Lots of people live in vans by choice, I've considered it. A PO Box, a cell phone and a van is pretty cheap.

Furthermore, in context of the topic at hand, we're talking about housing _in NYC_, which people certainly don't need. I certainly don't. I don't even want it.

You need land to park your van on. Land is pricey. Land in or near "a city where all the jobs are" is even pricier. A house (residential building) on land near amenities is going to be expensive. All a van does is reduce the cost of building on top of that land - and not by a great deal. I mean the UK has large numbers of "trailer parks" in the South East and those suckers go for 100K plus. More than half the cost of average house price in the UK.

A van does not solve the problem. A van is a shitty place to raise a family. And remote working is not going to cut it - if your job does not pay you enough to afford a house, it's unlikely to be a nice middle class job where you can sit at a laptop.

Walmart parking lots are free. So is the side of the road in most places. The purpose of the van is not owning property (hence the PO box).

Did we just add "being able to raise a family" to the "need" column too?

Kids are more expensive than housing.

Your way of argumentation can be applied to anything.

"People don't need nutritious food, you can survive just fine on bread and water for many decades. Do people suddenly "need" to live long healthy lives."

The point is that society should agree on some level of basic needs, if you think a van fulfills the requirements for a residence for the majority of people this discussion needs to be held on a much more fundamental level of how you view other people and their requirements for life.

And yes, if you want the future to be in any way a human future, "being able to raise a family" is absolutely in the "need" column.

Finally, to give you some perspective of problems a real society would actually face if this ridiculous scenario were true: what do you think would happen to the price of Walmart parking spots if "van-life" was a common choice.

> Your way of argumentation can be applied to anything.

That's because it's a good argument. And no, people don't need nutritious food either. Unless you _want_ them to live healthy lives. To satisfy your "want", there is a list of "needs". If you really want to, you can turn any want into a need by applying it to a higher level want. I happen to want people to live long healthy lives but I'm not going to frame that as a "need" because it simply isn't.

> The point is that society should agree on some level of basic needs

Ok, let's start there.

> how you view other people and their requirements for life.

I would _like_ everyone to live a happy and fulfilled life free of suffering. I pay taxes and donate to charity to help provide that for people. It is, however, not a requirement for life or a "need" in any way.

> And yes, if you want the future to be in any way a human future, "being able to raise a family" is absolutely in the "need" column.

Ok. If that's the goal, yes. Is that the goal? People are having children at a sub-replacement level. It doesn't seem like that's really a goal for those people.

I _want_ to live in a free society. I _want_ there to be no or minimal human suffering. If humanity goes extinct through a process of dwindling birthrates because people choose not to have children, I really could not care less.

Every "need" has an implicit "in order to accomplish [goal]" on the end of it. Framing something as a "need" assumes a common goal which is often abused people to put more and more things into the "need" column when there is no consensus goal.

So what do people "need" housing for? The availability of affordable housing is already an accomplished goal. The availability of affordable housing in NYC is not an accomplished goal.

The availability of affordable housing in NYC is only a need for the survival of NYC itself which I, again, could not care less about (provided humans don't suffer in the collapse).

People talk past each other constantly by omitting their priors discussing these things. When you say "housing is a need", for what? And in the context of this article, I'd interpret your statement of "need" to be NYC specific so, "housing in NYC is a need", for what?

Feel free to reframe the word "need" into a philosophical all or nothing, what-does-it-even-mean-to-want-something kind of way, but then there's no common ground to discuss anything on. Talk about omitting priors, how about this prior: lets use words the way people use words generally.

If you don't consider happiness and lack of suffering a goal that is worthy of using the word "need" you are just doing some Jordan Peterson-esque word salad defense of something that cannot be coherently understood outside your in-group, even if you wrote a book on it.

How many van-living people do you think will be able to squat on Walmart property before they're getting knocks with armed officers and drug dogs in the middle of the night?

Yes, without question being able to raise a family is a need for a functional society. Longterm living mobile in a van is not viable for anyone except the most fringe members of society.

This article is about New York City. Do you know how many Walmarts there are here? None.

> Lots of people live in vans by choice

For a claim like this you’re going to need to do better than “lots”.