High rents and a shortage of housing are driving many to full time living in RVs at parks that take long rentals.
For instance, Penny Banks and her dogs have been living the RV life for several months at the Rivers Edge RV Park in Sparks, Nevada.
She’s in one of the park’s 164 spots right by the Truckee River off Rock Boulevard. Alicia Siever, the park manager, said people pay $425 a month for a spot and they’ve been full for about three years, reports Reno’s News4.
“We get a lot of variety of people. We have families who can’t simply afford the rent prices, looking to downsize. We have retirees. We have those traveling for work,” Siever said.
She said they see a lot of Tesla workers as well as transient workers like plumbers and electricians.
The housing market is tight and rent is expensive in the Reno-Sparks area. RV parks around town are full and have a long waiting list. RV living is a solution to that problem.
Banks said she’s saving a lot of money living in her RV.
“Well, brick and mortar you’re probably going to pay three times what we pay for space,” Banks said.
These are not your grandma’s RV park from the 1970s. Most of the parks in town have stores, pools and other amenities.
Andy Anderson and his wife, Beulah, live across town at the Shamrock RV Park. They’ve been there for eight years. They pay $760 a month. It’s important for the Anderson’s to save money because they’re retired, on a fixed income.
The Anderson’s have no plans to leave. Like most of the people who live in RVs, they’re in love with the cheaper, simpler, more convenient way to live. And If they don’t like where they’re living or who they’re living next to – they can easily move.
Works for some except a whole bunch of qualifiers. First, the real cost. $760 might get you a studio in an apartment or close, just not in California or anywhere near. However, when you amortize the cost of the RV plus the monthly charges at the park, you have to wonder whether this makes sense financially. Maybe. Maybe not. Second, supply and demand. The cost of used RVs is about to rise. Third, this works fine until space in the private parks is taken and those prices also start to rise, if they haven’t already (probably have).
RVs are an acceptable solution for homelessness caused by high rents. However, this is a serious social problem caused by a long list of underlying factors, including population which is the don’t-ever-say-a-word-about-it primary driving factor everywhere. Too many people. Everyone wants someone else to not have those four kids that they can afford. But there are other factors, too. Like space and cheap farmland to suburbanize until you figure out that the cost of food is also rising., It’s a mess and it’s going to get worse not better.
I’m advocating public RV parks with amenities and social services for the homeless and non-profits who will buy and rehab old RVs, at least helping to keep the price of old RVs affordable. But that would take some imagination on the part of our dead political system. So not likely to happen any time soon.
Corporations are buying up the farmland as well as individual properties all over the country. When they start buying up the RV parks too, then those will be higher also. I don’t think this will be a long term solution.
Companies like the one my daughter works for are buying up individual homes, farms, and land all over the country. Once they have enough, rent goes up. Small farms are becoming corporate farms. I’m sure that RV parks will also be on the list.
This park in Sparks with the cheap rent (River’s Edge) is right under the airport landing approach and the noise is incredible. It’s relatively cheap because it’s a park I wouldn’t want to spend ONE night in, let alone move in permanently.
This is a common problem all over North America. Parks are filling up with permanents and that makes it extra difficult for those that are true RV’ers. There are fewer and fewer RV parks to go if you are on vacation. Costs aside when all the parks are full RV parks won’t be an affordable alternative for long.
So, if you choose to live fulltime in an RV, and you are retired, I don’t understand the cost argument, as it is flawed.
First, being on a fixed income dictates you need to find a cheaper place to live, this seems to be the solution to the immediate problem at hand. Search cheapest places to live, and pick one and move there, problem solved.
Large corporations like the one my daughter works for, are buying up 1000s of individual properties in most larger cities. They own so many now that they can charge whatever they want to charge. When they start buying up the RV parks, what then? I’m not at all sure that this is any long term solution.