These young SF professionals choose to live in RVs Young professionals say living in vehicles bolsters edgy image

Tynan Smith, who lives in a Winnebago that he parks in San Francisco's Castro district, takes a tea break. Tynan Smith, who lives in a Winnebago that he parks in San Francisco's Castro district, takes a tea break. Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Photo: Russell Yip, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close These young SF professionals choose to live in RVs 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

Tynan Smith, a 32-year-old tech entrepreneur, lives in what he considers his dream Castro district apartment. He's got marble counters, hardwood floors, a cedar closet and gold leaf ceiling. He doesn't have a roommate. And at $500 a month, you can't beat the rent.

The hitch is something he thinks is hardly a hitch: His apartment is a 1996 Winnebago. The rent is for a parking spot and a bit of electricity.

"With the RV, I have a good excuse to design everything really efficiently. If I had a house, would I really put in marble counters? But here it's like 2 feet by 2 feet, so I do," he said, drinking ginger tea he'd bought at the Samovar Tea Lounge nearby. "And then there's the way it makes my life more efficient, more thoughtful."

Smith is among a small slice of young San Francisco professionals who are choosing to live in vehicles - whether it's a large RV or a smaller car - even when they can afford more traditional options (i.e. apartments), albeit not in the trendiest neighborhoods.

These in-vehicle arrangements - usually associated with the homeless - are illegal, and come at a time when the city's housing crisis has pushed many to seek lower-rent options (the average rent for a one-bedroom in the Castro is $2,990 per month). Yet, unlike the homeless, these new vehicle dwellers see their choice as more than financially practical. They talk about the freedom to move, the minimalism that small space requires, and the cred it gives them within the startup community, where there's value in being hard-core and a little weird.

"We have such a tight vacancy rate, 1 to 2 percent," said Sarah Karlinsky, the deputy director of the city planning think tank SPUR. "It leads people to live in whatever they can find, like their cars. Still, what an interesting leap to be like, 'I'm just going to buy an RV?' "

Parking around town

Max Kirkeberg, a professor emeritus of geography at San Francisco State University who leads walking tours of the city, said he's noticed significantly more RVs and cars parked surreptitiously around town, whether they belong to the homeless or intrepid entrepreneurs.

Kirkeberg said it all harks back to "Carville," an impromptu neighborhood in the Outer Sunset where discarded horsecars and eventually cable cars had been dragged out and converted into homes beginning in the late 19th century. Kirkeberg had a good friend who lived in one of the cable cars during the 1980s.

"It really was just a streetcar - the vaulted ceilings, the old dark wood, the streetcar windows - but he'd put in some shoulder-high partitions to make walls. And he had a good taste for decorating, so it was a very attractive place, filled with flowers. He really took time to fix it up."

Which sounds a lot like what Tynan Smith has done.

His Winnebago Rialto, which he bought for $17,000, is 20.8 feet long, about a foot longer than a regulation parking spot. The vehicle gets 17 miles per gallon - and has been meticulously rebuilt.

After buying it in 2008, Smith tore the carpet off the ceiling and the walls. He installed a tin ceiling, which is bordered by gold leaf that he bought on the Internet (he also taught himself how to gold leaf).

"It's just ridiculously ornate," he said, "especially in the RV, and I love that."

Electricity controls

Smith also put in solar panels, but the surrounding apartments block the sun, so he usually employs his electrical outlets. He controls the lights, and all the RV's electricity, with his phone, using an app designed for media consoles that he hacked. During bright days, he keeps a cool whiter light; at night, he slides a hue scale on his phone, and the light becomes warm and ruddy.

His work desk is made of zebra wood. He laid the hardwood floor with his dad.

Every morning, Smith walks or takes his motorcycle to the gym - he has a personal trainer who's recently put him on a strict, no-sugar-no-wheat meal plan. He showers, picks up his laundry, and goes back to his Winnebago to start coding.

"It forces you to live a simple life and focus on what's really important," Smith wrote on the blogging platform SETT, which he co-founded. "You can't waste your time looking for a great armoire because you have nowhere to put that armoire. Who needs armoires anyway? They're a symbol of what's wrong in the world, if you ask me."

And although he won't allow his landlord's address to be revealed, he says it's not out of legal concerns.

"I have to think about them, too. They'd have like tons of people showing up with RVs and looking for spots! And they've really given me a very special arrangement."

Grace Zamora, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, made her own arrangements, too.

As rents rose, she found herself always moving south - from North Berkeley to Rockridge to Temescal - to find more affordable apartments. But the thought of getting farther and farther from her haunts began to wear on her, so she decided to bow out of the rental market - and live in a small RV.

She could see benefits beyond the low rent. She could park right by the BART station near Temescal (perfect because she taught English as a second language in San Francisco's Financial District).

'Sense of adventure'

"Living in a way that's extremely conscientious about what you're doing, and the sense of adventure without even going anywhere," she said. "You feel very productive all the time because you're so present. You feel a little bit, like, superior."

For her, the challenge was to find a suitable location to park.

"You want to find a space that's safe enough so you can walk home at night," Zamora said. "But dangerous enough so the neighbors won't call the police."

And though people didn't like her RV, they typically responded differently when she walked out of it.

"People would get very territorial, but the second I would step out in my suit, put on my helmet and get on my bike and cycle off to work, people's faces would change completely," she said. "Just based on the way I look, the lifestyle isn't a traditionally cohesive fit."

SETT co-founder Todd Iceton, who previously worked for a startup that was acquired by Constant Contact, did not need to live in his car for two years afterward - but he chose to. "It's free-ing," he said.

First, after he bought himself an Audi, he parked next to Buena Vista Park, where for decades people have been sleeping in their cars.

"But I mean, it's kind of dangerous up there! It's kind of rough. Once I realized that, I moved to the Mission."

To shower, he joined the Westfield San Francisco Centre's luxury Burke Williams Day Spa.

"Cucumber water and big robes and the whole thing," he said, laughing. "You get a free massage every month. And since it's a chain, when I went down to L.A. and lived on the beach in Venice, I would just stop in."

Finding an apartment

His living arrangements became a big part of his identity.

"When our startup was getting acquired, we'd have all these meetings, and they'd introduce me like, 'This is Todd, he lives in his car.' I mean, it's cool!"

These days, he lives in a Hayes Valley apartment.

"Yeah, I do," he said, a little bashful. "I was doing the car thing, and I loved the car thing. But after a while, even something strange gets old."