previous treatments that they had to pay for me, which could be tens of thousands of dollars. It has happened before to other people. In California, insurers are required to ONLY ask for treatment already given, and things that were actually diagnosed, and far less time I have to disclose (something like a year or less.) I could've gotten insurance in California but not in Arizona because of that (btw I finally got well from the mysterious illness, but it took a year of recovery.)

Plus, at least in the Los Angeles area they have cheap healthcare provided by medical students from USC and UCLA. Yes there are a TON of people waiting for treatment, and it can take many hours of waiting, but at least its FAR CHEAPER than going anywhere else. I got a tooth pulled for $75, while it costs around $250 elsewhere. I've heard of people even getting treatment for things like cancer and having to pay far less money than if they went anywhere else. Of course these people are probably not insured anyway, but at least there was an option for people who didn't have insurance. And if you were low income, you didn't even have to apply for Medi-Cal (California's medicaid) and could get free treatment on the spot.

---

And yes, California's cities have a lot of traffic. California has plenty of problems. Even I have problems with Los Angeles' traffic and smog.

BUT

Also, yes California has a lot of problems. However...

California has two of the most unique cities in the United States. San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco need not explaining (there are hilly cities in the U.S. but nothing like San Francisco with its grid over a hilly area making for many steep roads with gorgeous vistas of the bay and golden gate / bay bridges) and Los Angeles is just the most massive feeling city I have ever been to, taking about 85 minutes to drive from the border of the metropolitan area in the east to Downtown Los Angeles. All the neighborhoods, all the smaller city centers, all the beautiful views (especially when adorned with beautiful palm trees), all the mediterranean architecture and other beautiful and unique architecture, and especially all the beach culture with so many beach cities / neighborhoods and the best beach cities west of Florida.


I won't leave out San Diego, which is the Southern Californian city (only 2 hours away from L.A.) that's more livable, with less traffic and crime issues, and is very much a beautiful city with beautiful vistas and lots of beaches.

California to me feels like the center of the west just as much as the Northeast Corridor (Boston, NYC, Philly, DC) feel like the center of the east.


Of course, many would cringe at me liking this, but I am not an introvert, I get irritated and depressed if i'm not around people (and especially around civilization), I crave stimulation, and I just can't stand being in smaller, less interesting cities, especially if isolated. I love the energy of the city and it gives me energy and optimism. Seeing the beautiful landmarks, architecture, street life, city life in general, and beautiful views of the city (like in Los Angeles and San Francisco) gives me inspiration.

 

[Van-Tramp]

Yes I do have personal, political, economical, and generalized reasons to dislike CA. I also agree that each person's experiences will be different, and I'm happy that you guys (and gals?) enjoy California. I am a big believer of doing what even makes YOU happy, not what other people tell you. So, if you like CA by all means go for it. Don't let my dislike of it shift your own beliefs. Good for you guys. It is good to hear that you do enjoy where you are. That's all that matters.

City, I hate to think you shut out cities because you feel "smaller equates to less interesting". I hope you decide some day to change that view and explore about a bit more. I understand your income is based on metro areas so maybe in your retirement years? Best of luck.

 

[owl]

One thing about larger cities, you can be much more anonymous in them. Seems like small town folks are always in your business.

 

[cerenatee]

"Of course, many would cringe at me liking this, but I am not an introvert, I get irritated and depressed if i'm not around people (and especially around civilization), I crave stimulation, and I just can't stand being in smaller, less interesting cities, especially if isolated. I love the energy of the city and it gives me energy and optimism. Seeing the beautiful landmarks, architecture, street life, city life in general, and beautiful views of the city (like in Los Angeles and San Francisco) gives me inspiration."

I'm an introvert and extrovert, almost 50-50 really, which makes for interesting times. But this is exactly how I feel when I'm in extrovert mode. I love to do and see and feel. I love people and places and things.

I definitely don't discount small towns/cities though. A small town with great people and/or a great landscape has always touched my heart. I would go to visit family in a small town and there was literally nothing to do except hang out with friends and family. Those are some of my best memories. While I haven't found small town people in my region to be the most hospitable, I'm not letting that deter me from trying to connect, especially in other regions.

 

[owl]

cerenatee, "trying to connect" like it.