Santa Cruz van life more complex than it appears
Glamorization through social media often undercuts the less-than-clean-cut reality
SANTA CRUZ » John Fernandez’s path to “rent freedom” involved six months sleeping outside with only a bicycle for transport, then several more months on a friend’s couch, all while holding down two jobs.
After a two-year break, the 22-year-old UC Santa Cruz third-year art and psychology major has returned to school, finding some limited solace inside the colorfully decorated and tightly packed walls of his self-converted former wheelchair transport van, dubbed “Moses.”
Fernandez became homeless after their family was unable to offer continued financial support in paying $500-a-month shared room rental in a “rat-infested house,” Fernandez said. Fernandez has begun organizing fellow students to form the Rent Freedom Movement group, with one goal of gaining access to student overnight parking sites with access to facilities for those living in their vehicles.
Fernandez said sleeping nightly in a gutted and self-furnished $3,000 van brings profound daily stress. While they and other local van dwellers interviewed by the Sentinel each spoke of some positives in their lifestyle — ability to travel on a whim, easier access to picturesque scenery, freedom from monthly rent costs — Fernandez said it is not easy never knowing where the next safe parking spot will be.
“People say, ‘Oh, you chose this lifestyle,’ ”Fernandez said. “But it’s complicated. It’s either choosing life or death. I’m not going to choose a state of self-hate. I want something that’s going to uplift — ‘Yes, I choose to live.’ ”
Forces such as the glamorization of van living through social media sites such as Instagram, grouped under the subject of “#vanlife,” however, often undercut the less-than-cleancut reality, Fernandez said. While seeking assistance, Fernandez said the group has encountered push-back due to the university’s legal restraints and inability to “think outside the box.”
“People think it’s this young, romantic idea,” Fernandez said of van living. “A lot of people don’t understand that this is a form of homelessness.”
UCSC spokesman Scott Hernandez-Jason said that neither UCSC Police Chief Nader Oweis nor Associate Vice Chancellor for Housing Sue Matthew were aware of any students living in their vehicles this school year. The Slug Support program is one way in which the university works to assist students, he said.
“We recognize housing is exceptionally challenging in Santa Cruz and throughout the state, and we do everything we can to support our students,” Hernandez-Jason said. “As you probably know, we house more than half our students on campus. We continue to have some open beds, so any students in need of housing should reach out to our housing office. We also have our community rentals website where students can search for places to live in town.”
California code and UC code prohibit people from living in vehicles on campus, Hernandez-Jason said.
An exception appears to be the university’s Camper Park, founded on the north campus by struggling students in the early 1980s in the face of a housing shortage and serving as a refuge for those living in their recreational vehicles.
Santa Cruz Councilman Chris Krohn, who spoke to Rent Freedom Movement group members at the recent “No Place Like Home” housing forum, likened the students’ struggles to those elsewhere in the city.
“The shape of dorm life on campus very much mirrors the disastrous rent situation in town: skyhigh rents, overcrowded dorms, apartments and classrooms,” Krohn wrote in an email to the Sentinel. “I would like to see the UCSC administration designate a parking areas in (UCSC’s) East and West remote and charge students a modest fee … not the current $1,552 to 2,000 charged on-campus ‘tenants,’ but somewhere around $100-$200 and include water and electricity hook-ups at some time in the future if not available now. But emergency housing for many students is needed now.”
For Warren West, a 65-year-old retired nurse who has been an off-again, on-again vehicle dweller for decades, his rusty aging Dodge Ram filled with possessions visibly peaking out leaves little doubt about his homelessness. He said he feels as though he has to “hide” to avoid runins with the law.
Parked across the street from the Live Oak branch library last week, West said he spends much of his days at the gym swimming, and said he feels that many local veteran law enforcement officers know he is not a troublemaker and leave him be.
West, who is also known by the alias Warren Gufaston, has faced convictions ranging from drunk driving and public intoxication to lack of vehicle registration/insurance and vandalism.
Companies such as Aptos-based Advanture, which custom converts vans into living spaces, have sprung up, combining the whimsy and minimalist movement of #vanlife with the practicality of the affordable housing shortage.
Advanture cofounder and CEO Scott Nelson, 27, said he sees a diverse group of people who live in their vans, and many are influenced by social media depictions of van life.
“If you go buy a used van for $20,000 or a new van and you finance it for $400 and you put a little cash down on a build, you’re going to have your whole house for under $50,000,” Nelson said. “And you’re paying a cost of $400 a month rather that $2,000 a month, you’re creating value for yourself and you’re living completely off the grid.”
In California, how van dwellers comport themselves reflects on the whole community, Nelson said.
“I think as long as people are respectful and they pay attention to where they’re parking and what they’re doing, there’s no issue at all,” Nelson said.
The city of Santa Cruz attempted, in response to public outcry, to institute restrictive rules in late 2015 on how, when and where large vehicles can remain parked overnight on public streets throughout the city. The new law’s enforcement petered out, however, when the California Coastal Commission put the law on hold in response to local activist Robert Norse’s appeal, which contended that the parking ban targets homeless people and restricts coastal access.
In a Facebook post this month, the Santa Cruz Police Department posted statistics under the heading “SCPD Taking Action” for the 214 motor homes and camper vans towed citywide in 2017, compared to 169 in all of 2016. The post was accompanied by a photograph of a recreational vehicle being towed from the Westside, “courtesy of a grateful neighbor.”
Student van dweller Nikko Quinones, a 24-yearold in his final year at UCSC studying art and sociology, has been kept company in his converted wheelchair transport van by his 5-yearold boxer, Dinah, for the past four months. However, people leave notes, bang on his windows or straightforwardly approached him as neighborhood watch representatives, demanding he move along.
Quinones, who attributed the frosty reception from residents to the high cost of property ownership in this area, went from paying about $850 a month to share a rented room with one other and a bathroom with four others to $400 a month in van payments.
“People feel very entitled to their living space and there’s really nowhere in Santa Cruz that allows people to park for more than a couple hours,” said Quinones, a member of the Rent Freedom Movement group. “It’s kind of funny. People that you talk to think it’s kind of cool, but when it’s in front of their house, it’s not.”