When people lose their housing, no matter the reason, the question immediately becomes: where do they go when nothing is available?
Most people live paycheck to paycheck, working full-time to keep up. There is little room to prepare for disaster. After long days, we return home worn down, settle into our recliners, eat, rest, and repeat this menu over and over again. Over time, this routine creates a sense of safety. We might even believe that the small savings we manage to build will protect us, that we might slowly climb toward something even better.
But stability in today’s housing market is fragile.
Rent, utilities, food, and transportation keep climbing and consume everything that we earn. Then something happens. A medical emergency, a job disruption, a family crisis, a rent hike, a no-fault eviction. Suddenly the ground shifts. The landlord announces the building will be remodeled. Everyone must leave. The home we depended on is gone.
We quickly learn that our savings are nowhere near enough to re-enter the housing market. First and last month’s rent. Security deposits. Application fees. Pet deposits. Thousands of dollars required upfront. For many working people, this is impossible.
We are forced to confront a painful truth: Many communities have become places only the wealthy can remain. Longtime residents are pushed out. Workers essential to the city can no longer afford to live in it.
So what choices remain? Quit your job and move somewhere cheaper, without housing or employment secured? Leave behind family, doctors, school, and community ties? Start over with nothing?
At this moment, survival thinking begins. The car in the driveway becomes a possible shelter. A motorhome begins to look like a solution. A small contained space with a bed, a bathroom, a kitchen, and refrigeration. The basics of human living.
And yet, even this is often criminalized.
Which raises a simple and urgent question: Why can cities not designate safe land for people to live in vehicles or motorhomes as a legitimate form of affordable housing? A properly designed motorhome housing community, built and maintained through sweat equity and resident participation. It could provide safety, sanitation, stability, and dignity. It could protect people from constant displacement and punitive enforcement. It could offer an affordable, immediate housing option without forcing people into overcrowded shelters or dehumanizing spaces.
Not tiny cubicles. Not rule-heavy facilities that control rather than support. But a real community. A place people care for, belong to, and grow from. A place where stabilization comes first, because stability is what makes progress possible.
Housing does not solve every problem. But without it every problem becomes harder to survive.
