Some RVs are home sweet home
Some RVs are home sweet home - 04/14/05
Remi Bergeron lugs laundry to his RV at Hillwood Camping Park in Gainesville, Va. The computer systems support engineer pays about $500 a month to park his RV.
Some RVs are home sweet home
When housing prices get out of reach, many make the move into residential motorhomes.
By Michele Clock / Washington Post
Bergeron works on his computer at a work station he created to fit over the steering wheel of his RV in Gainesville, Va. Rents for a spot in a RV park can cost as much as $1,400 a month.
WASHINGTON — Three years ago, Remi Bergeron set out in search of a home in the Washington region, alone and with a $150,000 budget.
Good thing he had a Plan B.
“Around here, you have to go so far for a $150,000 house, forget it,” he said. “I don’t even think there are any.”
Bergeron, 49, a computer systems support engineer, refused to “burn” his money renting, either.
So he drove his 36-foot RV from Winter Springs, Fla., to Hillwood Camping Park and made the rugged spot in suburban Prince William County, Va., his residence.
Bergeron chose the park for its proximity to work, the comforts of suburbia and, most important, its price: $513 a month. Here, he lives in his RV among other workers who also were drawn by the region’s booming job market but were unable or unwilling to pay for its pricey housing.
The Washington area holds the distinction of producing the steepest job growth of any metropolitan area in the nation in the past five years, said Stephen Fuller, a public policy professor at George Mason University in suburban Fairfax, Va. Job seekers are flocking in to take advantage of that work, much of it on contract and temporary.
Of the estimated 70,800 jobs created in the region last year, the largest chunk, 35 percent, fell into the professional and business services category, which includes government contracting, according to Fuller. Thirty-four percent was in retail and construction.
“They’re building houses as fast as they can, and they need workers to build them,” Fuller said.
And workers need a home. Short-term rentals — whether apartments or residential hotel rooms — are expensive, as are houses. For many, an RV is the answer.
Long-term RV living grows
Although no organization tracks the number of people living in RVs, the four Washington-area campgrounds that allow long-term RV camping — as opposed to limiting stays to a couple of weeks — report a marked increase in demand. RVs, once symbols of footloose wanderers, have become long-term abodes.
“There are some families, but mostly it’s just singles and working guys,” said Pat Gardner, who manages Hillwood Camping Park. Long-term RV dwellers started filling up the park’s 150 campsites about five years ago. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Gardner said she’s noticed “more IT, more government-related, more security-related” workers among her RV dwellers. “I’ve had FBI, U.S. marshals, bomb-sniffing dogs … instead of just your regular blue collar.”
At Aquia Pines Camp Resort in Stafford, Va., demand is so high that owner Everett Lovell said he’s considering ripping out tent sites and adding to the 20 spaces for long-term RV dwellers.
Cherry Hill Park in suburban Prince George’s County, Md., has taken a surge of calls since 2002, when the fear of terrorism began to subside and workers felt comfortable taking jobs here again, said Janice Stabinsky, the park’s office manager.
When callers hear the monthly rate, about $1,400 per RV, many believe they can find a place to live for less, Stabinsky said. “Then they try, and they can’t,” she said. “And they call back and ask for a space.”
Trend started in Silicon Valley
The RV phenomenon first appeared in Silicon Valley during the mid-to-late 1990s, when some dot-com workers turned to RVs for relief from long commutes and steep mortgages and rents.
“The economy was so hot in that area at that time, some companies were letting (workers) park RVs in their parking lots,” said R.B. Brinton, marketing director for Escapees RV Club, a Livingston, Texas-based organization catering to RV users. “Most all of the parks in the area were full with waiting lists.
And “it’s not what people 40 years ago used to think of as an RV or RVing.” Brinton said. “Most RVs now have at least two TVs,” one in the living area and one in the sleeping area. “As you get into higher-end models, worth $200,000 and $300,000, you have plasma TVs that swing down from the ceiling. You have your complete theater surround system.”
Brian and Jo Lynn Forney’s 36-foot-long RV, parked at Cherry Hill, comfortably holds a medium-size couch, matching La-Z-Boy chairs, a dining area for four, a queen-size bed and Smokey the cat.
It’s as wired as almost any home, with a 27-inch television, DirecTV with TiVo, satellite cable, a built-in stereo system and a DSL hookup. Brian, 42, and Jo Lynn, 41, both master sergeants in the Army National Guard, even ride the Metro to work every day.
Asked how they could possibly live in an RV, they reply as unabashed fans. “Does your house have oak cabinets all the way through?” Brian asks.
All the Forneys had to do upon moving into Cherry Hill was hook into the campground’s electrical and water lines and call the telephone company to set up a landline. The campground office handles customers’ day-to-day needs as an apartment building would, accepting mail and offering laundry rooms, for example. Cherry Hill also provides a heated pool, a sauna and game and exercise rooms. Metrobus provides service to two Metro stations.
There are some sacrifices. “The thing I miss most is a dishwasher,” said Vicki Jackson, 52, a Pentagon budget analyst living year-round at Hillwood in her 35-foot Winnebago Sightseer with her husband. “That and a washer and dryer.”
Then there’s the loneliness that Kathy Justice, 48, must combat on quiet days when her husband, Darrel, 48, is at work at a Federal Aviation Administration facility. The couple live in a 38-foot RV at Hillwood four nights a week and return to their permanent home in Williamsburg on his days off.
“The first time (I drove home), I cried all the way,” she said. “‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this,’ I thought. But there’s no other choice.”
Now Justice fills the hours making runs to the new Super Target store a stone’s throw from her campground, working on scrapbooks and quilts, and talking to friends and family on her cell phone.
Justice keeps tabs on who is living around her: Male or female? Married? Occupation?
“It took awhile to get that feeling of security,” she said. “But then you realize everyone is doing the same thing as we are.”
Still, she counts the days until Darrel retires and this all ends.
“It’s gotten old,” she said, standing beside her RV one chilly evening. “It’s not how we expected to spend our life at this age.”
But it’s the practical thing to do.
