Well, I think there's a reason it's known as Van Life. It hasn't "always been" the thing it is now. I say this because I have worked in and for National Parks for years, visit many parks and forests, and...Van Life is affecting my own home town and the way of life here. It has not always been the way it is right now. Sure, people have lived on the road since Kerouac and Steinbeck. But it's different now.
First of all, it's a movement involving thousands of leaders (influencers and others), who have various businesses encouraging people to live on the road. In vans, not traditional RV's. The only place I'd ever seen them, until the past few years, was Yosemite. They take on active environmentalist stance, but there are real fights within this subculture about just what it means to do what they're. doing (gas, use of the outdoors as a toilet, etc). So there are different subdivisions within the culture. Entire businesses have sprung up around converting vans for Van Life. Prices of old vans are going through the roof.
Youtube made it possible for the Small House and Van Life movements to really get off the ground. Dyrt is now a thing, so that Van Lifers can find their way. into every inhabitable portion of National Forests and BLM land (sometimes illegally, it's a PITA for forest officials, it's been easier this year to just shut down forests rather than try to police the massive number of vans and tiny trailers on public lands, often without sanitary facilities.
Just in the past two months, three women are murdered while living the Van Life.
It used to be that these areas saw very few people. One could count on getting some place to throw up a tent, but no more. Volumes of visitors to national forests have tripled in the past 3 years and continue to rise. The average age of an RV user used to be around 60. Van Lifers are in their twenties. I guess soon they'll be in their 30's (although. of course, they give up the van life - but the curious thing is that there are plenty of new Van Lifers to replace them).
Anyway, Van Life is a youth movement similar to the commune-seeking, roadside-dwelling hippies of the 70's, except with vans that are, from my perspective, expensive. Yosemite has had to increase its vigilance about illegal overnight parking and change the rules for Camp Four altogether. I haven't seen so many policy changes in Yosemite since the 70's.
So from my point of view, this is a cultural form that is as distinctive as the Mod movement or the Hippy movement. It has a different history than RVing, and there's no way that there were as many Van Lifers in California 5 years ago, as there are now. My own town had to spend 2 years enacting new ordinances and finding ways to fund enforcement. Santa Monica is still spending so much money on enforcement, but at least now they too have laws against living in vans on its streets. People still do it, but it's lessened.
The number of images that come up if you search for Van Life right now, in late 2021, is astronomically larger than it was two years ago.
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Van Life is closely associated with influencers or those who have figured out a passive income via the internet. Being able to live off Insta or Youtube is new and precarious, but people are doing it. I know one person who is doing it through Youtube and passive income (investments...guided entirely by a particular online community of which she is a part, perhaps now a leader).
As I write this, I'm once again questioning whether I should alert local LE when I know people are violating our anti-Van Life ordinances. But I know that they know (they have to, right?) but they only do something when a crime is committed in one of the hidden parking lots where the Van Lifers live. Alongside the Van Lifers are also the Bike Lifers, but they are a very small group (living in the same parking lots). And there is crime associated with these places. So now we have different kinds of homeless; the major places where the homeless camp (with their tents, grocery carts, etc) are still the same. But now we have these other homeless populations as well.
When I use the phrase "Van Life" I am referring to this movement - and not to the people who lived in their cars during the Great Depression. Indeed, living in a car is not considered Van Life by Van Lifers.
