The New American Middle Class Lives in Their Car

Añadido: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]There are Americans working full-time who cannot afford a place to live. More and more people are having to move into their cars because traditional housing has become completely unaffordable. And once you start looking at the numbers, it becomes painfully obvious why.

[00:00:17]Homeless living here in my car even though I work 50 to 60 hours every single week. I don't make enough money to qualify for an apartment. Hi, my name is Brooke. I'm a homeless disabled veteran and I'm using my page to show what it's like to try and get back on your feet once you become homeless. The cheapest place I found close to me was Pine Oak RV Resort and it is $775 a month before you add tax and utilities, which is going to be $30 for sewer water, $40 for the admission fee, so a total of $889.34 a month. The system wants the poor and the unhoused to fail, which is actually crazy because the system is entirely funded by the poor people who are failing.

[00:01:00]>> For those of you who have been following my family for a while, you know that we have gone through a period of time where we have lived in some pretty untraditional housing situations.

[00:01:11][music] We have lived in our truck for a period of time. We have lived off-grid in an older camper without [music] running water or electricity. We did that for a whole year. Those living situations for us was somewhat of a choice. For a lot of people, it's not, but it did give us a little bit of a glimpse into what life is like when you don't have secure housing. One of the main issues in the US is just the overall cost of living and what you're getting for the price that you're paying. There's a choice that a lot of families are having to make. Do you afford housing or do you afford a vehicle? Do you afford housing or do you afford health care? Do you afford housing or do you afford food? These are just our basic needs. People are having to choose between the basics. I had some health problems. I had to have my fourth open-heart surgery. I was able to get the disability and with the disability, I was able to afford to get this. I didn't have a choice. I had to do this.

[00:02:17]They kept on raising the rent.

[00:02:19]>> Yeah. I was at a trailer park. I started off with $500 for rent and then it went up to a thousand. When I was working two jobs and plus I was doing DoorDash and I was taking care of my mom because she had the hospice.

[00:02:32]>> Traditionally, when people think of homeless people, they think of a certain demographic of people. Maybe an addict or, you know, somebody with mental health issues. Younger adults who have made bad choices. But the demographic of people who are becoming homeless is growing wider and wider. It is seniors who cannot afford life on their social security payments. It's young adults who are either going through college or recently graduated from college but are not able to find a job that pays them enough money to live independently. It's families who can't afford all of the costs associated with raising children and also have housing. And a lot of times when you're choosing between housing and transportation, I think that a lot of people from other places around the world don't understand how necessary transportation is in the US.

[00:03:38]Without your vehicle, you cannot get to work, you cannot get to the grocery store, you cannot get to the doctor.

[00:03:45]There are so many things that you're unable to do without a car that when the question becomes, do you choose housing or do you choose transportation, a lot of times people need to choose transportation so that they can have their needs met. America built communities around cars instead of around people.

[00:04:04]>> August 9th will be 1 month that I've been sleeping in my car and really honestly, it hasn't been too bad. It's just been hot, you know. Um the only bad times is is when I'm off of work. So when I'm off work, I really kind of really have nothing to do, you know. I can't really sleep and take a nap the way I want to because it's so hot in the car. The car is like a oven, right? So when I'm off, I normally go to the gym, take my time, take a shower, brush my teeth. I normally hang out at the library cuz it's like a it's like a cooling place. So when I'm off work, I really don't have anything to do. I'm just like wandering around. So I'm exercising mostly. I got my gym clothes on. I'm hiking. But eventually, that takes a toll on you cuz you're like tired. I want to take a nap. I want to go to an apartment and I want to sleep.

[00:04:53]So that's what I really want to do. I dread my days off. I dread my days off because I don't have the typical place that I can go and really lounge and react relax in.

[00:05:02]>> The average cost that somebody is paying today for their transportation expenses is $1,100 a month. And when you have that cost added onto your already really high cost of housing, it's becoming more and more difficult for the average family to be able to afford both of these very high expenses. So we left the US over a year ago and have been traveling around Southeast Asia and Europe. And something that I realized that is very unique about the United States is the extreme amount of homelessness all across the country. I think that it is something that would absolutely just shock the rest of the world if they saw the amount of homeless people. Like when we have traveled, we have not seen anything even remotely close to what it's like going to a US city. Not even a big city. Like we're from Knoxville, Tennessee. And if you go to downtown Knoxville, there are thousands of homeless people all over. There's bridges that there's just so many people. It's completely packed with homeless people and it's really sad. You know, we lived in a beach town in Florida and the same thing. Worse, you know, even. When we lived in our truck, we were living out in the Southwest desert on BLM land because there is free land that you're able to camp on and there are so many people living out there in RVs and vans and, you know, when we lived in rural areas, we liked to go paddle boarding and kayaking and stuff and you can just go down, you know, the Tennessee River in these little offshoots and come across homeless camps and people living out in the woods. And that was something that like we saw regularly and I didn't realize. It's shocking to me to even walk around Bangkok, Thailand and there be so few homeless people in what the US would consider a third world country, you know. It's really, really eye-opening. And I'm not saying that there's no, you know, homeless people or there's no extreme poverty in these countries. The culture around homelessness in other countries is not so normalized. Like it is very normal in the US to just walk by people begging on the streets and people sleeping on benches even when it's freezing outside and um that's just become so normalized in the US and it is honestly really sad.

[00:07:43]So there's obviously some sort of systemic issue going on in the US that doesn't happen in the rest of the world.

[00:07:49]There are preventative measures in other countries that prevent people from becoming homeless. The US is the world where if you become homeless, it is your fault. There is something that you have done wrong and there's a lot of blame on these people because, you know, America's pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you know, take care of yourself. Whereas other cultures, they're more community minded and um it's just more of a collective, you know, society where people actually care about each other a little bit more and see it more as a social community problem. So besides just cultural reasons, there are obviously tons of economic reasons as to why this has become such a huge problem.

[00:08:41]>> I spent $85 just on ice. Four weeks, $85. What do you mean $3 a bag? Wow, it would be cheaper just to have a fridge.

[00:08:53]Which brings me to other expenses that you just don't think about initially. At first, I thought, oh, a cooler will be fine. No, I need a fridge. But in order to have a fridge, I have to have a power bank. Those are roughly between three and $500. And then for this winter, I'm going to have to have some kind of awning to pull out so that I can cook without getting rained on. Have a heated blanket or some kind of heater for the car. That's like a thousand dollars worth of stuff and it's things that if you're just car camping, you don't really need. But if you're going to live in your car full-time and do it comfortably, there are a lot of unexpected expenses and it can get very expensive very quickly.

[00:09:27]>> Thing that I feel like I've learned in the last 6 weeks is how present this kind of forces you to be. By living in your vehicle, you're kind of shrinking all of your possessions down. Shrinking your focus on worldly things often times down. Left with just what's right in front of you and it forces you to be very present in your environment in the moment. You appreciate nature more because it becomes your safe haven.

[00:09:50]Also, your water consumption, for example, you appreciate water so much more. Not having running water has made me appreciate and feel just like more present every time I take a shower or every time I get to fill up my water at at a at a state park, something like that. I just I have such an appreciation for where my water comes from and just having it in general.

[00:10:13]>> So, a lot of people, you know, are thinking, "Well, why don't you just rent something cheaper?" Well, the problem is is there's not anything cheaper anymore.

[00:10:20]Rent is like, you know, between $1,600 and $2,000 a month across the US, which wages are not keeping up with inflation right now. So, the housing prices have exploded and people's wages are just not keeping up.

[00:10:35]When I was 20 and I started working, I was making just above minimum wage, which at the time was like $5 and something, maybe $5.75, I don't remember. Um but I wasn't making much more than that, maybe $6.25 an hour working full-time and I was able to rent a duplex for $500 a month and you know, pay all of my expenses, utilities, food, all that stuff. You know, it wasn't even an issue.

[00:11:01]And today, young people cannot do that.

[00:11:04]You cannot be a 20-year-old and go and rent an apartment, you know, making minimum wage. Like, you can't even really do that making double minimum wage anymore.

[00:11:14]>> I'm truly just trying to figure out how anyone can afford a house in this economy. I work, my husband works, I have my master's degree, my husband is in a unionized trade and we cannot afford a house. The house we had, unfortunately, is just no longer available. So, we are in a situation where we have to purchase a home or find a long-term rental solution.

[00:11:36]Both are unattainable. Rent is astronomical. A two-bedroom, one-bathroom house is over $300,000. I have three children. I just don't know what there is for people like me right now who work, work full-time, have a graduate degree and are still struggling to survive. That's a big red flag and a big problem.

[00:12:01]>> The requirements to rent places has also just become insane. A lot of times, you have to prove that you're making three times the amount of rent. They do credit checks. They have really high deposits.

[00:12:15]It's usually first month's, last month's, and a security deposit up front. So, that's like $6,000 or so dollars up front just to get in somewhere. There's application fees.

[00:12:26]They look at your work history. So, you could technically afford to rent somewhere, but still not even qualify for the place just based on all of these criteria that you have to meet. So, a lot of people really just have no other options but to move into their vehicle. So, I'm one of the many Americans struggling with homelessness.

[00:12:46]I live in a vehicle that was made in 1996.

[00:12:50]I live on the side of the road and I live in parking lots from time to time. When I can, I stay at campgrounds, but this was obviously not my first choice of living. At the time I became homeless, I was 22. My grandma had just passed away.

[00:13:06]I had applied to six different apartments and I got denied at every place because I didn't have renter's history or credit yet because, like I said, at the time I was 22, I never rented before and I never built credit.

[00:13:18]So, after being denied multiple times, I did have to stay in motels and my money was going fast on nights at motels. Also I want to point out, living in your car is not cheap. Uh we know this from experience. Just the cost of one owning a vehicle as far as like insurance and maintenance, the gas to get you places and to run your vehicle. You are going to have higher food costs because you don't have a kitchen to prepare your food. If you are forced to leave your old home and move into your vehicle, a lot of times you might have storage, a storage unit to put your stuff in. And then if you're going to park anywhere, it's not always easy to find free parking. Sometimes you'll have to pay for public parking. I know that was one of the reasons when we were in our truck why we went out to the Southwest is because there is free camping land out there. And so, we were able to camp for free a lot of the time while we were there. But we were still spending like, you know, a couple grand a month just living out of our truck. So, it's been a little more than a year of living in my car. I thought I'd go over how much I actually saved. I spent this much exactly on living expenses. I made this much delivering food for Uber and this much delivering food for DoorDash.

[00:14:30]So, in total, when you total up everything I made minus everything I spent, I saved about this much.

[00:14:36]Now, of that amount, I maxed out my Roth IRA, so take off seven grand of that.

[00:14:40]And for my own personal taxable account, I invest about $10 a day, so knock off about 3,600 of that.

[00:14:46]So, in total, after everything, I only saved this amount in cash.

[00:14:50]Now, I know it's not that much, but I'm extremely proud that I've been able to travel the whole country, see and do everything, and make money along the way. I understand that he's so excited to spend so little money and be able to save money and travel all over the US.

[00:15:02]Uh we would have felt the same way, too.

[00:15:05]But for that to be your overhead cost is still really high. There's a lot of people who are choosing to live in more untraditional housing situations that maybe don't absolutely have to. It's not a necessity, but they're choosing to do that because the financial pressures of just renting somewhere or even owning a home means that they will never be able to get ahead. This was kind of our mindset when we were, you know, choose to live off grid, moved into our truck is because, yeah, we could afford to rent something else, but that was all of our money and we had no other money left over to do anything else. We didn't want to go into debt. We wanted to build a future for ourselves and we had other plans and goals that didn't include spending all of our money on rent or a mortgage or property taxes or, you know, all of these expenses that come with like traditional housing. And more and more people are choosing to do the same thing. They're choosing to go off grid.

[00:16:11]They're choosing to live in RVs and move in with their parents. Like, 40-year-old people are moving in with their parents.

[00:16:20]Families are moving in with other families and sharing housing cost.

[00:16:24]People are leaving the country, which is what we ultimately chose to do. We went and we're living in Thailand and I've talked a lot about how much we're spending here, but um it is it is the same amount that we were spending while we were in the US and we now have a normal house with air conditioning and all the amenities. We have a swimming pool and all that stuff.

[00:16:47]So, um we we don't live off grid anymore. And it's not easy to leave the US and a lot of people can't do it and don't want to do it and that shouldn't be the solution for everyone. Like, this is why I am talking about this stuff on my channel because I want the US to change. I quite frankly am am pretty frustrated that we had to leave in order to have a good quality of life and so many other people can't do that. This There are things in our system that need to be fixed. They need to be talked about. They need to be addressed so that things can change. At the end of the day, we are still American citizens. We are fortunate enough to be able to be very resourceful and adaptable in our approach to the way that we live our life, but a lot of people can't do that.

[00:17:37]And we cannot confuse resourcefulness with a healthy system. The system is still broken. If people are having to leave the country or live off grid or not be able to live independently or purchase a home when they're 40 or any of those things, that is a huge red flag that our system is breaking and is not headed in the right direction and we need to make some really big changes. Americans are living in a situation right now where their wages have not kept up with inflation.

[00:18:15]Their buying power has decreased.

[00:18:16]They're basically earning less money every year while at the same time housing prices are skyrocketing, rent is skyrocketing. Most people are not able to even afford to buy a home. They're not able to buy into a system. Owning assets is the way to any sort of wealth at all. When you cannot buy a home, you cannot buy real estate as an investment, you are losing out on the wealth and you are giving it away to the people in power. And that is one very small way that our wealth gap is continuing to increase. Middle class and poor people are getting poorer every year and housing is just one of the red flags. But across the board, everything else is also becoming harder and it's just compounding on each other.

[00:19:09]Healthcare costs, childcare costs, food, debt. All of these things are making life in the US really hard and people moving into their cars is just one symptom of a much bigger problem.

[00:19:25]Because when people are forced to choose between housing or transportation or healthcare or food, that is not a personal failure. That is a warning sign. I don't think Americans are failing. I think that they are adapting.

[00:19:40]And when increasingly drastic choices are becoming necessary just to have a little bit of stability, then that means it is time for us to ask some much harder questions.

[00:19:52]Y'all, we're not angry enough.

[00:19:55]We're not angry enough. We're not We don't have enough rage. I literally just bought clothes for myself.

[00:20:03]Secondhand at that, and I spent $118, and I feel guilt. I feel anxiety because I bought clothes secondhand, and I went to the grocery store right after. My car's in repo.

[00:20:18]And I live in it, so I don't have any other I don't I don't have any other choice. I can't just give it back. This is where I live. Okay? At least not until I figure something else to out.

[00:20:25]I get a call from Toyota this morning.

[00:20:27]Enough. I get a call from Toyota this morning letting me know that my car is about to go into what's called charge-off status.

[00:20:35]If you don't know what charge-off status means, that basically means that they're considering it an unpayable debt, and that it when it when charge-off status gets approved, you have one of two options. You either give the car back, or you pay off the full car, which for this would be $31,000.

[00:20:52]Obviously, I don't have either of those options. I'm talking to this lady. I'm explaining to her my entire situation from front from front to back just to see if there's anything that she can do to help me given my extraneous circumstances. She says, "Not only do I believe you, but I want you to know that I'm hearing stories like yours every single day." She said, "Never in the entire time that I've been doing this has this many people been in your situation. Every single day I'm talking to people in this situation. So, we literally don't have safety nets for you because we've never seen this before."

[00:21:25]Things are really really really bad right now. Insurance is insanely high.

[00:21:29]My car is $515 a month. Insurance is $250 a month. You have to hear it from people who are on the ground experiencing this, okay? And don't even don't even bring up the job market to me right now. You can't find a job anywhere.

[00:21:46]I I have been applying for jobs every single day for 2 weeks.

[00:21:51]And it's like nothing.

[00:21:54]Nothing. I call these places, and they're not even hiring. They have their listings up, and they're not even hiring. Why do companies do that? I feel like they started doing that post-COVID, and that just doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense.

[00:22:08]They just keep the listing open. So, they're they're having you waste all your time because, of course, these things take 45 minutes to fill out. So, you're doing 45 minutes of unpaid labor.

[00:22:21]And then, [snorts] you know what?

[00:22:22]They'll send you an email after and say, "Hey, we got your application. We're actually not hiring for this position, and we delete all old applications after 60 days. So, if you haven't heard from us within 60 days, just go ahead and apply again." Apply again for what? A position that's just constantly open? If I haven't heard from you for 60 days, you just told me you're not hiring.

[00:22:43]Are Are we Are we on planet Earth right now? What's going on? Food is extremely expensive. Insurance is extremely expensive. Everything's extremely expensive. Wages aren't going up. Bosses are becoming more hostile. Police are becoming more hostile. That's what it's like. If you're wondering what it's like to be homeless right now in 2026, that's what it's like. It feels like there are no options.

[00:23:03]>> Now, the answer that you want, I have.

[00:23:05]You're wondering why they are doing this, and you're wondering why we are not fighting back. Slavery never stopped. It just evolved. The government requires you to be a slave to them in order to rent an apartment. You could have money. You could have, for example, $10,000 cash, but you still will not be able to get a place to live unless you have proof that you have been a slave to the system. Pay stubs, bank statements, proof that you work a certain amount of hours. If you are not making money for the government, then they don't want you. They don't want to help you, and they see you as a burden.

[00:23:39]The system is set up for rich families.

[00:23:41]If I had a cosigner, I would be able to get a place to live, but I had no family or friends to cosign for me, so I've just been navigating this kind of by myself, and I spent my life savings on this vehicle so that I didn't have to sleep in my car or outside in the park.

[00:23:57]But, the government doesn't believe you guys will fight back, and they are trying to make you so tired that you won't fight back, or you will become so rageful, and you won't think straight, so you'll get yourself in legal trouble, and then once you get locked away, you can legally be used as a slave. So, at the end of the day, it's all about the elites using the middle class and the poor as their workhorses. I always try to tell people you will never get rich working a 9-to-5 job because the rich never got rich that way. The rich are telling you guys, "Go work a 9-to-5 job, and you will be like us." But, they really got their money from generational wealth, slavery. The funniest thing is, right now I'm homeless living on the side of the road, but I'm making more money than my grandma was, or my grandparents, my mother, like back in the day. Their rent was like $300, but they're going to tell us that they worked just as hard as us, and that we're the bums, and we're lazy because they're not going to own up to the mess that they made.

[00:24:51]And they don't care anyways because they're not going to be on Earth for much longer, so we're going to be the ones to deal with it, and then our children. But, you guys just have to realize it's about slavery. It's about power and control. It's about feeding the elites, feeding the rich. They don't care what happens to you. They see you as ants. If you pass away, they will replace you with a new employee. They really don't care. You're just money.

[00:25:12]You make money for them, and they even say money doesn't exist. It's just meant to control you because they know money doesn't exist. They trade numbers. They do not trade money. Money is paper. It's a made-up thing to control the middle class and the poor so that you guys stay in your lane. They control you with fear because they think that you need them.

[00:25:31]They took away our human instincts, so you don't think you can hunt for food or make your own house, but you think you can make money to pay somebody to do it for you.