A few weeks ago I came across a statistic that was mind boggling. According to a 2022 poll, approximately three million Americans live full time in their vehicles. As the US population is slightly more than 300 million, that means approximately 1% of Americans live in their vehicles full time. I’m simply astounded by that number.
It would be wonderful if all of those people were living in fancy, fully-converted vans with all the amenities and niceties those vehicles can provide. Of course we know, they do not. While some percentage of those people choose a nomadic lifestyle, far more of them have resorted to living in their vehicles after becoming unhoused — a last resort alternative to living on the streets. Some make a differentiation between houseless and homeless; living in one’s vehicle can be a thin line between the two. It’s pretty likely that millions of those people didn’t choose what vehicle they would end up living in. My old journalism professor used to tell us the best camera is whichever one you have on you; I suspect the same is true when it comes to moving into a vehicle when the choice is between that and living on the streets.
And while living in a van equipped with a refrigerator, microwave, and solar panels sounds infinitely more comfortable than sleeping in a Honda Civic, I’ve always been a glass-half-full type of guy. Sure, Civics don’t have the leg room of a van, but they get great gas mileage, and there is literally nothing more stealthy than a passenger car.
Thoughts like that are what inspired this video. I decided to come up with a list of vehicle types (cars/sedans, pickup trucks, SUVs, minivans, vans, high-top vans, school busses (skoolies), RVs, box trucks, ambulances, and shuttle busses) and list the advantages and disadvantages of living in each one. All of this is just my opinion, and a lot of it depends on your personal needs. An RV would be wonderful to live in, but they take a lot of money to purchase, own, maintain, and operate. If a person doesn’t have the income to pay for parking and to fill its generator with gasoline, it’s worthless.
Not to spoil the video, but at the end I chose a minivan as the ultimate vehicle to live out of… and I’m already second guessing that choice. I think a cargo van like mine, especially one that from the outside doesn’t look like a camper van, is a pretty darn good solution for full time vehicular living. That being said, minivans have the upper hand when it comes to gas mileage and urban/city parking aka stealth camping.
Check out the video and let me know if I missed any advantages or disadvantages.