Why have we put RVers in such a terrible place that living in a national park with no hookups for your home is a preferable choice? Couldn't we solve that problem by just providing reasonable housing subsidies to people who need them? And if that decision would be so preferable then what does it say about the standards of living of those people today?
Do you mean they'd prefer to be in nature? Because we've got Idaho. There's an awful lot of Idaho... and if we run out there's more than enough Alaska.
Some huge percentage of the USA is BLM land which is basically entirely free to do whatever you want as long as you don’t build permanent structures and move every 30? days or similar.
If you’re quiet and out of the way, I dare say you could live on BLM land permanently and nobody would know, let alone care.
Technically you have to move your site every 14 days on BLM land, though to your point that is not going to be enforced in some regions of the Mountain West. In some remote areas of Alaska, including the islands of the Inside Passage, there are small, informal off-the-grid permanent settlements on government land. If they aren’t causing trouble such that someone complains then it isn’t worth the government’s time to care.
In the wild parts of the US, even the government tends to adopt the “live and let live” ethos of that type of country.
Yep, this is very doable and plenty of folks do live on public land for long stretches of time. Just be clean and don't mess things up and it's totally fine. Most national forest land also allows camping in disturbed areas.
This mostly applies to the west coast though. The eastern US has very little public land that is freely accessible.
Ive researched this for when I was staying in the Manistee National Park in Michigan. Must "leave the park" every two weeks for at least a day. So moving from site to site wasn't technically legal. Couldn't camp too close to trails or to rivers.
I think you’re reading too much into this. If someone is homeless, parking in a high-traffic national park that is patrolled by rangers and has limits on how long you can stay isn’t going to happen.
An annual park pass isn’t that expensive. People who live in an RV would spend far, far more driving to and from the park for various things they need (gas, supplies) than they’d save on the park pass.
Regardless, having a pass doesn’t eliminate the rules regarding duration of stay. You can’t live in a national park even if you have a pass. If you try to do it in an RV, you’d get noticed and cited.
