(upbeat music)
- Hey there.
Welcome to my home.
Come with me.
My name is Vaughn Dabney.
I'm an entrepreneur,
best selling author, and software engineer.
I currently live in Los Angeles, California,
and I live in a delivery truck.
- [Narrator] This is Relocated,
where we tour the living situations
of people who choose to live off the beaten path.
- I would say the main thing
that prompted me to move to LA was the weather.
Literally, just the weather.
I was over winters on the East coast.
I relocated here roughly five and a half years ago.
It's pretty much great weather all year round.
Currently, I took an old delivery truck
and I built a home inside of it.
Complete with solar panels on the roof.
I have electricity.
We do have water people.
I have a full bathroom and shower.
One second while I pause the water.
This is my bathroom and I couldn't be more proud of it.
One of my favorite things, can you guess?
The sky light.
Because if you've ever taken a shower with a sky light
you know that it's magical.
This is actually my bed right here.
It folds down onto the benches.
Here's where I sleep.
And I have no rent.
That's the most beautiful thing.
I don't know what you wanna take from that,
but what I'm doing in and of itself is unusual,
especially being a person of color.
So the cost to build this truck was fairly reasonable.
I did this myself over the course of about a year.
The truck cost me 10,000 dollars,
and the materials, the tools, any fixtures in here,
all of that came out to be around 14,000 dollars.
We spend 25 to 30,000 dollars on rent,
you know on an apartment that we never will own,
and I spent the same amount, maybe less,
in something that I own, that I can live in rent free.
Zero.
My water to fill up costs me maybe 30, 40 dollars a month,
and my electric bill is null and void
because I harness the sun for the solar power.
I think the only bill I have is maybe my internet.
I know the wheels are turning,
it's a beautiful thing.
I think my daily routine is pretty standard.
It's nothing different,
I'm just operating in a minimal space if you will.
I get out of bed, brush my teeth,
I make some breakfast.
I go about my day,
whether it be working on little things
in the truck that I wanna make better,
or going for a bike ride.
And usually, this is where I work.
I go on my computer and I work on
software programs for clients.
I think the biggest thing that surprised me
from being able to save my money
was that I had more time and money
to invest in my community.
I'm an investor in my friends and family,
and that was a surprise to me
because I didn't foresee that.
Those things have been the highlight
of me building this tiny home truck.
Before anyone gets into doing something like this,
I think you need to ask yourself why you wanna do it.
Is it to save money?
Is it so you can travel the country?
Is there a bigger plan in motion?
For me, the waste of money for rent
in an apartment that I would never own
just didn't make sense to me.
It never has.
The second reason was because I have the ability to do this
and to create my own living space
and change the narrative that we see
when it comes to people of color doing this.
You know, when I first started,
if you had looked up
you may not have seen many posts.
But now if you search for that hashtag,
there is plenty of content out there
we are contributing daily
and we are changing the narrative
in what we see when it comes to alternative living
in which to thrive.
I have no regrets.
I love this space so much
and I love when people come in here
and they're like, wow, this is bigger than I thought.
I hope you enjoyed my interview with Bustle,
and I hope that I have inspired some of you to explore this.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate.
I want to inform as many people as possible,
and I appreciate you for watching.