LOS ANGELES, CA – As fires raged across California and homeowners scrambled to escape with their belongings and lives, local van dweller Jason Emerson finally felt justified in his life choices.
Hidden next to a dumpster, his van carefully camouflaged by torn-up Amazon delivery boxes to avoid parking tickets, Emerson perched on his roof with a half-eaten bag of chips, peering through binoculars at the pandemonium unfolding before him.
“I’ve been waiting for this since I moved into a van,” Emerson said, rubbing his hands in glee. Emerson had been evicted from his apartment after missing multiple rent payments, an act he described as “sticking it to capitalism” but which his roommate described as “being a leech.”
“It’s not easy to pave your own path and decide to sleep in a car,” he said, popping a stale chip into his mouth. “People see it as being a homeless person on wheels, but I have a home.”
Just hours before being woken by sirens and screams, Emerson had curled up on his thin futon mattress, quietly sobbing as Temporary Home by Carrie Underwood played softly in the background. The weight of unpaid parking tickets, children who pointed and laughed at him through his van windows as he slept in his underwear, and the devastating loss of his Planet Fitness membership had left him missing the luxuries of an apartment. But now, watching million-dollar homes be reduced to smoldering rubble, he felt at peace. The flames were the sign he had been waiting for, proof he had made the right choices.
After the interview, he drove toward the fires and was seen shouting through a megaphone, “Who’s homeless now?” to the ex-homeowners, many of whom had paid enough into insurance to cover a new house but were upset to learn that they will receive only half of what they were due.
