I saw a documentary a while ago about the effects of the real estate boom in Vancouver. Basically low rent housing gets replaced by expensive condo developments. The tenants get evicted or can't afford the replacement they are offered. It's almost impossible to find a new place for the same rent so they end up in a dump, in an RV or on the street. Part of the documentary was filmed in North Van in that area by the auto mall that used to have a lot of those RVs all the time (they changed the parking rules since). We often go for a walk along the Spirit Trail in that direction and I have to admit I used to be a little annoyed by all those crappy RVs parked there but since seeing the documentary I realize most of those people are just trying to survive in a city that doesn't care about them.
It made me think about our own rent situation. We've been in our place for 8 years now and our landlord hasn't raised the rent since we moved in. We've seen similar units in our building advertised for almost double the rent. If our landlord would decide to sell the place or whatever and we had to move out, it would probably be very difficult to find something similar for a similar rent. Luckily we are in a position that we can afford a more expensive place if we have to but a lot of people have no margin for error. Living in a crappy RV is better than nothing.
Having said that, we do like the idea of a campervan for road trips. We revisit the idea every few years but always end up deciding against it because we like to travel overseas as well and for road trips in North America we continue to throw our camping gear in the back of our old Subaru.
