West Coast beginner city with easy parking?

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Lance22

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I’m rather new to urban van life so I usually stick to Walmart, truck stops and rest areas..

I’m planning on moving to the west coast soon and wanted advice on a good starter city so I can easily get overnight parking. Any advice on which cities and metro to head to?
 
You’ve had a couple of recent threads on this, Lance, and apparently have not received responses that are helpful to you. ☺️

Might consider scouting out areas you are interested in, and see which seem hospitable to van dwellers while still meeting your other needs.

There’s nothing quite like your own boots on the ground, in my experience.

Good luck to you.
 
Seattle will work inside the city limits. It is not illegal to live or sleep in a vehicle there. Because it is a metropolitan area there are adjacent cities directly abutting it on all sides and some of them do not allow sleeping in vehicles. So you have to watch out where you are parking as you get further away from the core of the city.

But there are some parking ordinances within Seattle.

No vehicles over 80 inches wide on residential streets late at night. That is for easy access for fire trucks and ambulances on those narrow roads at night when residents are parked along one or both sides of the street. Wider than 80” vehicles can park during the night in the industrial zoned areas.

Some streets are signed with no parking between certain night time hours or no long term parking. You see those signs a lot in business districts. Sometimes those signs have been put up by the city at the request of local businesses in industrial areas due to illegal dumping of waste on curbs and sidewalks by the full time vehicle dwellers. I have witnessed just how big an issue that can be at times.

Vehicles must be moved from a space within 72 hours time. They do not want unused vehicles being left on the streets as parking in a city is already tight enough. A lot of houses and apartments have multiple drivers living in them and not enough off street parking.

Seattle does have several free places to take showers. There are parks with public restrooms (not open at night). There are food banks.

Lots of mail forwarding services in business areas near the marinas but they are rather expensive to rent private mail boxes at and not all of them can be used as a residential address accepted for getting a driver’s license, or vehicle registration. So if you need to do that you should check before your rent a box there.
 
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