VANLORDS: The Worst Thing You Can Do for the Homeless Is... [CHECKS NOTES] Create Affordable Housing?

Problem: There just isn’t enough affordable housing in Los Angeles.

Solution: Become a “vanlord” who provides RVs as shelter at an affordable rate, and even moves them around to try and stay in compliance with local zoning rules.

Result: Get branded a capitalist exploiter and have the city council come after you.

That’s exactly what’s happening in Los Angeles right now.

I know it sounds crazy but this is L.A. we’re talking about, where bad ideas go to attain eternal life and where good ideas get curb-stomped while having obscenities shouted at them.

Allow me to explain.

Vanlords — not a hard rock band, so far as I know — sprang up in the City of Scolding Angels around 2019, in response to the city’s growing homeless crisis. They rent or buy RVs and vans, sometimes not even operational ones, and rent them out to the homeless at a small profit. Parking is limited and there are rules about how long vehicles can stay in any one place, so the non-op vans get towed around by the vanlords every now and then.

Is it legal? Eh… not exactly. But when the law makes affordability impossible, extra-legal entrepreneurs like L.A.’s vanlords become as inevitable as guys selling “loosie” cigarettes in New York City.

Naturally, Venice-based City Councilcritter Traci Park is having none of it. “These practices capitalize on the vulnerability of our homeless community, reduce available parking, and create significant life safety issues,” she was quoted saying by the Santa Monica Daily People’s and Worker’s News.

Capitalist exploiters of the world, unite — you have only some affordable shelter to provide!

I get the complaints about losing parking spots to vanlord rentals. Or maybe, just maybe, that’s really a lifestyle tax on the well-to-do of Venice Beach — sorry, Kurt Schlichter! — who vote for the people who make the laws and regulations that force people to live in a van down by the river beach.

CAVEAT: There’s a big difference between two different kinds of homelessness. There’s the transitory kind caused by a sudden job loss, illness, or trying to make it in an urban hellhole like L.A. or San Francisco. Then there’s the intractable homelessness caused by mental illness and drug abuse that we no longer aggressively treat, and that blue cities generously subsidize.

Creating a sustainable solution to homelessness — whether by relaxing zoning rules and regulations or with vanlord-type workarounds — is not in the government’s interest. A problem solved is tax dollars that don’t need to get spent and lost make-work jobs for entitled progressives with PhDs in F***ing Up Literally Everything With Government.

But a never-ending crisis means money and jobs for everyone! Everyone who counts, that is.

So when a city councilcritter like Park learns about vanlords, she doesn’t see a creative solution to a crisis faced by thousands of her constituents. What she sees is a direct threat to her actual constituent: the well-fed, well-housed government of Los Angeles.

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