A car isn't an option for everyone. I personally don't have a car. And 10 years ago when I was homeless, I couldn't afford to keep the car I had; it got towed because I couldn't afford to pay for the registration. On a more practical note, I was too big to sleep in my car anyway.
This is part of it, but people still need to leave their house sometime, and the best solution is one where people can survive without needing to own a car at all, which is nearly impossible in most of the US. We sold our nation's soul to cars, and now we're fighting to get it back.
I know it sucks living in the US without a car, I do think it is important to know that it can be done. You are going to have to prioritize though. I've lived carless in some of the most car dependent places of the earth, including the US so I know what makes that a great deal.
Not only that, a car is basically a requirement for life in the US.
With a complete lack of decent public transportation in the majority of the US, couples with a lack of walkable communities, a car is virtually required.
Anybody who disagrees, try living in the Phoenix metro with a family without a car. Good luck buying groceries, getting to the doctor, etc...
An automobile is basically a requirement to not starve anywhere outside the core of maybe 5 American cities with acceptable public transit. It's the same as having a pair of shoes.
There's a chicken and egg here: Plenty of places make it perfectly possible to thrive without a car.
The US decided (with plenty of support from the auto industry) that the convenience of building cities around cars was worth all the death, destruction, illness and poverty they cause/enable.
I'd say maybe a third of people I know don't have cars. In America. That's not a "basic necessity of life", especially when we're talking about well-developed regions like the west coast.
I closely know people who have lived in extreme rural areas of the US without a car. You are right that it is possible. But it certainly presented significant challenges. There's a reason why people buy cars in the US.
More realistically: being able to live without a car is desirable for enough people and rare enough in the US that places where it is possible have their rents driven up by demand, pricing out the people who were living there before.
I lived 22 years without a car in Boston. I finally got one a couple of years ago and also love having it, despite the fact that I only use it about 3 times each month. I don't know if I'm anti-car, but I'm definitely a strong advocate for the vision that cars shouldn't be required to live a full life in more places, especially in the US. In the US, there's so few places where living without a car is feasible, and all of them are incredibly expensive, so clearly there are Americans who want this. But for some reason we still seem to design new communities around the car.
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