Living in a Van? Homeless. Living in an Airstream? Adventurer.

My week at Alumapalooza (the annual rally of Airstream-owners at the home of the manufacturer of Airstream trailers in Jackson Center, Ohio) hasn't been all that different from the many weeks I spent homeless in Denver, Colorado. I am still laying in the back of my van in the heat, my dog in the front seat where the windows are open and the breeze is better. I am still praying for rain to cool things off. And when it does rain the van still leaks at the windows and doors — and by leaks I mean pours in through gaps so big you could thread a pencil through. I love those cracks in the summer when they let cool air in, and hate them in the winter when they let heat out.

There are no showers here. I "bathed" in a tub of water with a washcloth. If I want to shower I need to go to the truck stop down the road. My cooler is stocked with bottled water and I have to replenish the ice every other day. I do have access to porta potties, so no more buckets. Nice.

I am parked in a grassy field behind the Airstream factory, about the size of the paved parking lot behind an empty factory in Denver that I liked to park at when I was homeless. I am surrounded by other people living and sleeping in their vehicles, some doing it part-time, some full-time. Same in Denver, only they weren't Airstreams.

The difference between Denver and Jackson Center is we paid for the privilege to park here. When you have money and sleep in your car, it's called "RVing." I talked about this over dinner at a nice restaurant with some people I met here. One asked, "Are you still homeless?" I said, "Yes, just like you." She looked confused. 'We're not homeless. We're full-timers."

"So am I!" I smiled.

I asked, "So you're living in your van by choice?"

"Yes."

"But you don't consider yourself homeless?"

"No."

More confusion. I tried again.

"You don't have a house. So, you're homeless. You're on the road, sleeping in a trailer, staying in Walmart parking lots sometimes, campgrounds the rest of the time, but you're always moving."

"Yes. I mean, well, we sold our house, but the Airstream is our home."

"Exactly."

"So the van is your home?"

"Yes. And I base out of a small office where I have a full bathroom with a shower, fridge, cooking facilities — like a small efficiency. I don't live there, but I work, shower and eat there."

"So you're homeless?"

Just as I thought I was making my point and she drops the subject. She can't wrap her head around the thought that technically the government considers her homeless simply because she lives in a trailer she drags behind a pickup truck — even if it is a $50,000 trailer.

The rest of us realize she bought the most expensive trailer on the market. She has money. She can sleep in her car or trailer and no one will consider her homeless because she has a very healthy bank account and can throw money at just about any problem in her life. She is not homeless — no matter where she lives — because she has money.

To most of the world you're homeless if you don't meet certain financial criteria. I have a crappy, but dependable, old van — not an Airstream. It's obvious I don't have a lot of money to throw around. The only obvious difference between us is our bank balance and what we drive and what our RV of choice is.

I'm saving for an Airstream, which is about $8,000 to $15,000 used, $30,000 to $100,000 new. Airstreams are undeniably the best built, most expensive RVs in the world. But they're still, as a man I met named John Slade put it, "silver tubes." (Slade is a full-time Airstreamer, skydiver and yoga instructor and another person I had this conversation with. He totally got it.)

"We're all just people living in silver tubes," he said. "Expensive silver tubes, but tubes nonetheless. We're all still people." So why don't we get that? We ARE all still people.

This is how conversations about homelessness and where I'm living usually go these days. It re-enforces my belief that homeless is an attitude, a perception, a point along the continuum and most importantly, a financial state. I'm sitting here in my van right now — door open, while I watch what promises to be a long steady rainfall outside. If I were doing the same thing in a Walmart parking lot anyone under the age of 25 would think it was "cool" that I was living in my van and traveling. Anyone older would simply assume that I was homeless. After all, as an older woman, I should be able to afford something nicer by this stage in life. So I must be poor, and in America, poor and not living in a house makes you homeless (or so we're told.) I make a very good living now, but still live in the van. Some people still try to tell me I'm homeless while others criticize me and say I'm not. Like I said: homelessness is an attitude. If it were an actual condition it would not be so freaking hard to define it.

Photo credit: Becky Blanton