No Fixed Address: The Rise of Women Living Alone in Vans
More solo women are choosing van life — not for adventure, but for survival.
I’m sitting in a Walmart parking lot in Mesa, Arizona right now, watching the sun go down behind the Superstition Mountains. Two rows over, I can see a Dodge Caravan with curtains in the windows and a small solar panel propped up on the dash. I’ve seen that van for three days running.
Yesterday morning I walked over and introduced myself. The woman inside — I’ll call her Donna — is 68 years old, a retired school aide from Phoenix, and she has been living in that minivan for seven months. She told me she gave up her apartment when her landlord raised the rent by $400 in a single year. Her Social Security check is $1,190 a month. The new rent would have been $1,350. The math didn’t work. The van did.
Donna is not alone. Not by a long shot.
The Numbers Tell the Story
According to a 2025 report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the fastest-growing segment of the unhoused and housing-insecure population in America is women over the age of 60. Many of them are not sleeping on sidewalks. They are sleeping in Chrysler Pacificas, Toyota Siennas, and cargo vans in parking lots just like this one.
A 2025 joint survey by the Pew Research Center and the Urban Institute found that nearly 28% of single women between the ages of 60 and 75 now spend more than 50% of their monthly income on housing. At that rate, a single unexpected medical bill, a car repair, or a missed shift can tip a woman from housed to unhoused almost overnight.
And here is what the data doesn’t always show: a lot of these women are making a deliberate choice. They are choosing their vehicle over a lease they cannot sustain. They are choosing mobility over a zip code that is pricing them out.
Why Women, and Why Now?
Women outlive men by an average of five to six years in the United States, which means they face more years of rising costs on fixed incomes — and more years of doing it alone. Divorce, widowhood, and the wage gap all leave older women with significantly less retirement savings than their male counterparts. According to the National Institute on Retirement Security, women retire with about 30% less savings than men on average.
Add to that the fact that affordable housing waitlists in most major cities now run anywhere from three to ten years, and you begin to understand why a paid-off minivan starts to look like a reasonable solution.
What Van Life Looks Like for Survival Dwellers
It doesn’t always look like the Instagram version, I promise you that. There are no $400 rooftop tents or matching linen curtains. But there is real ingenuity. Women like Donna are learning solar power out of necessity. They are finding BLM land and safe parking programs. They are connecting online through private Facebook groups where they share tips on where to shower, where to park safely overnight, and which truck stops have the cleanest restrooms.
Safety is the biggest concern, and it is valid. Solo women in vehicles face real risks. But many of these women will tell you that the risks of van life feel more manageable than the risk of signing a lease they cannot afford and ending up on the street with nothing.
A Different Kind of Freedom
Before I walked back to my own vehicle last night, Donna said something that stuck with me. She said, “I wake up every morning and I know exactly what I owe and exactly what I have. That peace of mind? I didn’t have that in my apartment.”
That is not a fairy tale version of van life. That is a woman who did the math, made a hard call, and is navigating it with more dignity than the housing market ever gave her.
If you are a woman thinking about this life — whether by necessity or by choice — I see you. And I want you to know there is a whole community of us out here figuring it out one parking lot at a time.
Thanks for reading!
Kindly,
Carol