Vandwelling Thread

bump

>Or would it be cheaper in the ling run to get a small solar panel with a compact fridge?

Would you consider a top-loading one then?

Thermoelectric cooling doesn't give very much cooling. I have a big 22-inch cube igloo and while it gets cool inside, it's really for delaying the warming up of things when you're transporting something in the summer. The igloo is top-loading so all the cold air doesn't just flow out each time the lid is opened. That also helps reduce introducing more moist air into the cavity where it condenses on cold items.

>No one here is interested in living the free life?
Your idea has been thought about in many variations by the plague of Homeless people all over the country. So there's no lack of people who want to live a life free of paying for things.

It's not free as you have to spend money for food, clothing, fuel, medicines, and sundries. And you might even have dindu moving in with you because you are camping on their territory (the entire usa is "owned" by them).

For 2 to 4 day official camping trips (permits in state parks) that could be fun. But the homeless problem all over the place has changed how law enforcement works for campers. If you're way out in the wilderness, that's one thing. But if you're anywhere close to a town, you'll get driven out by the state park rangers as living in the parks is not allowed. Hikers and other travelers will also report your presence.

Around here, the national parks are sealed to private auto traffic. So no bringing in a camper vehicle.

>Used Ambulance.
Heavy chassis.
Too many openings via the plastic light.
Fuel consumption.
Sticks out like a sore thumb.

>No one here is interested in living the free life?
Where and how do people living the free life wash up?

trucker gas stations, if you have a trucker buddy he can hook you up with unlimited showers

>So what is the consensus on the mid-sized school buses?
Whether you carry passengers or not, don't you need a bus endorsement on your drivers license in most states?

cygany kurwa!
this is my van

>No one here is interested in living the free life?
It used to be do-able without so much stigma. But now, there are so many people living out of cars that neighborhoods try to evict them with vigilante actions.

Those homeowners are just scared of the druggies and ex-cons living and dealing out of those vehicles. We have the same problem here. When campers show up, neighborhood crime goes up and stuff becomes missing from our backyards especially bicycles.

Minivan dweller here. I don't prepare or cook food in the van as it's unhygienic and I'm hyperstealthing innacity. I'm spending too much money on food. Rec stuff I can buy from the grocery store that: healthy-ish, cheap, compact for putting in a backpack all day, tastes acceptable, no cooking, no fridge. Alternatively, healthy cheap items to buy out.

Can I just say, McShits has fantastic oatmeal.

Winter sucks. All the fruit is out of season and tastes like ass.

I'm about 3 months in and haven't got a knock yet. Went from being in the red every month to being in the black.

gym membership. This is like the easiest problem to solve.

>4run, cher, trooper

All primo. I should have gone with them instead of a dodgy grand caravan. Can you rip the seats out?

>builds

I'm a lazy bastard. I just put the seats down, tossed a shikibuton in the back, and called it a day. Hardest part was purging my belongings to get them all to fit in comfy. I have: small storage ottoman, cardboard apple box, duffel bag, a few backpacks for dirty laundry, and a plastic storage bin. Also got one of those closet organizers and strung it over the passenger seat so the pockets hang over the back, for quick access items.

If you go to that r/vandwellers they'll con you into thinking you need all this and that shit. You don't. So I sunk like $150 into shit I didn't even use (and couldn't return.) Just put your shit in there and then see what you actually need.

For me it is the McChicken, the best fast food sandwich.

/out/ usually has some food/cooking threads.

classic

>cardboard apple box
While a membership in Sam's Club isn't worth it for you, I'll point out that they have lots of stackable sturdy boxes available for free. Those are the fruit boxes to carry the produce products. The cardboard is very sturdy, has long fibers, and the paper does not "fray" easily so it might be surface treated. Each cardboard box is about 4 to 7 inches high and has stacking nibs that let other similar boxes stack. Because the industry is standardized for distributor and store utility, different brands stack.

apart from it being a bit scummy it actually looks pretty comfy

Some paint and ambient LED lighting would really liven it up.

and maybe a low bed frame to get the mattress of the floor

Bump for interest. Anyone got stories or tips for van dwelling?

>ambient LED lighting would really liven it up.
Unnecessary power usage and attracts attention. You find out soon enough that the less attention others give to your car the better.

>Anyone got stories or tips for van dwelling?
How do you go about finding places to stay overnight for free? I am curious and sort of want to try mixing up stays between hotel and overnight camping on road trips. But if I can't hold costs down, then that's the end of road trips.

The windows are already blocked with foam for insulation. Plus a LED strip would use less power than that one bulb.

there are fridges that run off propane or lpg
and if you want to use any great deal of power you park by a plug

When I see low-lifes around my street the thing I'm most worried about is my home value falling.

>When I see low-lifes around my street the thing I'm most worried about is my home value falling.
They don't even have to do anything to you. As soon as there are several burglaries in your neighborhood, the next home insurance payment automatically rises up because the insurance companies have noted the crime increase in your immediate area. It's a fast to rise and slow to fall algorithm.

And yes, rates have gone down by noticeable amounts before. Two areas next to my neighborhood built up as HOA gated communities. Because they are within a quarter-mile of my geolocation, their super-low crime rates decreased the average crime rate per house in my immediate area, so my insurance costs dropped.

A solar panel isn't going to do you any good for running a refrigerator. Even 4 950CCA group 31 batteries through a 5000w modified sine wave inverter can't run a chest refrigerator with a high efficiency compressor and the door closed for more than 12 hours. If you want to run a bank of 8 deep cycle batteries on a decent charge controller, and THEN slap a solar panel on top, go ahead, but it's really only going to buy you about an hour of power a day. Unless you get a high output alternator mounted on the engine wound to the capacity charging circuit (getting one custom wound with a 48v output for a 48v charger is ideal, since DC-DC step up/down controllers literally just throw power away) you're going to find yourself idling at least 6 hours a day to keep your batteries charged above dead in a 24 hour period.

Since most of you will be slumming around people that'll get aasranched about idling or generators, get a starting capacitor for the van. It's lighter, takes less space, and is more reliable than a jump pack. You don't even need to take out the stock 12v system in the van, just put the capacitor in series on a deadman's switch and it'll tip the engine over any time the atock battery shits itself, even if your battery bank is flat, too.

Bonus round: inverters throw away energy. If you have a DC battery bank, use DC adapters whenever possible. Converting DC to AC back to DC for things like phones, laptops, etc will use 30-80% more energy than needed due to the waste energy involved in conversion.

>A solar panel isn't going to do you any good for running a refrigerator

You also have to deal with robbery. If you have a solar panel, that is a signal flag to all the thieves to take over your vehicle. And they will do it with you there. The robbers are bold and walk right up to you and demand you hand it over. I had pulled up to the public library to drop off the borrowed DVD movies** when I saw a DINDU assault in progress. The dindu waited outside the library as people walked out and did it even with lots of people around. He had hoodie that wrapped even most of his face and a long dark ballcap so you couldn't see his face well.

The dindu used a sucker punch to knock the white lady down. That's what will happen to you. Someone will sucker punch you, stomp your arm or leg to break a joint so you can't get after them, then they take your keys and loot or even drive off. And they will do it in front of people.

No one here is interested in living the free life?

There's no such thing as "free life". You'll likely just wind up broken down begging for money on Youtube like all the other van dwelling faggots.

Anyone ever did this with a station wagon?

I mean, I just went to target and got some boxes. After downsizing my ownership of items, I was left with only the need for one. They're sturdy, yes.

>sleeping innaminivan, early morning around 5, still dark out
>suddenly a roaring engine pulls in right behind me
>LOUD
>panic that it might be a tow truck (I'm parked legally but who knows, cities are ruthless and I always see poor bastards get their shit towed)
>pull covers over head and pray
>idles there with headlights on, directly behind my vehicle, for upwards of ten minutes
>engine shuts off, I don't hear a door open though
>starts getting light out
>I want to leave and head out for my day, prefer to do this in the dark before normies start walking around
>peek up and look out back window (I don't cover my windows, but they're tinted the legal max)
>it's just a fucking jacked up pickup, not a tow truck
>shit retracts back inside colon
>not sure if I see a guy in the drivers seat or not
>watch, cautiously get up to start gathering items I need for the day
>movement in their drivers seat
>oh fuck it is a guy
>vault into my drivers seat
>chilling, trying not to look like I just slept in my vehicle
>fucker is sitting there like another ten minutes
>screw it
>shove shit in bag, grab it and prepare to leave
>new dawn now, light enough to see by
>I open my door
>light turns on
>fuggg it and get out, lock up and start walking
>peer back, guy doesn't seem phased, is wearing construction worker clothes and finally getting out of his truck
>he must be working on the apartment tower they're building down the street
>whistle.mp3
>nothing happened

I don't know what the guy must have thought, I know I looked weird as shit appearing from nowhere. But it's scary when you feel trapped in the vehicle.

>There's no such thing as "free life".
There used to be. Now it is only a romantic memory of America gone by. All the violent predatory homeless have turned "free life" into a dangerous mockery of how it used to be.

Readers Digest had more than one story of "free life". One from an old 1970's issue that I liked was how five millionaire friends (back when a million was a lot of money) had annual "vacation" where they tried living the "free life" in different ways. One would be driving and camping which was easy. Another would be hopping aboard freight cars (train) to hitch a free ride as far as they could go. They would stay in hotels at the destination though. They were trying to re-live parts of the historic american romanticism.

Now, a million dollars is a laugh. Even supermarket cashiers become millionaires from their jobs. For example, WinCo supermarket published some time ago that it had 163 cashiers who earned a total of a million or more from the company in total compensation during their career at just that company. Les Schwab in his autobiography (with additional writer help) wrote about how his company generated a lot of millionaire employees who started with the company and stayed with it due to its profit sharing plan at each store location. If you work for a jew, well, of course you will be treated unfairly. That's why there is that $15 dollar minimum wage movement.

If not for all the dangerous or criminal people also living the "free life", the idea of doing that in today's society wouldn't be so bad. All my local walmarts stopped allowing overniters as other people have said in other threads. Is this the coming end in the whole usa of walmart parking lots as a place to sleep overnite?

>be my retard self
>left a plug for a cig lighter charger visible. no device, just the cord+plug empty
>come back and find window smashed
>they didn't get in but I had to shell out shekels to have the window replaced
>value of the charger was like $2.
>apparently coons will smash your window for some loose change

The shittier and plainer your vehicle is, the better. Fuck solar panels, they're reddit tier idiocy. I have a club locked to my steering wheel now and might pick up a fake car alarm light (real system is $400 and I'm poor.) Never anything of value visible. Just some clothes and bedding, no one wants to steal that. Everything else is covered or stashed.

God damned thieving coons, man. The shittier your van looks, the less likely a nig will rob you. Never look like you have money or valuables. All these fancy set-ups that are unstealth are hipster redditors who dwell on their mommy's driveway for two months then get an apartment like good rentcucks.

What the hell do people need a power system for anyway? Just get portable power banks and charge them at starfucks, it's enough to keep your phone charged and you can hide them in a backpack. People lived without refrigerators for ten thousand years. It's not a necessity. And you don't need hipster fairy lights, neither.

There's people who live in a fucking prius. Yes.

Looks comfy, right?
Well, your opinion will change once you're shitting in a bucket and then sleeping next to it.

>keeping one's shit
why

I can't tell you how much I hate typical homeless people. They give us a bad name. They shit up the libraries and coffee shops, they're all on drugs, stink like hell, leave mess everyone, harass people, start shouting and cursing out of nowhere, violent, harass women, ask for free shit and steal everything... They're a huge menace. Make the rest of us who actually shower and have jobs/other income look bad by association. And they're nothing but disease vectors, litterers, bums, and filthy trash. We have entire streets in my city that SMELL like hobo even when they're gone. Like piss and BO. It's a shame because the old hobo culture really was romantic, but they've gone and ruined it with drug use and lack of composure. Now our libraries are mugged with hobos who stink to hell and leave ten thousand bags of their junk splayed all over, and sit there coughing and hacking, mumbling to themselves, sleeping. Not /comfy/. So instead of the library, which is free, I have to take up in coffee shops and pay "rent" of $3 tea every few hours. And they lay all over the streets and sidewalks, too. Leave trash all over. The drug-using leftist loser hipster trash who vandwell aren't much better. If I tell people I vandwell they assume I'm a pothead hipster. And the ones who are obnoxious about it get communities cracking down on the rest of us, no overnight parking on the streets, walmarts are banning us.

Feels bad man. Get a job and a shower, you dirty fucks.

Why would you keep a full shit bucket in the van with you while you slept?

I wouldn't, because I have a home, but I reckon there may be situations in which it would be difficult to dispose of your shit.

The ass was not fat.

Don't forget: every single fluid a human being can produce has spilled in it and no matter how hard you try, not all of it will come out.

>When I see low-lifes around my street the thing I'm most worried about is my home value falling.
In residential areas where they have no place to stay, that usually means they are scoping the place out.

If your lowlifes are from Section 8, well, that was Obama's method to try to re-integrate people back into society by renting out expensive homes and putting social service cases into them. It's a lot more expensive than building more subsidized slum apartment housing and having all the subsidized housing cases live there. But the notion was that keeping everyone living in a criminalistic slum setting raises the kids in a pro-criminal setting.

Thing is: that's always been the case. It was just hidden and suppressed back then. You'd get your ass tossed out just as hard back then as you would do now if you try to hitch a ride on a train car.

>why
While I don't live the free life, disposal can't just be done instantly. If there is a porta potty type unit, then it needs a lot of finagling. If it is bucket, it still has to be cleaned out somewhere otherwise it is permanently tossed.

I've seen homeless piss while walking down the busy four lane highway. They have enough clothing on that only the tip of the penis sticks out and they spray as they walk alongside the buildings. It doesn't look obvious either.

As for poop, I've walked downtown and then suddenly there is a log lying on the sidewalk and tabloid newspaper lying around. So if you are into picking up trash, be careful because that paper you pick up may have poop on it.

And they don't conserve paper. I not talking about emptying public restrooms of paper towels and toilet paper. They do that. But they will take a whole tabloid newspaper. Poop on the ground. Now, take the tabloid and open it up and wipe. Flip a page and wipe. Flip more pages and wipe. Toss the whole tabloid on the ground and walk off. If you pick up the tabloid and try to read it or touch it carelessly - TRAP OCCURS. Picture of unrelated trap.

No, but I've been doing it a semi for 7 years. Had a guy in a minibus come up to me with a gascan while I was fueling asking for a fuel gallons of fuel, and topped off his can when my tanks were full. I know he's living the dream, and all that teenage poon isn't going to fuck itself if he doesn't have the fuel to get to the show on time.

So it's like a Motel or Hotel?

Run a Ozone generator for a couple weeks and it should be fine-ish. Maybe be careful around any exposed metal bits as I've heard of people getting hepatitis when working on them. Though you might want to get used to hepatitis if you go for the van life as you'll be looking for a vein in your dick to shoot up in no time.

>So it's like a Motel or Hotel?
It's why I pack my own pillow and I try to touch the comforter or covers as little as possible. Too many people have sex with pillows under their butts and the buttcrack juices soak into the pillows or chair fabrics.

I've been working on this for a little while to use as a camp vehicle or to live in temporarily if needed. Not as comfy as a van by any means though. It has a tool box and padded bed rug in the truck bed, and I can get into the cab through the sliding glass window if needed.

It is a pain to get in and out of and you have to crawl around cause the ceiling is so low, but it's doable.

I'm going to a welding school for three months in a different state and I may try to live in it for that time. I have an anytime fitness membership to shower, brush teeth, workout and I could use library wifi or whatever for internet. Not sure if I can deal with how uncomfortable it will likely be though, and finding parking overnight might be a bitch eh

>finding parking overnight might be a bitch
You have to avoid windows fogging up. Around here, security patrol services and police use fogged up windows as the clue that someone is living in their vehicle on the street. So if you park at some 24hr supermarket to pretend your car belongs to one of the workers there, it can work as long as you don't fog up windows.

Parking in the street is harder. In parking lots, you avoid the police with their automated license plate readers. But on the streets and other places that police cruisers go such as behind stores, the license plate readers reveal a lot about the car owner's statuses. Based on that, they can get out to inspect and issue a citation. Our city is trying to crack down on vagrancy, so instead of giving tickets that are ignored, they're crafting laws to impound the vehicle immediately. Paying the fine, tow fees, impound fee, and paperwork fees, and getting it out of impound costs over $1000. They're still debating it since the anti-discrimination activists say that law can unfairly target people who have jobs but didn't update their license plate tabs for lack of money. So they claim it's unfair to tow those vehicles when they are illegally parked and don't have valid license plates.

So im kinda more like
I lived in my jeep for 2 weeks, traveled over 3000 miles and just in gas alone i probably spent 700 usd. I only stayed at a hotel once due to having the stomach flu. Having a flushable toilet and shower make life 100% better when sick.
Other than that its usually 20 bucks to camp almost anywhere except the bigger parks that cater to rv crowds. The most expensive place i stayed was in colorado 40 bucks for a single site with a 20 entrance fee because it was a state park (Mesa Verda). But it had showers flushing toilets and free wi-fi. Also its one of the only nice camping sites close to 4 corners.
For food i used a wynter fridge freezer that costs 600 new. As long as you drive once a day it will keep the batter powered enough for the fridge to run all day, and this was in heat up to 123f.

For liviing free i would think it would be much easier to do in a sail boat vs a Van. You can basically sleep where ever and if weather gets bad there are alot of places you can dock for cheap. There is almost always work on the coasts and when you have a boat most people dont tend to treat you as homeless.
I know some of you probably have more experience with vehicle living but i did a lot of truck camping so if u have any questions feel free to ask.

Thank you for the tips m8

>your opinion will change once you're shitting in a bucket and then sleeping next to it.
Does anyone actually do that? I doubt it.

>Get a job and a shower, you dirty fucks.
No one hires mentally ill people. There used to be a lot less, but family culture has changed a lot in the USA. Ever since the mid 1980's, lots of families began tossing out the mentally ill members instead of taking care of their ill family members. Then the plague of homeless druggies rose in the 1990's with crystal meth creating a more violent kind of druggie.

In the USA, the federal HUD did a survey and found about half of the homeless live in five USA states. These five are typically the most liberal ones with extensive social services paid for by the state government. So it seems that homeless also tend to migrate to states that don't persecute them. Does that mean to decrease the homeless problem, your city and state simply need to persecute them harshly or give them a free bus ticket to a liberal state?

I've toyed with the idea, just for camping, not actually living, of an Avalanche with a truck cap. Have the divider down/removed and pull out the back seats.

>tfw no restored type 2

im converting my 1970's wagon into a cross country car

my plans are a motorbike on the rear towbull with one of those ramps, roof racks stretching from the tailgate to the windscreen, and bedding in the cargo area. keep the front bench intact too. currently rebuilding the engine for insured reliability

>finding parking overnight might be a bitch eh

1) Rest Areas
2) Truckstops

Ive workes security at a couple of different Truckstops (Love's and Flying J) and people always sleep in their car in the parking lot overnight.

I should add for truckstops, as long as you buy some stuff (food, beveverages, showers, etc.) and don't cause any trouble, the staff won't really care how long you stay.

>1) Rest Areas
Our state patrol inspects them regularly and looks for regular overnight users. So camping out at them is risky.

You can live a free life by working hard for 10 years only and investing it in stocks.

I fucking hate this new van life bull shit. People always come to my upper-middle class neighborhood and park in the fucking street thinking we will do nothing about it.

>three different instances of this happening
>starting to become a problem with trash and human waste
>cops can't do shit unless I can prove someone is living in it
>ask the neighbors if they have family visiting and if the vehicles belong to them
>nobody knows who the vehicles belong to
>knock on the vehicle
>THEY NEVER FUCKING COME TALK TO YOU LIKE A HUMAN BEING
>forced to leave a note like a passive aggressive twat
>states that they need to leave in 24 hours
>worked 2 times
>third time the passive aggressive twat left a response note on his own fucking car
>"I'm not leaving you don't own the street"
>that night put a large rock through the windshield at 4AM
>vehicle was gone that day

Seriously, you fucks need to respect private property and neighborhoods. If you want to do this in state parks or rest stops by all means, but don't do this shit where I live.

you are a real hero.
Fuck hippies.

National Parks are a great way to save money.

An annual pass is like $60, and most of the camping is free.

>Fuck hippies.
They're not hippies. They are people unable to get jobs because of any combination of criminal records, mental health issues, or drugs. Their families will not help them even if the family is wealthy. There's a lot of that nowadays where the family simply conserves its money and writes someone off. The culture has changed a lot, thus making it more acceptable to toss people away with the "me first" philosophy of capitalism. If there is no benefit, then write them off.

So that's a major reason why we have so much homelessness increase even during the prosperous years of the 1990's, 2000's, and now 2010 decade. All the decades had prosperous years but only for certain groups of people. Even in the 2008 meltdown, there were lots of people making a lot of money off the misfortune of others. This of course generated even more homelessness as it pushed those barely able to hold a job (mental health, crim records, drugs) over the cliff. When the gap between wealthy and everyone else is small, those who are marginally employable are able to be employed. But with the big gap as it is now, homelessness will only increase.

This sucks so much because it would be great if everyone could have the freedom to experience "Living Freely" in their lifetimes. But that lifestyle has been severely tarnished by the homeless who are not living freely but living poorly or criminally.

Unfortunately, the rest of society lumps those sad cases with the rest of us who want to try "Living Freely". Another age of romanticism of old American Highway life has gone by.

Snowbirds sort of do it, but they are "Living Expensively" since they take their RV homes to RV parks with high fees and taxes. There's a whole service industry created for them.

A lot of this was caused by the state shutting down mental institutions, so now the mentally ill have to rely on either their family, or they get tossed into the street.

>the mentally ill have to rely on either their family, or they get tossed into the street.
A lot of times, they can't even benefit from social welfare such as food stamps because of gangs. The gangs look at those food stamp debit cards as free money, and force the person to hand over the card and its PIN number. They then cash out that month's balance.

Boats are super expensive.

What really should happen is that we re-open the mental institutions, and put these mentally ill homeless people in them.

It's a win-win:
They get 3 hot meals and a warm bed
Society doesn't have to bear the burden of them shitting up every public place.

>What really should happen is that we re-open the mental institutions, and put these mentally ill homeless people in them.
The reason why they were closed in the first place was that they were super expensive per person. An official mental institution has a huge number of expensive medical requirements under the law.

As mental health goes, privatization makes it worse. The county south of mine privatized their health care system, so even the public hospital was a sort of HMO. The private company received a zillion dollars annually as the ceiling. Any cost over that they had to eat. If the actual cost was less, they got to keep a percentage as profit and return the rest to the county as savings. The county guaranteed a minimum profit to the company. To avoid treating most of the mental health patients, the private company managed to get them interpreted as criminals, thus they went to the county jail instead of being treated. As a result, the county had to set aside a huge section of jail just for mentally ill criminals. There was controversy about that method of profiteering.

The reason they were closed was because they were poorly regulated torture factories. They were just places to throw those you didnt want to deal with.

>The ACLU's most important Supreme Court case involving the rights of people with mental illness was filed on behalf of Kenneth Donaldson, who had been involuntarily confined in a Florida State Hospital for 15 years. He was not dangerous and had received no medical treatment.

15 years in a mental facility without receiving treatment.

Ok, fuck you it was Obama. Section 8 existed way before he was president.

I lived out of my shortcab '93 Dakota from 17-20 because nobody would rent to me.

Shit sucked, would not recommend.

I do now have a Winnebago micro travel trailer I use when traveling out west for vacation. It's amazing how efficient LP utilities can be, and I've augmented it with a 12v battery bank and solar panels on the roof for an extra fridge (since I only ever use it alone the batteries went in the "guest" storage and I'm frequently in the middle of nowhere in the middle of summer and shit gets hot).

If by Obama you actually mean Dubya. It also resulted in a 75% drop in the homeless population in Utah alone.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First

>Ok, fuck you it was Obama. Section 8 existed way before he was president.
It was Obama that PUSHED to have a greater number of poor people integrated into society using Section 8. I believe most section 8 is a waste of money. Letting poor people live in and integrate into prosperous neighborhoods sounds noble on paper, but in actual practice, I don't think it's practical when there are more urgent needs for the money.

The state of utah looked at the cost of homeless living on the streets causing problems, causing usage of infrastructure services, getting sick and using hospital emergency rooms, and the costs of excessive social services. It was cheaper to build new economy housing in housing parks (nice looking, not slum-like). Selected homeless were then moved into the new housing.

This. The asylum "system" was dismantled with good reason after the the public became aware of the horrors that took place within the facilities.

The sometimes-unfortunate result is that today it's difficult to hold someone against their will unless they pose an immediate threat to another person or themself.

The outlook is pretty bleak when it comes to dealing with non-violent mental cases that are out on the street. The most likely outcome is that, as in the past, the penal system will end up dealing with and ultimately warehousing those individuals.

Granted, at least in the US, the criminal justice and prison systems would be improved a lot with the addition of proper mental health care. Getting taxpayers to agree to "lavish" such things on criminals is easier said than done, though.

1987 dodge b150
$1200

The problem is that if a state tries to solve the homeless problem, other states see that and ship their homeless to that state in order to get rid of them. Or the homeless migrate to that state in order to avoid harsh persecution or even "illegal" treatment by the police.

Prisoners being released from prisons can get a bus ticket. So ex-cons can also end up in those states because the system supports that.

All of that makes an unfairly large burden on those places that try to solve problems and they may crumple under the strain of excess homelessness.

>The outlook is pretty bleak when it comes to dealing with non-violent mental cases that are out on the street.

There's nothing to do but turn to a life of crime on the streets. When there are no jobs, and welfare turns off after 2 years unless disabled status, they eventually end up either in warehouse jails (minimum security detention centers that don't even look like what you'd expect of a prison (no barbed wire, just locked doors).

While people object to prisons being built nearby, detention centers quietly get built in the countryside and then cities grow and surround them. It might be the case that some people don't even realize they are working near such a detention center. I remember driving by a residential area, and it surrounded a detention center. The city had expanded out year after year.

In my state, the cost was $44,000 per prisoner in 2010 usa dollars in my state for a state prisoner. Don't know the detention center cost, but it was probably lower.

Car crime is not high near prisons or detention centers as far as I can tell. What is apparent is that car crimes are much higher near social service centers, bus terminals, salvation army, homeless shelters, drug treatment sites, needle exchanges, havens, and public libraries where destitute people congregate.