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Property taxes aren't the big impediment, or shouldn't be if you have any kind of a j-o-b (or even a "special snowflake" trust fund or early inheritance from grandparents spending down for the look-back period prior to going on Medicaid in a nursing home, as so many hipsters seem to these days). The big impediment, as I say, are city codes and zoning regulations prohibiting human habitation of anything that small, either on or off the grid, unless a "full-size" residence is also on the property. Again, the propensity to park it in the parents backyard or on a friend's land. If anyone knows a way around this, I would be interested in hearing it, as I'd love to buy a parcel of land on or near a beach for a tiny house.
I know they did practice something in the 60's, but I don't think anyone had the technology in the 60's to do this kind of thing, and, hey, maybe I am WAY off base, but right now it seems like a worthwhile, yet very challenging, goal.
What did you mean by "drop out?" I finished college. I have a degree; it's not in STEM or engineering or anything like that, which might mean I know less about this than a building planner, but from my perspective it seems doable.
The ZERO spending is a joke.
However, yes you can learn to be self sufficient and GROW into learning to live as cheaply and securely as possible.
The best advise you got here was to buy a used mobile home. But you're not ready for that even.
Go RENT in one, LEARN how they work. They DO have maintenance just like any house. Or do it in an RV park. Same thing. Rent an RV and LEARN how to maintain a self sufficient life style.
Some have an equity payment that is a lump sum you pay that's reasonable without the high lot fees here in FL. Many are very nice. Many mobile/manufactured homes are SUPER expensive, too. But some are cheap. May be fixers.
LEARN about things by DOING things not by dreaming up your version.
Drop out is from an expression from the hippie counter-culture era. Drop out of society.
Google Timothy Leary.
Your problem is, your generation is NOT like the hippie generation where the aggregate of people who had the shared values at least made the attempt to hang around together and support each other ie trying to make communes etc. Of course, drug use and no money was going to make that unachievable.
But YOUR era, people take pride in being "introverts", isolated from being offended with words, being entitled, and demanding the people they abhor pay for their lives. Not to mention they think they deserve $15.00 per hour for just existing and walking in the door of a business owned by someone. They would NEVER EVER in a million years even consider a roommate let alone a commune and dropping out. LOL
Hell, they don't even know how to wash dishes, let alone plant food to live on.
My son's GF, at age 25 had one job to do when they were moving. Clean out the food.
Of course they were running late so I said, go ahead and leave and I'll make sure the house is ok for the landlord's inspection.
What did I find?
Bags of trash on the kitchen floor. (They had a yard, and trashcans).
LEAKING because she threw EVERYTHING including all the cold and FROZEN FOODS including ICE CREAM in trashbags and just left it a day or two before.
Smelled really great. ROTTEN MEAT mixed with melted ice cream in mid-summer Florida 95 degree heat. She didn't even close up the bags. Not that it would have mattered.
Last edited by runswithscissors; 08-09-2016 at 08:26 AM..
Unfortunately, no one really seems to understand homelessness (I was homeless for a few months after Katrina. I got a night job and crashed on relatives' couches....
Oh good grief. More "woe is me" attitude. Like you're the only person to experience jobless and homeless at the same time. Here, I'll one-up you ~ I was homeless in Montana from January through ~May back in 1994. No job, I burned through my friends in short order... So I stayed alive by spending what little money I had on tea at a 24-hour restaurant overnight, and then would try to find a chair to sleep in at the library, or local college. Showers came from the college gym (needed an ID to get into the gym, but not the locker rooms). I sometimes was able to beg food off the college freshmen who had meal plans paid for but weren't using them, generally I got scraps from the restaurant kitchen (made friends with the servers who would sneak me the stuff they couldn't sell). My salvation was a $100 bus ticket to another state where a different friend helped me get a job and a place to stay.
It's been awhile, but then so has Katrina. And you know what *I* did to ensure it wouldn't happen again? I put money into savings. When it did happen again in 2000, I was able to float on my savings for the 4 months till I found another job. Stressful, but I was never under threat of being homeless, not knowing if/when I'd eat next or aliening friends.
You know/understand that there are state and federal programs to help those who fall on hard times. Generally they're looked down on as being abused (and they are) or somethign one is too ashamed to apply for, but you Could use them... except that if you owned property you'd be disqualified. So you've have this liability AND no way of getting social assistance because of that liability. Bad planning.
You really, REALLY, need to rethink what it is you want to do, protect against, and how to get there. You're on the wrong path, going the wrong way and apparently have put the blinders on yourself to keep from seeing this fact.
This whole thread is just a train-wreck of you knowing better and trying to Prove you know better when it's clear to EVERYONE (has anyone agreed with you?) that you're going about this wrong. No one replying here wishes you ill, or harm. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that everyone who has posted is doing so because they have at Least a basic desire for you to be content, if not happy. Stop acting as if the comments are "Then Man" trying to "Drag you down", because that is not what's happening even though that seems to be the way you're perceiving it.
I'm sorry if this offends you. Sometimes you need to be offended to wake up and look around, Really take stock of your surroundings and options. In my opinion, you are making things WAY harder than they need to be by trying to swim Against the flow. I'm not saying you have to be a lemming and follow the same path as everyone else, but you need to at least be going in Generally the same direction.
However, yes you can learn to be self sufficient and GROW into learning to live as cheaply and securely as possible.
The best advise you got here was to buy a used mobile home. But you're not ready for that even.
Go RENT in one, LEARN how they work. They DO have maintenance just like any house. Or do it in an RV park. Same thing. Rent an RV and LEARN how to maintain a self sufficient life style.
Some have an equity payment that is a lump sum you pay that's reasonable without the high lot fees here in FL. Many are very nice. Many mobile/manufactured homes are SUPER expensive, too. But some are cheap. May be fixers.
LEARN about things by DOING things not by dreaming up your version.
Drop out is from an expression from the hippie counter-culture era. Drop out of society.
Google Timothy Leary.
Your problem is, your generation is NOT like the hippie generation where the aggregate of people who had the shared values at least made the attempt to hang around together and support each other ie trying to make communes etc. Of course, drug use and no money was going to make that unachievable.
But YOUR era, people take pride in being "introverts", isolated from being offended with words, being entitled, and demanding the people they abhor pay for their lives. Not to mention they think they deserve $15.00 per hour for just existing and walking in the door of a business owned by someone. They would NEVER EVER in a million years even consider a roommate let alone a commune and dropping out. LOL
Hell, they don't even know how to wash dishes, let alone plant food to live on.
My son's GF, at age 25 had one job to do when they were moving. Clean out the food.
Of course they were running late so I said, go ahead and leave and I'll make sure the house is ok for the landlord's inspection.
What did I find?
Bags of trash on the kitchen floor. (They had a yard, and trashcans).
LEAKING because she threw EVERYTHING including all the cold and FROZEN FOODS including ICE CREAM in trashbags and just left it a day or two before.
Smelled really great. ROTTEN MEAT mixed with melted ice cream in mid-summer Florida 95 degree heat. She didn't even close up the bags. Not that it would have mattered.
your one sentence, 6th paragraph was excellent advice.
I doubt it will be heeded.
Here goes my story of off grid. I do this 3 months of the year by design in a travel trailer or tent. I much prefer the TT as I have solar, gen sets and a propane fridge and freezer. It has a double deep cycle battery bank I have to constantly maintain. It's not nearly as easy as one would think. I'm on BLM land and move around every 2 weeks per the rules. I know where all of the wells are that were drilled at one time for Forest Service offices that no longer exist as they were all burned down at some point in a forest fire. I get a month out of two big propane tanks, fifty bucks to fill.
Water is a precious commodity. Hauling it is a pita. I take a quick outside shower once or twice a week. I do dishes in a tub and use the water on the few plants I have in planters I take with me. Washing clothes usually happens in the same water right before I do dishes with the shower as a final rinse. 5 gallon jugs of water are heavy as hell.
Hygiene. This is a tough one. I hike 5-15 miles a day and believe you me, I stink BAD. You won't believe the rashes and other funk you get in places you'd never dream of. I have a steroid cream and other ointments and wipes to keep the bacterial army from murdering me. It's hot, it's dirty in the summer and freezing at night in the winter up there.
Waste. I found the composting toilets are a gimmick. They don't compost nearly as fast as advertised AND the compost stinks like a feed lot. You'll want that FAR away from where you reside as the bugs love it. Nothing better than knowing the fly that keeps landing on your dinner probably was tap dancing on your poop fossils a few moments before. My method is a porta potti that I can dump in the local free campgrounds and that takes place every few days. Oh and here is the kicker. Even with one person you'll fill the blackwater in a week. Unless you are PAYING to live in a park with hookup or a pump out you'll be unhooking everything to drive to pump out. Min once a week. Another pita. Many charge a good fee too. If you get caught dumping your waste it is a huge fine. As it should be.
Food. I shoot a lot of my protein as I'm hunting. I also have a book of 250 edible plants. Otherwise I'm heading down the hill for provisions once a week as storage is confined.
My interactions with people are minimal at this point as there is no cell service there. Do I love it? Yes. Is it simple, NO and hell no. I'm usually more than ready to come off the Mt when it's time.
Any type of dwelling will take maintenance and the weather, hot or cold creates problems. There is always something to work on in my spare time.
In summary, this is possible out in the sticks. Not allowed within city limits or non-blm land. If I had to commute to my job doing this I'd go broke buying gas.
Last edited by 1AngryTaxPayer; 08-09-2016 at 10:07 AM..
Property taxes aren't the big impediment, or shouldn't be if you have any kind of a j-o-b (or even a "special snowflake" trust fund or early inheritance from grandparents spending down for the look-back period prior to going on Medicaid in a nursing home, as so many hipsters seem to these days).
I have owned homes before that are on tiny lots, with property taxes in the $3,000 to $5,000/year range.
Where I live now 150 acres with river frontage, and a huge house is well under $1,000/year.
Property taxes can be can high, or they can be low.
Quote:
... The big impediment, as I say, are city codes and zoning regulations prohibiting human habitation of anything that small, either on or off the grid, unless a "full-size" residence is also on the property. Again, the propensity to park it in the parents backyard or on a friend's land. If anyone knows a way around this, I would be interested in hearing it, as I'd love to buy a parcel of land on or near a beach for a tiny house.
To my understanding; some municipalities are focused on their 'total assessment' that is the grand total of all assessed properties within the municipality that they can tax. If they can raise their total assessment, they raise their tax revenue. So having a slum anywhere in their municipality is seen as lowering the tax revenue for the municipality.
Neighborhoods with small $20k homes, private wells and septic, no sidewalks, no curbs, no street lights; do not make the municipality as much tax revenue as do $200k homes with city services.
The driving forcing behind these city codes and zoning is to make you high cost / high tax urban.
Maybe. I guess I'm just mad because I don't have a place to retreat if I fall on hard times again, lose my job, get banned from something for some arbitrary reason, decide to move and then find out it was a mistake, etc. It's always good to have a way to retreat and regroup. Unfortunately, no one really seems to understand homelessness (I was homeless for a few months after Katrina. I got a night job and crashed on relatives' couches. They eventually got fed up with me just doing that. I didn't shower at their place or do anything to take many resources from them; I just slept there, yet they had a problem, an extreme problem, with it. It was a humiliating experience, one I never want to go through again.), and it upsets me that most people just express the same false opinions. Your job isn't guaranteed, and it would be easier to get help paying the low property taxes on a self-sufficient off-grid dwelling than having to pay monthly expenses that could lead to the house being foreclosed due to utility liens.
To be honest, it just seems to be a better use of resources and time to at least mentally prep for what you would do, worst-case scenario, in a job-loss situation, and arrange your life so that you can set aside even a small amount over time as a temp safety net so that you're not staring homelessness in the face.
I've taught. It IS tight to put money into savings. But it can be done (without living in a vehicle, no less).
ANYbody can lose their job at any time, to be honest. Employers close up shop, lay people off, businesses go under, agencies close, etc. The answer seems to be more along the lines of ensuring that you are employable enough and flexible enough to switch into "Plan B" mode and line something else up if the worst-case scenario happens...not put a lot of time and energy (and, yes, money as well) into setting up a way to just live off-grid.
I sympathize about the hurricane after-effects and your difficulties, but honestly, spending so much time complaining on the Internet is time and effort better used to find a more suitable job or career, inexpensive apartment, and make a written plan how to realize your long-term goals.
The Internet is a good research tool, not a substitute for sweat equity or making hard decisions and living by them.
For the record, I DIDN'T lose my job, but did face the loss of a place to live, several years ago. I was mentally and emotionally unprepared for it, and it was a huge blow, as were the circumstances leading up to it. I was teaching at the time, and was worried about how I'd find somewhere to live on really modest wages, but I WAS able to do it without resorting to one of my city's tent villages or similar. You SHOULD be able to set up an at least modest, short-term safety net on your income, and should make it a priority to do so, if these anxieties are pervasive. You'll feel a lot better.
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