Rising Costs Force Families Into RVs

Making Long Term Decisions For a Better Future

Shefali O'Hara
5 min readMay 18, 2022

--

Photo by Stefan Widua on Unsplash

Texas has been growing, which has led to rising housing costs, particularly in cities such as Austin, Houston, or the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex. Rents have skyrocketed, with some parts of the North Texas housing market seeing increases of close to 20% in rental costs. For those who want to buy their first home, they are looking at hikes of up to 22% per square-foot.

These are averages, though, and in some places, such as Austin, for example, a house today can cost twice as much as a similar one did 2 years ago.

This is not great news for current residents who want to stay in their homes — after all, their property taxes will go up and they won’t see a return on their investment unless they sell.

However, the situation is worse for those who rent their homes.

I recently read a story about two families in North Texas who have made the decision to switch from traditional housing to living in an RV in order to deal with the rising costs. The issue is not just the rising cost of rent, though that is a major factor. However, the price of food, gas and utilities are also rising. Many working families are getting squeezed, and the Washingtons, who are mentioned in the article, are no exception.

The family, headed by Lorne and Lacie Washington, consists of six children and two dogs as well as the parents. They had been staying in an 1.800 square-foot townhouse.

Due to inflation, however, they’ve had to make tough choices.

While the price of everything they need, from food to clothing for their children to their utility bills, have gone up, their earnings have not, despite both of them working long hours. In fact, Lorne has been taking on odd jobs to try to make ends meet, but the family was still forced in recent months to decide if they would cover their rent that month or their car note. Lacie stated that there have been months they’ve had to decide if they will buy food or pay their utility bill.

Recently, however, they found a solution to their dilemma.

They’ve decided to sell everything they can and use the proceeds to buy an RV.

--

--

Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.