People are also joining the #vanlife movement, which allows them to save money and travel.
One New Yorker lives in a used 2005 Dodge Sprinter that he purchased for $5,000 so he doesn't have to spend any of his $30,000 annual salary on the city's sky-high rent, reported Zachary Kussin for The New York Post.
Living in vans is also popular in California. In Mountain View California, staggering rent prices have forced some residents out of apartments or houses and into vans or RVs, reported Business Insider's Nick Bastone.
And in San Francisco, Tracey Kaplan, a reporter for the Bay Area News Group, cashed out her retirement fund to buy a cargo van for $53,894, she explained in an article for The Mercury News. She's spending an additional $37,000 on renovating it into a home.
"I spent years anxiously searching for a viable housing solution that would allow me to retire in the Bay Area without going broke," she wrote in the article.