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Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

landcamp.org

151–160 of 236 posts

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#151
post #94

The van equivalent of couchsurfing.org. I'm going to go with they probably are flaunting local laws as to where people can park.

The van equivalent of Couchsurfing is Vanly. This is Vanly where the barrier to entry on the platform is owning property in California.

You can couch surf for free. Vanly is hustlers trying to charge $50/night (on the cheap end) for their driveway

I think https://freeroam.app/ or https://boondocking.org/ or https://www.campendium.com/ or https://www.boondockerswelcome.com/ or even the OP are much closer to "the van equivalent of couchsurfing"

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#152
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like too little to avoid hosting people who don't have a place where host. Someone could pretend another non-host user is hosting them and both could use the credits to stay with actual hosts. Or they could host someone in the same place where they're staying that they don't own or rent.

it's california only and "every member is vetted". Clicking the sign up button gives you a form to write out an email telling them about yourself. I think it's a "small on purpose" kind of thing

I think it's a "doesn't actually exist yet" thing since it has no testimonials, no account creation process, no examples of possible sites, and really just a single page brochure with a "contact us" form.

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you leave out (which the comment you mentioned does) - please respect local rules. For instance, in Death Valley, you can free camp most anywhere (refer to NPS guidelines) two miles off of a designated roadway.

But try to be aware of what you're signing up for: Death Valley Germans [0] [0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...

That was a great read, thanks.

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#154
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been vanlifing for ten years, I pee in a jar in my van just fine. It's POOOPING that's complicated, many days.

If you can afford it, a gym membership to Anytime Fitness is a great fit. Most locations of any gym, usually 24 hours, private bathrooms with wifi and outlets, place to shower, and hey you can even work out if you're into that

I rarely live anywhere near a gym with that sort of setup, but sure, that's basic for anyone van dwelling near a city. #remotelife

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#156
post #74

This would be a huge liability for the land owner: 1. Slip and falls. 2. Forrest fires. 3. Trashing the place.

Homeowners insurance covers a lot. If you have more than 30 nites (don’t quite me on the number) of stay then you need arider as well.

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#157

Can the homeless or homeless advocates signup?

I've worked with a group that tried to allow houseless people to camp on their property. The main thing most people are looking for when homeless is safety. The most common story I hear when talking to houseless people is the "woman who just escaped an abusive relationship" story. Others have dear pets or are even pregnant. The place was literally just a parking lot but it felt safe and that meant a lot to a lot of people.

The city labelled it a campground and said it was illegal. We worked out a contract with the city to let us slowly move people and try to find somewhere else for each individual instead of violently kicking everyone out all at once. Despite the contract, cops tried showing up at 5am or other weird hours on multiple occasions to kick everyone out. One of us always had to be on call because the only thing that stopped them was housed people with cameras filming them doing illegal actions. Eventually they got through though and most people lost a lot of their belongings. Even IDs and wallets were taken making it impossible for folks to access other possible services

A service like this geared towards houseless people would certainly mean a lot but if it existed (and wanted to continue existing) it could not be this public. Some cities are better than others (Santa Clara has "safe parking places" e.g. but it's only a few dozen spots) but many of our laws (e.g. why a campground costs many thousands more in taxes to run than a motel) are specifically structured to prevent networks like that

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#158
post #90
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is hosts sell off their excess credits if they don’t want them.

So it's not free to camp, we'll end up with centralised mega hosters (seedboxes in the tracker analogy) and in practice travelers will be too small time to actually be able earn any credits

Its also ripe for abuse; create dummy accounts that use their free stays to give a host credit, then the host sells those credits for real money.

On a certain movie tracker some invite selling scum would join via the signup process that used to exist on reddit, cheat a bunch of upload on popular torrents, convert that upload into bonus points, launder the points to their main account through a forum contest where they also gave away BP to innocent users, and buy invites to sell for real $ with the laundered BP. Similarly the dummy camping accounts could make sure to mix in some legit hosts as their free stays by picking hosts that may not be around/able to verify the dummy account stayed at their location (because it didn't).

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#159
post #9

For anyone looking for actually free, no strings attached (and no subscription) camping, check https://freecampsites.net/ instead. It's a community wiki of free camp sites, usually on federal lands of various sorts (National Forests and BLM lands often have primitive campsites with fire rings and not much else). It's great for travel around national parks, especially. But please do leave no trace, pack out what you b…

Like this website, the important caveat is in the Southwest . Public lands other than formal parks and preserves are basically nonexistent elsewhere.

> Like this website, the important caveat is in the Southwest. Public lands other than formal parks and preserves are basically nonexistent elsewhere.

What I call the greater west (all of the “West”, “Southwest”, and “Pacific Northwest”) are largely public, federal lands.

Re: Show HN: Van, truck or car camp for $0 a night

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this website, the important caveat is in the Southwest . Public lands other than formal parks and preserves are basically nonexistent elsewhere.

I'd say the West in general, not just the Southwest. By that I mean most of the West Coast (California, Washington, Oregon) has abundant federal lands. Some of the adjacent states do too. Alaska as well. It goes east a bit. Colorado has a bunch. It's more the Midwest and east of there that doesn't have much of them. (edit: actually there are some near the Great Lakes too!) Here's a map: https://maps.usgs.gov/padusdat…

> I'd say the West in general, not just the Southwest. By that I mean most of the West Coast (California, Washington, Oregon) has abundant federal lands. Some of the adjacent states do too.

Pretty much every state West of (or split by) the Contintental Divide, not just the Pacific Coast states and some of the adjacent ones.

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