to Pedroni's delicatessen,” she says. She works in healthcare and has worked in Petaluma, Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. She’s owned a couple of homes in the area but 10 years ago moved in with her mother who is disabled. She helps with the bills, does the chores around the house, buys groceries and pays her mom some rent to help out. Living with her mom also means she’s able to have a bit more to spend on other things, like her grown children. She likes being able to help them out, spending time with them camping, taking trips and going out to dinner. She believes it would take a miracle for her to afford her own place in Sonoma County. “The bottom line is that it's just impossible to be able to afford housing as a single woman,” she says. “For me, anyway, to be able to afford anything that's safe.” Charlene will eventually inherit the house. She likes to live simply
and says it’s far more room than she needs and so she’d probably sell it. “I’d maybe find some land somewhere and build a little tiny home on it,” she says. “For me, it's just about simplicity, being conscientious, being environmentally thoughtful and just being, you know, aware.” A challenge for Charlene is that her mother struggles with issues that lead her to become highly confrontational. “It's sometimes not a healthy environment for me so I've created boundaries,” she says. “What I find works best for both of us, is for me to remove myself from the situation.” While she doesn’t believe she’s in danger, she has a plan for if the situation escalated to the point where she had to leave. “I would just move into my car and possibly buy a little travel trailer, like a van,” she says. “Van life—I would do it in a heartbeat.” Even though Charlene lives simply and has “car camped” a lot herself, she knows that it would still be an adjustment. “The biggest challenge would be the parking,” she says. “Where do you park?” One of the Facebook groups for nomadic
women has a map where members offer safe locations for other women to park or camp. Charlene has offered up her carport for safe parking, and has hosted several women in her driveway. As Charlene has gotten to know women through the group she has found that a driving motivation has been the cost of housing. “If I had to put a percentage on it, I would say maybe 75% is due to housing shortage and affordability,” she says. She has found another common thread is a love of simplicity and self-reliance. “It's really being able to be with yourself and not needing to surround yourself with external things,” she says. “It's more of like, necessary intentional living—as opposed to consumerism and constant excess.” Charlene says it still takes planning and you need to be present and aware of your surroundings. “It's not like you can just check out,” she says. “Of course, you know you can, but there's just a higher awareness of your humanness and what your needs are. It's pretty humbling, you know, it really is. Some people could never survive.” She says it “circles back to that rat race” of constant work one must join in order to afford housing in the North Bay. “And then you're just on this ridiculous treadmill that, for me personally, doesn't work. It just doesn't work.” Charlene thinks the choice of a vehicle- dwelling lifestyle is judged too harshly, especially when it comes to the need to find safe parking. Women in the Facebook groups often talk about being awakened by the dreaded “knock” while they’re trying to sleep. It means they’re being told they must move. She, too, would be dealing with this if she returned to living in her vehicle. “I'm not on drugs, I'm not doing anything weird, I just need to park so I can sleep,” Charlene says. “I feel like it's misinformation and people are not educated about it. It’s just
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26 NorthBaybiz
December 2024
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