Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

The Apperleys used to think they would retire to live aboard a sailboat, funding that dream with equity from their three-bedroom house in Beaverton, Oregon. They’d bought the home for $340,000 at the top of the market and put another $20,000 into it. Then the housing bubble burst and its value tumbled to $260,000. Before the crash, they’d been doing alright. Bob worked as an accountant for a timber products firm—he hated that job, but it paid the bills—while Anita was an interior decorator and part-time caregiver. Neither could imagine spending the rest of their lives servicing a loan worth more than the value of their house. So they bought a 2003 Cardinal fifth-wheel trailer and hit the road. “We just walked away,” Anita said. “We told ourselves, ‘We’re not playing this game anymore.’” Bob blamed the bad guys on Wall Street. He spoke almost defensively about his decision to abandon the house. He rushed to add that he’d always paid the bills on time and kept good credit. His downfall was putting his faith in the gospel of ever-increasing home prices. “I never had any experience that a house would drop in value,” Bob said, shaking his head. He compared the “slow-dawning reality” of his new life to waking up in The Matrix: learning that the pleasant, predictable world you used to inhabit was a mirage, a lie built to hide a brutal dystopia. “The security most people take comfort in, I’m not convinced that isn’t an illusion,” he added. “When you find out what you believed to b...