Watch the woman who has been living in a van
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A 31-year-old woman is now living in a van because she didn’t want to spend her money on expensive rents.
Eileah Ohning started living in a Freightliner Sprinter High Top van which measures 13ft 2in long, 5ft 8in wide and 6ft 2in high after she decided to stop paying expensive rents.
Eileah – a photographic producer from Columbus, Ohio – has been living in her van since May 2017.
The van has a memory foam mattress, storage compartments, a desk, and a camping stove. Eileah is planning to add in a shower, toilet, and fridge.
According to Barcroft, Eileah said: “I don’t need a house. I don’t need something that big, I don’t need something that eats up most of my monthly income. I’m not saying that living in a house is bad – a family of six needs more than a van – but that’s the motivation for me.”
Eileah showers at her local gym and always parks her van near her workplace.
Eileah said: “When I wake up, I freshen up a little bit, make a little coffee and I usually do cereal for breakfast, just because it’s easy and it doesn’t require cooking. And then I get dressed and grab my laptop, bag and my purse and go to work, which is 20 feet way from me.”
“Some people think it is really cool. They just want to hear more and a lot of people respond by saying, ‘Oh, that’s amazing! But I can never do anything like that.’ There have been some people who just don’t get it and they think it’s really weird and strange. They just think I’m an odd-ball.”
“My mom had her reservations but she was at least open to listening and working through the process with me. My father is a lot more traditional and so I think he was scared that I was going to be more vulnerable. He never spoke directly against the idea but he definitely made his concerns known.”
“I tend to only park in neighbourhoods or places that I’m comfortable with and that I already feel safe in. I guess that’s a luxury of your home being on wheels – you can move it if you don’t feel safe.”
“I don’t hang my laundry outside of the van or make a big scene so for most people it’s just a van parked on the street.”
Earlier she used to live in her 2004 Acura TSX car. She spent 1 year in her car. She said: “It was really simple. I mean everywhere I went I had everything that I needed.”
“I missed the ability to stand up in my home. If I was really tired and exhausted, I had to crawl over the seats and put them down and make the bed. I couldn’t just come home and relax.”
She then decided to live in a van and traded in her car for a $10,000 van, called Marta.
Eileah said: “So far I’ve spent about $7,000 on the build out. There have been a couple of repairs that were probably about $2,000 and then to finish the build out I am going to have to spare maybe another $3-4,000.
“It’s still a fraction of the cost of buying a home.”
Her boyfriend, Brian Laston helped Eileah refit the van.
She said: “When I started [thinking about] the van, we had really just met, we hadn’t been dating for long, so it took me maybe two or three weeks to tell him that I had lived in my car.”
‘It took me probably another month to tell him that I wanted to live in a van and I didn’t like the idea of living in a traditional house, which I’m sure would probably be difficult for him considering he owned a home.”
She added: “I don’t know that I ever see myself going back to traditional housing, I just think that there is a better way to do housing in general.”