“| found myself in that situation lots, and | thought | had good judgement, but I just had
to be like, ‘Fuck off, man. | don’t have another place to go, and you’re seriously taking
advantage of that right now?’ It’s hard to put that in a light-hearted article, but that’s what
happened a lot. Safety issues, when you don’t have a lock and a home, and a place where
you have respect that you can expect. You’re sometimes living by other people's rules, and
those rules aren't always fair.”

The pitfalls of being home-free came later in our interview, and when | ask Bach early on
what some of the consequences are of living such an itinerant lifestyle in Vancouver, she
could initially “only think of perks.” Ultimately, home-free living taught Bach to have less
attachment to personal belongings, and the experience was indispensable in advancing her
trajectory as a musician.

“My main takeaway was, ‘Holy god, do we not need to make all of this money, we don’t
need to work so hard.’ The number of hours that | didn’t need to work in order to make
rent, | was so productive, and it absolutely 1,000 per cent changed my music career. I’m
going on a tour of Japan in March, and | never would have had the hours in a day to work
on being a musician if | were trying to make rent,” she said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling
how much time | was able to give myself when | didn’t have to work a job to pay Vancouver
rents.”

And while Bach’s success story might have you itching to go home-free, she also cautions
against doing it simply to save a few bucks.

“Don’t do it for no reason; don’t just do it for the money. There has to be a larger goal. For
me, it was to have more hours in the day to be a musician. That was my goal, and that’s
what | accomplished. If you just want to save money, that’s short-sighted.”

It’s difficult to imagine a time when living in the Lower Mainland was anything other
than a struggle, and those conditions are unlikely to change moving forward. Back in
2015, information collected by Statistics Canada found that nearly a quarter of Vancouver,
Burnaby, Richmond, and Coquitlam renters were spending more than 50 per cent of their
earnings on rent.

Bach’s solution to start a pet-sitting business and go home-free for 15 months is just one

of many approaches to alternate Vancouver living. In recent years, friends of mine have
purchased RVs or vans to live in, literally putting the van back in Vancouver. I’ve also met
people who’ve given up the whole “living on land” thing completely, and taken to living on
a boat—but even then, restrictions on how long you can stay docked in one place and finite
marina spaces available are causing boat owners headaches of their own.

Fast-forward to the spring of 2017: Bach’s settled back into apartment living—in the same
building she lived in pre-home-free living, sans roommate—but she looks back on the
home-free days fondly.

“It's good now,” Bach said near the end of our interview, “but that’s because I’m not so achy
and cold from sleeping on the floor in a freezing, disgusting, beer-soaked, garbage-ridden
jam space.”