The Guardian Opinion Article

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Len and Jo

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 25, 2005
Posts
1,441
"Living in cars, working for Amazon, meet America's new nomads"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/02/nomadland-living-in-cars-working-amazon
 
Thanks for the link, well-written article albeit with little information that most people here didn't already have.

Also, I'm not sure the general tone of the article, describing RVers (out at least workampers) as 'victims of the system' that were forced into the lifestyle  by  a combination of high rents and low wages, is anywhere near accurate. It certainly doesn't describe us (albeit we're still on the process of making the move), nor does it seem to describe most/all of the RVers/Workampers we've met personally or online.

Is our vision too rosy, or is the article too harsh?

Cheers,
--
  Vall & Mo.
 
I wouldn't read too much into it, Vall& Mo.  The article was about one group of people, who happen to use vehicles as their living quarters and do migratory work. I don't think it was intended to be a generalization about RVers or even workampers, though the author didn't mention that. May not even have been aware that many retired RVers supplement their income with seasonal work, just as other retirees do elsewhere.

If you travel around a lot, especially away from the tourist Meccas, you will encounter two low-income sub-cultures of fulltime RVers similar to those described. One group is migratory, following seasonal work opportunities, and the other is more-or-less fixed but living in RVs for mostly financial reasons.

There is a third, somewhat more affluent itinerant group of what I think of as mobile specialty workers, e.g. construction specialists, nurses & medical techs, entertainers, road show personnel, etc. They use/live in RVs because they work requires frequent relocation and an RV enables them to have a home instead of hotels and rental apartments.  They may have chosen their line of work simply because it allows them to change venues on a regular basis, or because it is more lucrative than doing the same work in a fixed location.
 
There definitely are people who live in cars, vans, etc that do that out of necessity instead of choice. I agree with Gary the article isn?t about the majority of folks who are on this forum. The lack of stable jobs for the semi-skilled definitely allows Amazon and similar companies to attract a large workforce that have no other way to live. Obviously not all the Amazon workers fit this categorization, but enough do for the story to be interesting. There was a similar article a couple of months back in a major news source about older work campers who lived in RVs and trailers who had to work at relatively hard jobs just to survive at well over the standard retirement age. I am sure most of us know someone in similar circumstances, and we have probably seen some at various campgrounds.
 
Though I will admit the cost of living in an RV for me at least is thousands of dollars a year LESS than living in a sticks and bricks... THat's not what "Drove" me to the Class-A life.

What drove me to the Class A life was a desire to travel the USA.
 
Not the first article about the abused mistreated RV'ers.  Another pick and choose point of view. Think of what point you want to make then go find people who match it.
 
halfwright said:
Not the first article about the abused mistreated RV'ers.  Another pick and choose point of view. Think of what point you want to make then go find people who match it.

Jim, I notice in your signature that you have a poodle that serves as a half garbage disposal.  May I offer a Shih Tzu puppy (8 months) who will gladly serve as the other half of the disposal.  Give her and the cats a treat and she gobbles hers and hustles over and steals the cats who are a bit slow on the intake......lol.

By the way, I recently posted a thread about folks in Silicon Valley living in RVs  on the street because the price of housing is ridiculous. They all work but still can't afford an apartment.

Bill
 
Gary RV_Wizard said:
There is a third, somewhat more affluent itinerant group of what I think of as mobile specialty workers, e.g. construction specialists, nurses & medical techs, entertainers, road show personnel, etc. They use/live in RVs because they work requires frequent relocation and an RV enables them to have a home instead of hotels and rental apartments.  They may have chosen their line of work simply because it allows them to change venues on a regular basis, or because it is more lucrative than doing the same work in a fixed location.
This is me I work in the Auto industry retooling factories to produce new vehicles. I've been doing it for years by choice, I could get an apartment or stay in an extended stay hotel but then it's not my stuff or I won't be able to pick up and leave in a few hours notice.
Most of the people in the Rv parks I stay in are in one of the jobs Gary talked about.
 
We started fulltiming my last year in the Air Force. After I retired I got a job with a company that does gas pipeline surveys which requires an RV since you have to be mobile. We also lived in our 5th wheel while I was the University of Florida. We fulltimed for 5 years while I worked and then went to college.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
131,749
Posts
1,384,219
Members
137,520
Latest member
jeep3501
Back
Top Bottom