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A related issue to restrictions regarding camping is the politics of zoning laws in America. As someone who works in Silicon Valley and can afford to rent an apartment but cannot afford to purchase even a condo in the area, for the past few years I've researched alternatives such as living in a mobile home and buying land and placing a tiny house on it. However, the zoning laws in many of the municipalities within a two-hour radius of Silicon Valley make it very difficult to do these things. In all the municipalities I researched, I'm not allowed to live in a mobile home on my own land unless I'm in the process of building a home on a permanent foundation. Homes on a permanent foundation must meet minimum size requirements, thus prohibiting tiny homes and thus requires spending more money for a larger place. Permits can cost many thousands of dollars, and that's assuming I could get the permits. Water is a serious issue; in some parts of Monterey County, there are long waitlists to connect to the water system, and in Cambria (a town in northern San Luis Obispo County) there's an ordinance barring any new construction until more water is available.

A part of me understands the rationale for these restrictions. But another part of me feels discouraged that the real estate market in much of California is all sewn up with no way to "hack" it without figuring out how to make $200K+ per year or throwing in the towel and moving to some other part of the state or outside California. Thus I continue to rent my apartment while trying to find other ways to get into real estate.

Serious answer: get into your local politics. Start calling up your representatives and demanding this change. Find a representative for which this is a key issue for them and start campaigning to get them elected or re-elected. Organize with other renters; there’s more of you than there are land owners there I bet.

The number of voters needed to radically alter the landscape of extremely local politics is probably maybe a dozen or less in this way, btw.

I got 14 residents of Los Altos Hills to join me to ask for changes to local zoning law. The council completely ignored us.

You have to be on the council, along with a like-minded majority. It'll be a full time job for all of you.

I disagree fully. This is not "Democracy". This is arbitrary little dictators pushing their little pet agenda forward (no matter how good in your example) over those that just want to be left alone. The same thing you're advocating is the same reason the landscape of regulation is currently such a mess.
Gavin Nuesome actually had good intentions with streamlining ADU's in California.

It turns out only the wealthy are taking advantage of the gift though.

In my county, I believe 6 guys took advantage of the streamlined process. It's still very expensive.

They used building the ADU as an excuse to build a bigger house, and that variance is hard to get, but if you have money and kiss ass, you can get it.

I believe almost all the 6 used an ADA unit to increase the size of their home. They all had to get variances from the town, and 5 got it. One homeowner refused to kiss the town council's ass, write begging letters to his neighbors, and attent countless meetings while paying for an architect, and a Builder's time.

They are all asked a bunch of questions.

The one that got me is "Are you going to rent the unit out to low income individuals. (Low income in my town is like "$90, 000. Yea--really. $110,00 if married.". All basically lied, and said yes they will rent it to a Nun. They wanted a bigger home, and the ADU will be used as----an Art studio, or for Lupe' the cheap help that will wipe them in later life?

My point putting in an ADU is fine, and I'm glad Neusome streamlined the process. People aren't taking advantage of it besides the wealthy though. The people whom didn't need any help.

I would rather see something different.

1. If a person (not a corporation, rich foreigner, etc.) of modest means buys a small piece of land they can put a trailer, tent, small cabin, etc. on the land. And of course live there. I'd even be ok with no foundations until you build properly, and no renting unless you offer it for free. I'd even be ok with time limits that are reviewed every ten years for free. So basically a guy would have to go in front of some official and sign a declaration that they still don't have the money to build a proper unit.

2. CA counties, and towns are going to be told to build more housing in the future if Neusome is still around. They only way I see it happening is if we start building huge blocks of housing, like I see being demolished in Ukraine. (I've seen pictures of Russia. It does look like everyone is in a reasonably priced apartment. I guess it's a leftover from evil Socialism.

Personally, I'd be happy with 1. I just don't think the powers at be really want to help the very poor.

Marin County, San Anselmo. This is basically the town I'm writing about. Newsome has a mansion here where Jenny wanders room to room trying to find something "important" in life to do. Be careful Gavin. She reminds me of an Amber Heard. I honestly like the guy. He was voted most fashionable in my high school.)

While there's a lot of NIMBY about zoning higher density, is not the problem also (partly) that 'price' can't be used as a motivating factor for more efficient (people/area) land use?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

i wonder if a hack like this would work: a large courtyard inside the house. so the actual inside living area is much less than what it looks like from the outside.

the only question is if you can get away with not putting a roof over the courtyard or if you can find a very cheap, lightweight roof that you can move aside.

> unless I'm in the process of building a home on a permanent foundation.

Would it possible to do that, but extremely slowly? What counts as being "in the process"? Just designing your home might take you many, many years...

No. The rules account for that and generally you get permission to live in the temporary mobile home for x amount of months with a provision for an extension for another x amount of months. You don’t get the permission to put up the mobile home/tiny home until after your designs have been completed and approved.
There are still plenty of ways to “hack” it, but they are all unpleasant. Is your goal to accumulate cash/build your net worth?
My parents recently bought a plot of land in a mobile home development in order to house my uncle with mental health issues. They have the exact same requirements you mention above - no travel trailers as permanent housing and permanent housing must meet square footage requirements. In a place named $X Mobile Home Estates. And in supposedly low-tax, freedom-loving Texas; not California.
Mobile home parks don't sell the land outright, but sell the rights to park a trailer on it. Are the regs from the park or the state
The real crime here is making six figures and not being able to afford to buy a 1-bedroom apartment. Capitalism.
You can save and live like a king all around the world, Silicon Valley programmers are the infamous %1 in the eyes of world.
So how the hell does this work in SF? Where do your cleaners, barristas, teachers and other assorted pauper servants live? Do they put them in caves under the ground in California or something?
It’s not capitalism; it’s excessive government regulation preventing new housing from being built. (Also the ocean too)
The real crime here is making six figures and not being able to afford to buy a 1-bedroom apartment. Leftism.
Anyone making six figures can live like a king almost anywhere in the US. Capitalism.
In most counties in California you are free to buy land.

After that, just expect to pay property taxes unless you have money to build exactly the home they sign off on.

I once was ready to buy a reasonable small piece of land in Bolinas after graduating from college. I should have known the price was too good.

When I called the seller he took pity on me when I told him I wanted to just use it to pitch a tent on until I saved more money.

He said, "Son---you can't even put an blanket on "your" land and take a nap."

I haven’t tried this, but I am curious if they would allow you to build a garage or storage unit on the property. Is there anything they cannot legally block?
I spent several years camping all over the U.S. recently, from the countryside to the sidewalk. I had a good experience doing it, and little trouble. Apolitical.

If you're trying to not pay rent for a while and enjoy a more free lifestyle, I think it's worth dipping one's toes into, especially if you have prior camping experience.

Only slightly related to the article is "stealth camping", which is an entertaining genre of youtube channels, including Steve Wallis. A recent example is https://youtu.be/OPDvLaXuSHQ

Wallis is Canadian, but similar sensibilities hold with regard to camping in places that aren't explicitly marked as campable.

I've seen a few of that guy's videos. He's very sweet and entertaining, but there definitely seems to be a bit of nose-thumbing and gentle protest in his stealth camping. I won't call it overtly political, but he does seem to like the idea of transgressing what he believes are silly laws, and given his homelessness in the past, there's also a "'til things are brighter, I'm the man in black" quality to it. All that to say, I think it is relevant to the article!
+ 1 for stealth camping. Just be respectful of the land and others using it
That reminds me, time for a step 2.
> Phoebe S. K. Young finds that Americans have long struggled to decide what camping is, and who is allowed to do it

Huh? Anyone is allowed to camp in designated camping areas. No one is allowed to “camp” in random public areas. There is nothing anti-homeless about camping. Is this article for real?

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

-- Anatole France (The Red Lily, 1894)

"As I went walking I saw a sign there, And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me."

- 'This Land Is Your Land', Woody Guthrie

First, there is a huge amount of public lands where you can't just set up camp.

National parks, lots of state parks, city mountain parks which are public and do allow camping have very limited permit access, rules, exclusions etc. Some lands which ostensibly should be dispersed camping allowed you can't even access bc you'd have to travel through private land.

But your comment misses the entire crux of the article imho.

It's not that camping is anti-homeless, it's that there has historically been - and still is - a societal judgement and double standard based on ethnicity, class, and housed status.

It's about a double standard of the Govt forcing native Americans to give up their 'barbarous campfire life' while the rich were encouraged to have the same experience for the benefit of their health.

Same happens today just not as extreme.

Just to illustrate, i get this isn't the same as pitching a tent in front of someone's house.

But society says it's not ok for the homeless to stay in their RVs on public streets but it is ok for people to stay the night in 150k sprinter vans.

Not exaggerating, there are both happening in large numbers here in Denver. The difference is one can afford to move their place of rest around the other can't.

I might try and take a photo at the Movement Baker gym there are 2 homeless RVs on the road and almost always at least 3 sprinters, usually one with doors totally open someone just chilling there living their day. Shower & internet inside. For the rich climbing dirt bag only though.

The article starts at a time in American history where there weren’t campsites at all, and describes times and situations where certain people were either explicitly forbidden or highly discouraged from camping in designated places.
"The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule."

- Giorgio Agamben

You can camp anywhere you want in the national forests.
How can such a huge article about camping, one that links it back to the civil war, not even mention the word "hunting"? If you want to talk about politics of the outdoors, there is nothing more illustrative than the different viewpoints of hunters and hikers.
There are some very interesting current developments in this area going on today with checkerboard public lands that are bounded on the sides with private land but touch other public land on the corners. Hunters will take ladders across from public land to a public land not touching the private land. There are some lawsuits from private owners saying this violates their property rights trying to stop it. If this is upheld, it would mean that only the private landowners have access to the National Forest
I didn't see it mentioned in the quick search of the article so a quick reminder that federally managed BLM land has the best use in camping options. You can usually go anywhere at your own risk of death and stay in any one place for up to two weeks for free. National Forest are one step behind, rarely requiring permits with lots of free camping opportunities
> reëducation

Although that spelling makes sense, it's not one that's ever been widely used (since 'education' is from French éducation). So I'm not sure if that's an attempt to use a dated spelling (I noticed some others, such as élite) to conjure a certain je ne sais quois, or to forge a new trend for continental accents in English writing where it seems there ought to be?

It's part of their intentionally quaint house style people have been complaining about it since my grandfather was in college.
Here’s another New Yorker article to explain :)

TL;DR: it was an arbitrary decision from long ago that they stick to despite getting many letters of complaint.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

Camping is so easy out east and so difficult out west. People must be writing scripts to book these campsites on these websites the nanosecond they become available. Its such a shame.
Really? Certainly there are popular locations out West in season including but not limited to the national parks where it can be hard to reserve a spot/get a permit. But especially once you get to vast BLM and National Forest properties, with some exceptions it's usually pretty easy to just find a spot.In general, even backpacking in the East, your options tend to be more limited.
(I'm quoting myself from a few days ago, sorry)

Really it goes back to European vs. Native lifestyles and colonization. The Europeans were psychotic bastards who murdered and tortured and enslaved people, and who had absolute masters and abject servants, and all kinds of psychotic baggage. The native cultures were (and still are in many many places) not quite so messed up.

People who could get away from the towns and join Native American societies didn't want to go back. Whereas Natives had to be forced (typically with savage brutality) to adopt European culture.

"Going native" was perceived as a serious problem, because it was: if you didn't like society, or your actual literal "master" (a person under the psychotic delusion that he or she actually literally owned you) you could try to escape to, say, the Sioux nation.

We mostly exterminated or marginalized these societies, and filled and/or enclosed most of the open land, so it seems like options are fewer.

And today we have "the homeless" to act as a goad: if you don't work you will starve in the street. There's not supposed to be a way out.

This is somewhat of a Noble native fallacy. Native American culture was diverse and a mixed bag. Some exercised extreme territorial claims and had very hierarchical societies. Some practice slavery and cannibalism.
Guess you've never heard about the Comanches that would rape a woman, gut her then put burning coals in the gut cavity while they were still alive.

In addition plenty of really barbaric tortures done by the Aztecs documented.

> The Europeans were psychotic bastards who murdered and tortured and enslaved people, and who had absolute masters and abject servants, and all kinds of psychotic baggage. The native cultures were (and still are in many many places) not quite so messed up.

The natives never fought amongst themselves for resources or territory? No victorious tribes ever enslaved or murdered their defeated foes?

This whole idea of conflicts between ethnicity and tribes and nations, master-and-slave and hierarchical societies is just some weird European pathology that, like smallpox, was unknown in the Americas pre-1492?

This is a tad romanticized.
I didn't see it mentioned in the quick search of the article so a quick reminder that federally managed BLM land has the best use in camping options. You can usually go anywhere at your own risk of death and stay in any one place for up to two weeks for free
>The government forced Native children to attend boarding school and subjected adults to dehumanizing reëducation projects.

This isn't morally right by the standards of modern western neo-liberal culture, but with the alternative it is imperative that we accept that these different cultures are not likely able to achieve collective equity in a society of equal opportunity. And that's ok, because we have no right to impose our cultures onto others, even if we believe our practices to be better suited for success in the modern world.

>In June, 2020, in Forks, Washington, residents mistook a mixed-race family for members of Antifa. The family, unemployed because of the pandemic, had been living in a modified school bus...

The race of the family is completely irrelevant and serves only to race bait. Also there's no indication that they weren't involved in a little protesting on the side, especially when covering up such a fact would make their story far more sympathetic.

The fact that racist policies were once common and sanctioned in the US does not imply that all modern inequities are due solely or significantly to discrimination, past or present, but that seems to be the consistent angle of material from high brow outlets like the New Yorker and NPR, exponentially so as of the last few years.

If we cut out the race and political baiting and clearly define camping in the typical modern sense of a sleeping bag, tent, and/or trailer in an outdoor setting surrounded by nature then the confoundedness disappears. It's borderline disingenuous to treat a nature escape and a tent on a city street as conceptually the same activity just because both involve sleeping outside, and betrays an agenda.