I wrote my last rent check in late July. There were only five checks left in the little green booklet, checks that still read “Sugarloaf Road, Colorado.” Checks still water damaged from an overwatered plant carried across the country from Boulder to Bellingham, just to be sold a few weeks later as we prepared to move again. It’s almost like I wasn’t here at all. My former life whittling back down to bare bones.
The homeowner was a nice dude, but part of me wanted to write, “Last one, fucker!” on the memo line because after a decade of struggling to make rent, I’m not sure renting property is ethical. Instead, I wrote, “Bellingham Rent” with some ounce of composure. I wrote a little note to stick in the envelope that said, “August rent. Hope you’re having a great summer!” as though this were a high school yearbook sign-off and not the liminal transition to living out of a camper.
This is the short story: One unassuming afternoon in late May, I bought a camper. It felt simultaneously like a sudden decision and also a decision six years in the making.
This is the long story: I have been threatening to leave behind rental life since 2017 when I graduated from grad school with $30,000 of student debt and landed a mediocre job paying $31,000 a year. But each year there was something that kept me from moving forward with an alternative living situation. The first year it was a breakup. The second year it was a new job (paying a little more, $42,500). The third year it was finding a ridiculously too good deal on rent and the sweetest roommates. The fourth year was a pandemic. The fifth year was another new job and a move across the country (and still a pandemic).
The sixth year, something finally snapped. It was sometime mid-April, after eight months of pouring rain and chronic flood conditions, after the inflation boom sent me panic scanning my bank account every month wondering where all the money was going, after housing prices in Bellingham crossed a median price of $650,000 and rent skyrocketed that I cracked. I sat on the floor of the poorly lit office in front of a space heater creating an expense spreadsheet and coming to the horrible conclusion that I couldn’t do this. Even with both of our incomes, J and I could no longer afford the $2,100/month rent and $200-$300/month in utilities that were an absolute steal in a town this expensive. There was no money left over, and some months there was less than no money left. Every necessary purchase felt like a personal crisis.
And so what might seem like an overnight decision to the outside observer was actually a decision many years long, steeped in an ever-worsening housing crisis, pushed over the edge by extreme inflation and a winter so dark and so wet that I worried I might never experience joy again. Just a few weeks after that morning on the office floor, J and I were the (proud? manic?) new owners of a 2022 Taxa Mantis. We had three months before our lease was up, and a million other decisions to make before we could leave rental life behind, but so long as we could consistently come up with $448/month, we would have a place to sleep, cook, and poop (for me, the three essentials).
Were there other decisions we could have made in the face of our financial woes? Yes. We could have found a tiny, shitty, too-loud apartment and parted with the only things that brought us happiness like our bulky skis and bikes. We could have moved into a crowded house with too many roommates (though still difficult to find a place for less than $1,000/month). We could have moved further away, increased my commute, paid more in gas. I could have quit my job and moved to Somewhere, Middle America hoping J’s salary could cover us while I looked for a well-paying job that didn’t also make me want to die, rented for another decade, and then maybe had the money saved to buy. We could have taken on second jobs. There were always traditional options available and all of them made my chest ache.
Maybe this is my “entitled millennial” showing, but I felt certain that as I approached my 30s (and J fully entered his) it was entirely unfair that as two people who combined cleared six figures in salary, we couldn’t have a safe, quiet rental for just the two of us AND save for a down payment on a home. I have bounced around between mold-infested houses, rat-infested duplexes, horrible roommates, and uninsulated basements for the last 10 years and quite frankly I am fucking fed up.
Now, there are also joyous aspects of this decision. As two people who love the outdoors, thrive on a haphazard adventure, and are eager to see new places, meet up with old friends, and not be handcuffed to expensive rent, the camper is such an extraordinary living situation. But I want to make it clear that given all of the options, what we really want is a safe place to land permanently (or, at least for more than two years) — and this was the best way we could make that happen.
As of Wednesday night, we have transitioned fully to the camper. We are parked in a friend’s yard and we leave Bellingham on September 16th for a myriad of other locations. I hope to share so many of the wonderful, wild adventures that come from this, while also steering clear of the overly-glorified influencer #vanlife trope. This is an incredible option we were privileged to have and it’s also maybe not the decision we would have made in a more perfect world. I believe I can hold both of those aspects simultaneously in this space.
More to come.