Heart and Mind

Living in Your Car

When people talk about hitting hard times, they often jokingly (or not) make some kind of reference to living in their car. Perhaps they'll say something like, "If I don't find new work in a month, I'm going to be living in my car!" People who fear living in their cars are those worried about being homeless—either due to the financial crises of not being able to pay for a place to live or because of some other circumstance, such as being thrown out of their current living arrangement.

If you're living in your car, it's not good. I wouldn't want to live in my car. I should make that clear right out of the gate.

That much said, the idea that "living in your car" is the yardstick to measure rock bottom still strikes me as a little bit funny. Besides the fact that you have to at least be doing well enough to own a car to live in one, I can't quite over look this notion: Excluding comparisons to places that are meant to be lived in, your car seems like it's a pretty good place to live.

If you couldn't live in a house, apartment, motel, or the like, your car offers amazing comforts and conveniences. It's dry. It's heated. It's air-conditioned. It has at least one, if not more, 12-volt receptacle that can provide you with electricity. It's lighted. It's got windows that open and close. It's got chairs, and they recline. It's got a storage receptacle (trunk), and, frankly, the whole thing is basically storage on account of the fact that it locks. It's got a sound system with built in speakers, AM/FM radio, and a CD player and/or means to plug in an iPod. It's got mirrors, cup-holders...

OK, so there is no running water and there are other drawbacks, but I think you'd have to agree that a car offers amenities that you just won't find elsewhere. Hey, on a cold night when the wind is blowing a wintery-mix of snow and freezing rain, I would kill to sleep in my shed if the other choice was being on the street, and yet my shed doesn't have ANY of the things mentioned above that are standard on any modern-day car. My shed can't hold a candle to my car in terms of a place to live.

And when you think about it, we use our cars as little "mobile homes" for short periods of time, don't we? The car your drive to work (or wherever you go for a long day) sometimes becomes your little portable apartment. I use mine to store stuff I'll need later but don't want to carry around with me. I've gone out there on my lunch break and gone to sleep. I've gotten changed in my car. I've used it as a place to read. As a place to make phone calls. As a place to open up my laptop and get some work done. Hell, it's like my office when I am away from the office. And it never matters if it's raining or not.

Oh, and American lore suggests that a car's "back seat" is the number one place for teenagers to fool-around when they're too young to get privacy at home. If you can't get it done at home, look to your car.

Yeah, living in your car would be rotten, but it could be far worse, right? Your car is a pretty darn good shelter. It kind of gets a bad rap when people negatively talk about it like it's the worst place to live.

posted by Steve @ 3:45 PM