n a gloomy January day in Los Angeles, Austin Pedroni wakes up in his chilly van in the warehouse parking lot of Loaded, a skateboard company where Pedroni works.

Inside, Pedroni has installed solar panels on the roof that are connected to a battery to power lights and outlets to charge his phone. His sink uses a hand pump to pull water from a tank that sits under a wooden counter to brush teeth or do dishes. A small camping stove sits on the counter. A small lofted bed fills the back wall of the van, a tangle of grey and navy sheets perched on top.

Pedroni usually starts his day with a bowl of Uncle Sam's Original cereal. He will often take a shower in the company bathroom and read fiction books before work starts.

"It's super nice having my entire house in the parking lot at work." Pedroni says.

Most days, Pedroni likes to head to a Culver City climbing gym after work to exercise and use the Wi-Fi to help him plan his weekly schedule around work, freelancing video and photography for skateboarders, and visiting with old roommates in the area.

Pedroni moved into his white, Dodge Sprinter van in November 2018, after his $700 monthly rent for a house shared with 11 men in Culver City became too much on his $35,000 annual salary.

"I met some people who were doing it," Pedroni says. "I saw how feasible it was, and from there saved up my money, lived super cheap, and started living in a van."

Once quintessentially Californian, brightly colored vans loaded with surfboards overlooking expansive white sand beaches have become a symbol of rising housing costs, with vans taking on a new life, crowded with everything one owns, parked on streets throughout the city.

Rent in Southern California has risen steadily over the past decade, with many people finding it hard to keep up. A new wave of people choosing to live in vans is emerging across LA county. Read the methodology here.

Instagram has perpetuated the idea that people who live in vans live a luxurious life, but in reality many are living in vans because they offer economic flexibility in a poor housing market.

Rent is rising faster than income. Almost 60% of Los Angelenos are paying over a third of their income on housing. Over the last five years, median rent in LA County rose nearly 40%, according to Zillow data and ApartmentList.

The rapid increase in rent in the county can be attributed, in part, to a lack of available housing units. In Los Angeles, there is a huge demand and limited supply for housing units, and the city is not building enough to keep up with the demand, so rent continues to rise, according to Benjamin Henwood, a professor of social work at USC with expertise in housing.

In this rental climate, and in the absence of near equal increases in income, Angelenos will continue to see housing prices that are too expensive to afford, forcing people to try to find alternatives.

Brian Peck started to live in his van in 2017 after his rent became too expensive, wanting more space for himself. Peck was paying $700 per month to share a room in a house in the Westchester neighborhood of Los Angeles.

"You feel like you're at home no matter where you go," Peck says about vanlife. "It's my bed, it smells like me, it feels like home. I'm just like waking up different places but feeling like I'm in my little spot."

Vehicle dwelling has been a contested issue in Los Angeles for nearly six years. In 2015, the city introduced an update to an existing ordinance, Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) 85.02, which sought to provide parking guidelines for people living in their vehicles.

LAMC 85.02, initially introduced in 1983, banned parking overnight anywhere in the city. This was ruled unconstitutional in 2014 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, prompting the City Council to allow parking in industrial and commercial areas. The council approved the changes on Nov. 23, 2016.

Many advocates pushing for the city to help the homeless didn't think this was enough and that it punished people for living in a vehicle instead of sleeping on the streets. Jojo Smith, a resident of Los Angeles, said "we said one year ago in the state of emergency that we aren't going to criminalize homelessness, but here we are again, criminalizing homeless for sleeping in their vehicle."

When changes were being made to the law, the City Attorney requested that the city also begin working on a collaboration with the non-profit, Safe Parking LA, to establish parking lots within the city where parking would be allowed overnight from 6:30 p.m. to 6 a.m., and provide amenities such as bathrooms.

LA City Councilman Herb Wesson pushed the motion forward, and the first parking lot in the program opened in May of 2018 in Koreatown.

Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti tweeted his support of the Safe LA parking program, saying "ending homelessness requires using every tool possible. This week, I signed Council President @HerbJWesson's Safe Parking Pilot Program motion, which offers Angelenos sleeping in their cars safe places to park and helps connect them to the services and housing they need."

Wesson said he hopes to expand the program.

"What we've done so far is positive but there are still thousands of people sleeping in their cars in LA every night," Wesson said, "we need to continue to build partnerships with religious institutions and other organizations who have the space to host people sleeping in their cars so the program can expand."

Politicians are not the only people supporting this program. Ann Job, a resident of Sylmar, Calif., and advocate for these safe parking locations said, "I appreciate its not an easy task, but it's terribly important that we provide safe parking for our homeless, and provide restrooms and shelters at that safe parking."

As of 2019, the program has a total of six locations in the city providing "safety for up to 80 vehicles and approximately 95 persons every night," according to the Safe Parking LA website.

Sean Wright, a representative of Los Angeles Housing Services Authority, says there are about 15,000 people in LA County living in a vehicle, far more than the number of safe parking spaces available. The housing authority supports the safe parking initiative, explaining that it helps provide safety for people living in their vehicles.

Wright explained that because there are areas in the city that don't allow overnight parking, vehicle dwellers have to constantly move or they face citations, and lose their vehicle. He says that LAHSA supports safe parking because it provides a place for them to go, and begin to get out of the cycle of homelessness.

"Homelessness in a slow burn. A person may stay with family, then friends, then a motel, then their car, then end up on the streets. With every step, it gets harder to house someone," Wright says. "We want to help people living in their vehicles before they end up experiencing street homelessness."

This problem is not isolated to Los Angeles. The Bay Area has been facing problems with people living in their vehicles for years, struggling with parking policy to help people living in vehicles find parking. More recently, California Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, introduced a bill, AB 302, on March 25 that would allow overnight parking for homeless students at all community colleges in California.

Laura Metune, vice chancellor of governmental relations of California community colleges, said in an interview, that they "appreciate[s] the spotlight that this bill places on the true needs of our students" citing a survey conducted with Hope Center at Temple University, found that 60% of community college students in California faced housing insecurity.

Metune added that Los Angeles Community College District is trying to provide safe parking for students.

As rent continues to rise, more and more people may be facing the choice of trying to make rent payments, or living in a vehicle. The battle to find places to park may become the make or break factor in that decision.

he biggest cost when moving your life to a van is the initial remodel. Making a van a home takes time as every vanlifer will make adjustments to fit their lifestyle and add a little bit of their personality into it to really make it theirs.

While some people take their time to remodel, Pedroni made all of his changes at once. After spending $18,000 on his van, he immediately invested an additional $6,000, pulling from his savings, to remodel it, adding amenities such as solar panels, a small water tank and a bed.

"The whole reason I did this was for the freedom," Pedroni explains, "to pay less money to live so I can do more stuff." Pedroni believes he has more opportunity to go on adventures, such as ski trips to Mammoth, or try new experiences since he has moved into a van.

Many people choose to live in vans because it's simply a cheaper way to live in an area where rent continues to rise, making it less and less affordable to live in traditional housing options. Pedroni says he spends about $600 per month living in his van, compared to $1,100 per month, including all expenses, when he was living in a house with 11 guys on the Westside of Los Angeles. His current constant costs go towards gas, groceries, a gym membership and insurance.

In Pedroni's spare time, he races downhill skateboards, using his van as not only a way to get to and from races, but also as accommodation. For his lifestyle, travelling periodically for races, the van is a perfect alternative to paying a stagnant rent in the city.

Pedroni credits vanlife for relieving his previous monetary pressure. "I don't have to worry about making a certain amount of money," Pedroni explains. "I like the freedom to live wherever I want. I'm trying to go on some ski trips this year and I can just, like, park the van here, go for a month or two and not have to worry about paying rent or sub-leasing or anything like that."

Brian Peck was one who adapted his van over time as need arose. He had returned home to Connecticut for a few months, only to come back and the house he was formerly living in had no rooms to rent. He bought a van, used it as a bedroom, but otherwise living out of the main house, and planned on biding his time until a room opened up.

After that, he did some travelling, and got used to living in a van. "I wanted to like add a couple amenities, and that's when I put in a little kitchen and a sink," Peck says.

For Peck, he spends roughly the same amount of money as before, but now he has his own space. Peck formerly lived in a house in LA's Westchester neighborhood. His number of roommates was constantly in flux, from four to eight other people (Peck noted it was hard to pinpoint because there were many guys sleeping on couches or bunk beds to split the rent to make it as cheap as possible.)

After deciding to live in his van full-time, he rented a warehouse space up in Ventura to store some of his stuff. Peck says with the combination of the two, he gets way more space than he did in the house. The warehouse space is littered with surfboards, a large workbench and miscellaneous boxes. The warehouse has a small bathroom with a toilet and shower, and Peck brought in a small couch to make it more his own.

Peck uses the warehouse as an office. He lives in his van full time, but uses the warehouse space during the day to complete any freelance projects and work on his surfboards. Peck likes having the space because it made his move into a van much easier.

Peck pays $700 for the warehouse space, which he splits with a friend, compared to the nearly $800 he was paying to share a room in the Westchester house. His other expenses, like groceries and gas, have remained the same.

nstagram has a prevalent #vanlife presence, and it has made living in a van much more accessible and feasible. The vanlife gained traction, particularly with many millennials wanting to escape high rent prices.

Emily Pennington, a writer, blogger and vanlifer, says one of the reasons that vanlife gained traction is that "it's a way of reclaiming ownership of a space, no matter how small."

However, there is more to living in a van than the limited view presented on Instagram.

Pedroni explains that people judge him a little bit for his life choices.

"I don't like telling people I live in a van. There's like kind of a social stigma," Pedroni explains, "I don't know. Every time you tell somebody you live in a van, they have so many questions, like where do you live? I was like, oh, like I kind of live on the westside."

The negative stigma emerges, in part, from the prevalence in homelessness in LA.

"I guess technically I am homeless while my van is my home. I don't have more traditional home," Pedroni says. Although the negative stigma is definitely present, he says he is lucky in that those that those he spends most of his time with "don't think twice about it".

"I'm pretty fortunate where I'm not really forced to interact with that many people I don't want to interact with. So like most people I choose to interact with are pretty down to earth mellow people anyways who like totally get it and they accept it," he says.

Peck thinks that even though Instagram doesn't present the most realistic view of vanlife, its popularity has made living in a van better, lessening the negative perception.

"I don't think there's too much of a stigma, especially these days," Peck says, "A lot of young people are, are really into the whole #vanlife thing and traveling and living, um, tiny house living, living off the grid and stuff like that."

hen someone decides to live in a van, not pay rent and operate outside the housing market, they have effectively removed themselves from the housing market, which makes re-entry harder.

Richard K. Green, director and chair of the University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate, says that a credit score is key to determining a person's ability to compete in the housing market, and when you remove yourself, this could be affected.

By no longer paying rent, and accumulating a credit in the housing market, vanlifer’s are effectively removing themselves from the market. Without a history of paying rent, or paying utilities at a house, you don't build up 'credit' in the housing market. When you are renting or applying for housing, landlords check past leases or with past landlords to determine if you are reliable, this is not possible when you spend time living outside the system, and may cause rental applications to be rejected.

"There's a phrase that 'it's expensive being poor'," Green explains, meaning that you may not be able to get into professionally managed units, but rather into a unit that isn't any less expensive, but is poorly managed. Green adds that "it's entirely possible that once you're out of the system it is a little harder to get back home."

Benjamin Henwood, a professor of social work at USC with expertise in housing, affirms this, saying that without having a long-term lease, people can get priced out as rent continues to climb.

"It isn't sustainable," Henwood says about living outside the traditional housing market.

Both Pedroni and Peck feel that maybe one day they will consider living in an apartment again, but they are doing what they love for now.

"As of right now, I think I got a really good thing going with just my van and the warehouse and the, the money that I save and the space I do have is a really good balance," Peck says.

Pedroni wants to get an apartment eventually, but for now he is also happy where he is. "I'm just kind of doing it because it's the life I want to live into life I enjoy. And so as things like change and progress and such, um, and as I get different personal and career goals, I'm sure things will change and I might not be as attracted to living in a van."