FIFTEEN MONTHS OF HOME-FREE LIVING
IN CANADA'S MOST EXPENSIVE CITY

WHAT COULD YOU ACHIEVE IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY RENT?
BY JACEY GIBB, DISTRIBUTION MANGER

Metro Vancouver. Though an experienced mover of places myself, | still sought out tips

from friends who'd also moved a ridiculous amount. While most of my interviews yielded
useful tips and guidance on being an urban vagabond, my interview with Vancouver musician
Emily Bach introduced me to a whole new concept: home-free living.

Te weeks ago, | wrote a feature giving advice on how to lead a transient lifestyle in

If you're a frequenter of local music shows, you may have seen Bach perform in bands like
Dirty Spells, Eric Campbell & the Dirt, and Big John Bates. And while it may not immediately
seem like it, Bach’s musical endeavours around town actually play a integral role in the piece
you're reading: Between 2015 and 2016, Bach was “home-free” for a total of 15 months.

After her soul/room-mate moved in with her partner, Bach used the opportunity to “get out
of [her] rut” and shake things up in her life—more specifically, take back the hours in her day
that were going towards paying for rent.

“I took a house-sitting gig for a month, and thought I'd sort myself out after that, and then

| really, really quite quickly took to not paying rent,” explained Bach. “It was so liberating
that | made a poster and said | was a house-sitter and started my own business, so | could not
look for a place to live—lI'd look for a contract. It just happened to be that December was the
month | either needed to get an apartment or find some other alternate solution, so lots of
people were leaving town and needed someone to stay with their dog.”

“I got the courage, and just left my stuff in storage, and started pet-sitting.” With that, Bach’s
pet-sitting business, Sit and Stay, was born.

And while the life of professional pet-sitter may sound like a glamorous endeavour, Bach
doesn’t shy away from the grittier times of her rent-free days. Considering the average person
spends about 33 per cent of their life sleeping, she had some interesting stories related to
where she slept during those 15 long months.

“| slept in the craziest places. Pet-sitting is nice, but there’s never a new gig as soon as the old
gig ends. There’s always a lot of days to fill in.

“There were long stints where | didn’t have a place to stay. Because I’m a musician, | had a jam
space to sleep in—which | did, so many times. It was really disgusting. | sneakily hid a Therm-
a-Rest, sleeping bag, and pillow behind some gear, so on nights where there was no other
option, | had to stay in my jam space. I’d just sleep on the floor huddled around a space heater,
and hope that no one came in to grab their gear.”

Bands seldom have jam spaces entirely to themselves, usually pooling their money with other
bands to rent a shared space. Their jam space was shared with five other bands, with roughly
four people in each group, meaning that about 20 people had the key for where she would
often spent the night. One time, when Bach was sick with the flu and crashing on the Therm-
a-Rest, someone tried to access the jam space, and she describes how disorientating it was to
wake up on a beer-soaked floor, feverish and ill, with someone banging on the door outside.
The person eventually gave up, and Bach went undiscovered.

Despite the obvious sacrifices that come with lacking a fixed address, one challenge Bach went
into detail about was how difficult not having any personal time was. If she was lucky enough
to have a friend or bandmate invite her to crash for the night, the evening would inevitably
turn into a social call, denying Bach of any real downtime.

“I'm someone who needs a lot of alone time, and | had to completely give that up, and it made
me a bit crazy,” she said. “But it also made me relax, because you can’t control everything. So
that was an unintended perk of being wildly out of control at all times. Because you have to.
You have to chill out, and be like, ‘Well, this is another weird fucking day.’

“You know in the evenings, when you sort of just want to turn off and watch Netflix? I'd go
to the movie theatre and just theatre hop and stay in the theatre until it closed. Go from one
show to another to another, and just eat some popcorn and be in the dark by myself. That was
a really good coping strategy that | discovered. Just go to the earliest movie, and stay in the
theatre for as long as | could, and when they kicked me out, | would just go to my jam space
and sleep.”

Another reality of the home-free lifestyle is the vulnerability aspect. When you’re relying

on pet-sitting gigs and friends for a place to spend the night, sometimes you're forced to
accept offers that take a turn for the worse. Throughout our interview, Bach emphasizes the
importance of staying safe during her home-free days, including a warning to never sleep in
your car. But, somewhat surprisingly, her main caution involved people she knew and trusted.

“I can’t tell you how many times guys that | thought were friends would have me over to
stay at their place, and they were trying to help, and I'd known them for years, and it would
turn into a sexual thing, and | didn’t have anywhere to go, and then | was unsafe. It was
scary. People, on many occasions, would take advantage of my need. | was a 35-year-old
woman, able to stand up for myself, but if | were a younger woman, | might not have been so
confident.”