Product Review

If you’re venturing into a place you’ve never been to, bring a damn good map. How to Live in a Storage Unit or Other Place You Don't Belong is that map. Painstakingly researched, and thorough, this title is the authoritative text on how to turn a non-traditional space into a home.

• Avoid commonly-made mistakes.
• Tried-and-true strategies for locating the ideal non-traditional living space.

Some choose to “get off the grid,” but many more Americans find themselves pushed off—whether because of financial pressures, a need or a deep desire to disappear for a period of time, or myriad other compelling reasons. John Casper is serious about teaching the reader how storage units can meet the needs of the housing-insecure, the adventurous, and anyone else willing to challenge social mores (and sometimes the law) in search of a place to call home.

Hundreds of homeless human beings die each year in the United States from hypothermia alone. This book aims to help people find alternative means of shelter, so they can not only get back on their feet but also to help prevent them from dying out on the street. This doesn't necessarily mean living in a storage unit. These ideas can be adapted to live in other places you don't belong.

According to a 2006 report from the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, the life expectancy for a homeless person in the U.S. is 50 years, compared to the standard life expectancy of 78 years. Many homeless people die from preventable causes such as communicable diseases, heart problems, cancer, hypothermia and hate crimes. In the colder regions of the United States, the risk of death from hypothermia and frostbite is eight times that of the non-homeless. Between the years 1999 – 2005, the National Coalition for the Homeless recorded 472 violent crimes against homeless people by non-homeless people; 169 of which were murders. According to Social Solutions, there were 564,708 homeless people in the United States in the year 2015, and 15% of those people are chronically homeless as opposed to people who are merely temporarily couch-surfing, or living in a family member’s garage or basement.

One-hundred percent of the royalties from this book go toward helping someone who is homeless.