9/15/2024

I used to be really interested in small RV’s which would be useful for traveling the USA inexpensivly.  Unfortunately with higher gas prices it’s not really inexpensive to use RV’s to travel as compared to driving a hybrid car and staying in inexpensive hotels. Campgrounds with hookups cost as much as an inexpensive hotel room so there’s actually no savings. Perhaps it breaks even or it might even be slightly more expensive to travel in an RV. An RV means the convenience of having all your stuff in one place. You don’t have to pack and unpack in hotels.

I’ve always been interested in RV’s.  I like to go to RV shows and fantasize about how fun it would be to travel in one. But the truth is I’ve never slept overnight in an RV and maybe I wouldn’t like it at all. Living in a van is definitely a thing they even call it Van Life.  Now I know I’m never going to get an RV and travel around the country. The maintenance and upkeep of an RV is very expensive. They’re often left sitting out in the sun and rain they end up developing leaks and then mold. The resale value of a used RV is low.

The pros and cons of living in an RV or a van.

The best thing about living in an RV or a van is you can just pack up and drive away if you don’t like where you are.  The downside is you won’t have a lot of places for your stuff.  You won’t be able to have very many clothes so you’ll have to do a lot of laundry. You will have to use the laundry mat at the campground that you’re staying at but if you’re camping without a campground you’ll actually have to drive to a laundry mat.

People feel the same way about tiny homes. There’s not enough space in a tiny home to store things like pots and pans that you might need for cooking and if an RV has some sort of cooking surface it’s always substandard and miniaturized compared to the convenience of a full size kitchen and a refrigerator. If you don’t have a place to stay with hookups you also won’t have enough electricity to keep things like milk cold. You’ll have to eat out almost every meal you won’t be able to store leftovers. But there are some people who are so resourceful and psychologically resilient that they are able to make these things work short term until they can afford something permanent like an apartment or a rental house.  Check out this YouTube channel about a young man named Alex Haraus who lived in his Subaru while putting himself through nursing school.

This is why people who only have an RV to live in (they’re not on vacation) like to park their RV in San Francisco. San Francisco has really fantastic weather if you have to live in your vehicle you couldn’t pick a better place climate wise. San Francisco is neither too hot in the summer nor is it too cold in the winter. I lived there for the first 50 years of my life.

 In 2014 I wrote a blog that’s now deleted about places where people could park their RV’s and live in them in San Francisco. Unfortunately this is now coming to an end because they’re going to make even parking smaller RV’s on the street illegal.

Once there is a good thing and people know about it everyone wants to do it. Now that there’s so many RV’s parked in San Francisco, it’s gonna be no longer possible to live in your RV in San Francisco. Although I there is a place in Bayview Hunters Point area called The Bayview Vehicle Triage Center. Unfortunately they don’t have a lot of spaces and the prices are not even listed. I’m not sure if it’s free by waiting list or if they ask for money. It’s a vicious circle because one needs a place to live in while they’re waiting.  They’re even waiting just to get on the waiting list to begin the waiting process.

Speaking of waiting lists there’s a really long waiting list for Section 8 in San Francisco and the worst thing about this is that you can’t even get on the waiting list because it’s not open. It would actually be pretty wise (in the past) to live in your RV in San Francisco while waiting for Section 8 to come through if you could get on the waiting list. The Public Housing Authority that takes care of Section 8 has not been responsive when I tried to get my San Francisco rental house pre-qualified for Section 8. I was instructed to e-mail an address which I’m sure that they don’t monitor this mailbox they don’t read it and they don’t contact anyone back.

Something that I found was a positive thing (RV living in San Francisco) has now been ruined by too many people doing it. It would actually seem to be a good thing to get an RV and live at a perpetual campground in the Bay Area.  It would be cheaper than renting an apartment but this has now also become extremely expensive and most likely with waiting lists.

Looking at the prices for even RV campgrounds in the San Francisco Bay area you can’t get a place with hookups for less than $100 a night.  This is why people would rather park free without hookups which is (less convenient) but in San Francisco you could actually have a fairly pleasant life. You would save $3000 dollars a month in campground fees. People buy memberships to Planet Fitness or a similar gym so they have a place to shower. But that dream is gone now. It’s the end of an era, due to our declining economy. COVID lockdowns led to a lot of people losing their jobs and places to live causing the population who needed to live in a car or an RV to explode.

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