Thanks to our busnut ancestors...

[lvmci]

Hi All. Just saw an interesting article on CBS this morning, a story about Bargies. These are people who got fedup withe the cost of apartments, homes, or distance to affordable living in London, so they have built homes on barges and float or tye up to the inland waterway system of London, some are very nice, alot are older and many young people are seeing it as an alternative way to have a home.
  Of course none of this is new. Our busnut ancestors have been doing this since six and 8 wheels have been put under a closed cabin vehicles. I think Clifford, in his previous life, lived in a Conestoga Wagon, managing his 6 Detroit horses powers from the small seeside hamlet on the Caribbean Sea, later to be named after a famous Texan, over the Rocky Mountains to nearby the Snake river, to find a gorgeous babe.
  But I digress.
  Trailers, tent cars, motorcycle pulled tents, even tents themselves, from Nomads to hikers in the Grand Canyon, have been living an alternative life style. Bargies are not new. The south east Asians have been living in Junks for most of history, tyed to eachother, coming up with the customs to allow people to live in such close proximity and traverse the beauty and problems of living on water. We too have always had people living on the Mississippi, and swamps. Even Lucy and Desi did it so that she could collect rocks from every place she stopped!
  But our busnut ancestors, those hardy, innovative, mechanically savvy, handy with carpentry and electrically astute predecessors, have paved the way for us to build from something meant to transport tourists and business people, across the great bands of asphalt of the North and Central American continent, to find spots to make their home site, temporarily or longer.
  I for one thank them. And thanks to those creative people who used the publishing magazine system and then that small upstart, the internet, originally meant to allow scientists to immediately talk about flying satellites, to duplicate the conversations on published paper, with slick pictures, to appear on a flickering screen, so that I might ask, " why is straight weight oil important and what is ash content!". lvmci...

[Geoff]

I guess you are relating full timing in a RV/Bus Conversion as an alternative to high rents and property values in metropolitan areas.  I recently read an article about people who attempt to do that around the SF Bay area and the authorities are constantly making stricter rules to run them off.  I used to park my bus at my in-laws house in the Sacramento area until this year the city came up with a 24 hour limit on RV's so now I am parking at my brother-in-law's shop 5 miles away.  We have a new member on this board who rents a small commercial lot in SF to park his bus in the City.  It is tough to stealth camp in metro areas.

--Geoff

[luvrbus]

I can see people dropping out of the mainstream the American dream is just BS,you buy a home maintain it for years for nothing you never own it because your silent partner is there every year with his hand out for taxes as part of your lease agreement.It really pisses me off paying school taxes for a school to build a 25 million + football stadium that only a select few benefits from    

[lostagain]

I remember as a child in France in the 50s and 60s the Gypsies from Eastern Europe. They lived in caravans, some drawn by horses, some by trucks. They would set up camp on vacant property to work for a few weeks, then move on. Our parents prohibited us from talking to them. They always intrigued me when I walked by them on the way to school. I hear they are still around and roaming around Europe.

JC

[Geoff]

I can see people dropping out of the mainstream the American dream is just BS,you buy a home maintain it for years for nothing you never own it because your silent partner is there every year with his hand out for taxes as part of your lease agreement.It really pisses me off paying school taxes for a school to build a 25 million + football stadium that only a select few benefits from    

The thing that irks me is that schools get their money increases​ from voters passing bonds that go on our property taxes.  Maybe I am mean but I don't have kids in school and I generally vote against new bonds for just about everything, not just schools.  My property taxes are already at $5,000 a year just for my house.  Lucky my shop is on my house property or I would be paying twice.

--Geoff

[luvrbus]

Yep when you sell your house and the value has increased by a 100 grand just go back and check your taxes and look at the increase you paid for in taxes it is BS 

[sledhead]

awe death and taxes

I feel for the young people trying to buy or rent a house ! in toronto you can not find a house for under $1,000,000 or so they say on the news and 1.5 hrs north of the city the price for a house has gone up by 30 % from last year $ 650 -850 k and if you work in toronto you get stuck in traffic going to work every day . I like the idea of a tiny house ( bus ) but there is no place that you can put them for any length of time . the smallest house you can build today and get a building permit is 750 sq ' so no place to put a tiny house that is legal . no one wants to go through all the red tape to set up a community ( like a mobile trailer park set up ) so they could rent the land and get the services that are needed .  "not in my back yard " is the typical answer   

dave

[Dave5Cs]

Tom V, I think we saw JC and Clifford in Ireland in 2006 when we were there. They were in an RV park just outside County Cork in 13A. We went to visit them but saw their horses were gone so they must of been at Walmark getting grocery's.

[lvmci]

funny Dave...

[lvmci]

our ancestors...bus conversion or C class?

[Geoff]

That is a tiny house RV.

[lvmci]

Funny Geoff...I  wonder if the fireplace has a mantle!a

[PP]

Is that Cliff and JC standing in front?

Whatever happened to the rail riders? For a while it was popular to buy old cabooses and freight cars and convert them into homes and move with the trains or sit in sidelines.

[Iceni John]

When I worked for British Rail after I left school I had this crazy idea of buying a surplus railway passenger coach (that's a 'railroad passenger car' to folk here!), converting it and living wherever BR would let me keep it.   Unfortunately the reality is that one is dependent on being hitched to a freight train to be moved anywhere, and there were few places that would allow a live-aboard coach to be stabled long-term.   Today that's not even an option at all.   So, that plan fizzled out, but it still left me the idea of living in something other than a typical bricks-and-mortar house, even though at that time it was still relatively affordable to actually buy one's own home in England.

My next idea was to buy one of the surplus double-decker buses that Eastern Counties Omnibus Co. was selling off for scrap value at the time, just a few hundred pounds for a lovely old Bristol FLF with the legendary Gardner engine and ECW bodywork and plenty of life left in it for residential use.   The main reason I didn't pursue that further (apart from not yet having a driving license!) was that there simply wasn't the acceptance in England then, and even less so now, of folk living in converted buses.   Anyone who does so is either a vagrant or 'gypsy' and likely to be constantly moved on by the police, or someone on the fringes of society who would not find anywhere to legally park.   There is nothing equivalent there to the US federal lands here that allow free camping  - all land there is owned by someone or by the Crown.

My third idea was to buy a canal narrow boat.   After having had two wonderful vacations on the canals in rented narrow boats, I knew this was a lifestyle I could easily accept.   I even looked at some boats to buy, but at the time I could not get a 'marine mortgage' because I did not own a house as collateral.   Thwarted, again.   I still sometimes wonder if I would have eventually found a way to buy a narrow boat if I had remained in England.   It's a bucolic life, mooring wherever you want on the canal towpath, and seeing parts of the country completely invisible to most other people.   There's been a recent upsurge in narrow boat dwellers and barge dwellers due to the absurd cost of housing in London and elsewhere that makes home ownership in Britain essentially impossible for almost all younger adults now.   Boat living is widely accepted in the Netherlands and France  -  you're not assumed to be questionable or suspicious if you choose to live on the canals or rivers in those countries.

So, here I am several decades later with my bus, finally realizing a life-long dream to convert a mobile vehicle of some sort.   Sometimes it takes a while before you can turn ideas into reality!

John