[flovec]

I never thought I would see the SLV in the New Yorker!

A friend and I purchased 5 acres in the SLV around 2008 from a guy on Craigslist for 5K. We had no serious intentions at the time. But I was laid off from aerospace in 2009 after the crash, and so I moved out there for a summer, living in a conversion Astro van (before #vanlife, and definitely still van-down-by-the-river and not cool), and started to build a cabin. I didn't finish it that summer, but I eventually moved out to Colorado the next year to do so.

My experience in the SLV can't really be summed up in a comment - you could write a book :D - but I think this picture captures the beauty of the place: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hlvnsofo4leiseo/img_0012.jpg?dl=0

I lived there for about 8 months straight in my longest stretch. It was the kind of difficult I wanted. I (and every one else living in the mountains) had major issues with theft, though. There were multiple break-ins, and the last time I visited, just a flat-out smashing of windows and stripping of siding. I never finished the cabin and abandoned the project after I moved from Colorado. It was perhaps one of the few times I utilized the sunk cost fallacy and didn't dig deeper :)

When I left the SLV, the folks I knew living in RVs were being pushed out for land use violations (or at least that's how I remember it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8M2bZNEac . Most folks I knew moved out in RVs/vans first and then attempted to build after they were there (this includes me as well!). To my knowledge, RV living is "illegal" past a certain number of days on most residential properties in the US, but I do not know what prompted the code enforcement (if anything).

[adamgordonbell]

In the book, as far as I've read, the focus on septic violations was an effort by the county to get people off the land. They often gave 10 days to get a septic in place and daily fines after that, when getting someone to put one in if you had the money would take months and you needed a permit to do so which was often denied.

The reasoning was the people who lived in the towns around there didn't like off-griders buying the land on the flats and moving in, so were trying to push them out however they could.

In the book there is a group suing the county for it, but they can't really afford lawyers and also are sort of free-men-on-the-land loons, so it doesn't go well.

[onecommentman]

I’ll read the New Yorker for off-the-grid Intermountain West living info the same day I read the Alamosa News for insights into the latest Israeli elections.

Saying that, in NM in the 1980s, off-grid living was perfectly feasible with some of the same caveats you mention. If the local community accepted you (Latinos, First Nations), you could easily make it happen (and I assume you still can). If you get crosswised with the autochthonous spirits, you could find yourself burned out of your half-built cabin pretty quickly.

Communes help, but come with their own problems. Don’t know whether the Intentional Community movement has solved those problems yet.

[ip26]

The restrictions on indefinite RV living center around habitability. Sewage is a big part. Off grid sewage needs to be managed properly to avoid spreading disease. For example, you might need a proper leach field, which is addressed as part of building code.

Everything I’ve read leads me to believe theft will remain a problem- it’s a very poor area, with limited employment options and a weak law enforcement presence.

[flovec]

I agree with you to some degree, but if your statement were 100% true, you would be able to do both of these things below in my area:

- Store (not live in) an RV on an empty lot you own

- Use composting as a primary means of sewage disposal

Where I live now, you can do neither! This leads me to believe that _some_ building codes - and enforcement of them - is classist in nature.

Heck, even with blackwater tanks...people are capable of emptying them at an RV disposal etc. If this were just about management of cleanliness, we could all find a way to make it work.

[ip26]

How many RV disposals are nearby? Do they have the necessary volume? Will anyone pack up their entire permanent home once a week to tow it to the dump station? Composting is not sufficient to destroy human pathogens, and prohibiting storage of an empty RV on an otherwise empty plot of land prevents people from bouncing back and forth between two permanent RVs on two different plots of land (never permanently resident in either).

I agree the laws could be changed to provide more options instead of blanket bans, and choosing not to do so is probably somewhat classist, but as far as I can tell they are going after real problems. (Even if bluntly)

[flovec]

> How many RV disposals are nearby? Do they have the necessary volume? Will anyone pack up their entire permanent home once a week to tow it to the dump station?

Those are great questions! And those are the questions the local government should be asking, and working with those folks to solve waste management issues, not prevent them from living a certain way. House more, not less?

> prohibiting storage of an empty RV on an otherwise empty plot of land prevents people from bouncing back and forth between two permanent RVs on two different plots of land...

It prevents that (which I would argue is problematic because it sounds classist? - again, house more, not less!), but it also prevents someone from just storing an RV on a plot of land they own.

> Composting is not sufficient to destroy human pathogens.

The studies aggregated in the Humanure Handbook suggest otherwise?: https://weblife.org/humanure/references.html

Here is a link to just 1 study outside those references: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288724214_A_pilot_s... (there are better links than this particular one, no time to dig up more ATM)

The thing about composting..it's a system, just like septic, just like centralized waste management. Things can go wrong. And it is legal in some places (which suggests efficacy), but not accepted as a "primary" system where I live (or in the SLV to my knowledge), which I take issue with given that the current legal primary systems are not always sufficient to destroy human pathogens in practice (either because the systems lack capacity, aren't properly maintained, or both). Flush toilet waste management overflows into the local water systems when it rains or is over capacity. Septic systems also do environmental damage since a lot of them are not maintained (need a source, there was a book recently that came out). Septic systems are also not inspected by the government after they are built where I live (they tried to charge residents for inspections at one point and they said no).

[bacchusracine]

>Everything I’ve read leads me to believe theft will remain a problem- it’s a very poor area, with limited employment options and a weak law enforcement presence.

How is the region's pest control policies?