I do all the maintenance on my travel trailer, but I have a garage full of tools and a different place to sleep when there's problems. And if I screw it up, I'm not homeless.
I imagine if you're living in an RV, even if you know exactly how to fix a problem, you still have to pay someone else to do it because you don't have a good way to get parts, or equipment to do the work. How do you get Amazon to ship a head gasket to a random spot in the woods on federal lands?
There are tool libraries, and a lot of auto parts places have loaner tools, but you still have to get there to do it, and you can't just sit there for a week working on the problem.
Just another time that it's way more expensive to be poor.
Our homelessness numbers are vastly under counted. They guess the amount by going outside and counting the number of people they can see. A better way to judge this would be by number of people with no active address. (I'm sure it's not that simple and some safe guards would need to be put in place. But we know the number is magnitudes greater than the publicly stated amount.) We say it 800k individuals are homeless but id bet if we actually tried to find every known American to see if they have a permanent address it's two or three million people under counted.
I wouldnt be surprised if they count homeless figures the same way the count jobless numbers: by only counting the people who dont have it but are actively looking. So once people give up looking and stop utilizing services to help connect them then they are no longer in the figures
They are way lazier than that. Starting to wonder if the government not knowing where ~2% to ~3% of its population is actually might be a good thing. Lol
This is gonna be the hardest part. Some people don't pay taxes, nor own a TV, can't afford crushing medical costs, and don't have a car parked in front of their tent. They simply don't exist.
And an American ID card - like the gov ID and separate health card I have - would still be a non-starter for them if the gov paid for it. They simply get nothing but trouble from it.
What subset of people living that lifestyle are classed as homeless? What's one-third of "no idea"?
I feel the article may have actually meant trailers or campers. RVs are expensive and become a pain to maintain and fix especially if it's a shitbox already.
No, most of the people listed in the article have RVs. One of them ended up with a blown engine and needed $10k to fix it, but still owed $500/mo for payments.
Looking at our local RV camps, I don't think maintenance is a priority. Just had to move far enough when the city pushes them around.
I'll note (I haven't read the article yet; going to do) lots here live in RV's but have a second car for travel/work. Many of those second cars are better than my daily driver.
Basically i've always had a personal hatred for single-family homes. I grew up in one, and i hated it. My parents moved into the middle of freaking nowhere when i was born, the neighborhood was dull, it was somewhere in the countryside, you couldn't go anywhere without driving a car, my mother was always angry and tired and refused to drive me 90% of the time, and when she did drive me, annoyances always happened (like, i'd say to a friend i'd meet them at 3pm, and it's a 10 minute drive, and we start driving at 2:40pm, and then my mother remembers she has to go grocery shopping first, which takes 45 minutes, and she does that before dropping me off at my friend's place, stuff like that). It was frustrating.
In the countryside, you're dependent on fossil fuels. You're dependent on putting that transparent fluid in your car's tank day-after-day, which i suspect is a method of mind-controlling the people, because it makes the people feel dependent on some kind of infrastructure (gas station) that they don't understand. I mean, where does petroleum come from? have you ever seen it produced? the people can't produce it locally, so they're dependent on the government's goodwill that it continues to be provided to them.
if the people had solar panels, a whole lot of things would be less shit. people would feel somewhat more self-reliant, being able to produce their own energy and all, and i guess that would improve people's self-esteem a lot.
anyways, i've always had a very hatred of the single-family home. it has 1000 m³, of which you realistically need about 300 for 4 people, for a kitchen, a toilet, a shower, and beds. the extra room is to brag to your neighbors ("what would the neighbors think if we were poor!") and mostly to cause yourself a lot of stress while you're trying to clean that whole space, while you could instead just chill and relax. but i guess relaxing means that you have to face your inner emotions, and we can't have that! (according to the people i've met)
Funny because I have the exact opposite experience.
Most of my life I've lived in a tiny apartment, so tiny that I literally can't keep my room cleared because have no space to store my stuff.
Yes, I can literally walk to the nearest, coffee place, or take a subway to the mall or cinema or whatever people usually like to go, but I have no interest in those places, instead I would love to live in a rural place where I can walk along nature or just rest outside without being right in the middle of people and traffic and ugly buildings.
Oh, and the worse part, my new neighbors that don't let me blast my guitar amp or listen to music past 10
annoyances always happened (like, i’d say to a friend i’d meet them at 3pm, and it’s a 10 minute drive, and we start driving at 2:40pm, and then my mother remembers she has to go grocery shopping first, which takes 45 minutes, and she does that before dropping me off at my friend’s place, stuff like that). It was frustrating.
Yeah, that's just absolute bullshit. What the fuck.
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