If it seems like those self-storage places – brightly colored row upon row of doors – are popping up everywhere, it’s because they have. Over the last five years, more than 250m sq ft of storage were constructed in the US. That now makes up more than 15% of the country’s real estate inventory, according to the listings site StorageCafe. One in five Americans keeps belongings in these very convenient spaces outside their homes. Stashing stuff is a growth industry.
But while storage may reflect American overconsumption, the boom in these facilities is an indicator of trends in affordable residential and commercial real estate. Even as housing prices rise, new apartments are getting smaller. And commercial office or work space has gotten out of reach for many entrepreneurs.
We asked the renters of storage units around the US how they use their storage and why. Priced out of their homes or unable to rent office space, some live or work in them. Some do store their belongings in them because they no longer have a stable home. Others make money from buying units abandoned by owners who can’t pay or somehow disappear.
Here are their stories. The interviews have been edited for clarity and length, and some of the interviewees requested their full names or specific locations not be used.
‘I made it my little bedroom’
Angie, 55, delivery driver, Davidson county, Tennessee
I got hit by the tornado in December 2021, the one that hit Mayfield, Kentucky, and pretty much wiped it off the map. It was devastating. A lot of people died, but here in Tennessee, it ripped off the roof of the unit above me in my apartment complex. I made it about 30 days and I just absolutely had to leave because the ceiling was starting to cave in in my apartment. I was paying $850 a month. And after the tornado, they had to remodel that apartment, and they were going to list the apartment at market value and raise the rent to $1,300 for a one-bedroom. I couldn’t do it. I knew I could never keep up with $1,300; I was already struggling.
My whole car was full of stuff, and I have been an Uber and a Lyft driver for years – DoorDash, Grubhub, all of them – so I had to get all this stuff out of my car. Then I lost my cat, and so I stayed in my storage unit so I could [stay close to] try to find my cat. That’s how it got started.
I’m a dumpster diver. At first, I got a very small storage unit just for all the stuff that was in my car, so I could drive. Then I had to get a bigger unit and then a bigger unit. Places were filling dumpsters with Nike shoes – in the boxes – every day. I made like $3,000 in June alone just selling shoes.
I was always in the unit unloading and rearranging, and I discovered electric one day, and I freaked out. I had fans going and I made it my little bedroom. At first, it’s kind of scary. It’s a solid door; you can’t see out but you can hear every little noise and I didn’t know who might be lingering out there. I was worried about spiders. I had to feel it out.
The owner started saying I can’t be there all day. But once I discovered there were no cameras in the back, and there was a cool manager, I chose to go in the back. The last four, five months I was really comfortable. I got an outdoor cushion from RH that they threw away; it was fabulous. I made a video about my unit – it was never my intention to go viral on TikTok. I think a lot of people would like to do it because we’re in a bigger crisis than we even realize.
They have to catch you asleep to evict you for that reason. I was very careful. I would sleep for three, four hours, even during the day sometimes. The manager was chill and didn’t really care. Earlier this year, I got evicted for having stuff in units I wasn’t paying for, not for living there.
With Uber and Lyft, I made anywhere from $800 to $1,500 a week, and I didn’t even work full-time. But I was deactivated for a DUI from 34 years ago, and now I only have Grubhub and it’s horrible. Last week I only made $400.
I went back to living in my car. I checked out this place; someone told me people are living in their units there, and the owners aren’t saying anything. But it’s getting harder to get people to agree to give you 24-hour access, which means you have to be in by 10 and lay low until it opens up in the morning.
Several days ago, I started living in storage again. It’s not horrible, but it sucks.
We live in our car – and need the storage space
Kyla Kelly, 29, circus performer, aerial instructor and content creator @vanboozled, and Andrew Kitchens, 42, recruiter, both of St Petersburg, Florida
We were renting a condo for two years, and had never been late on rent. It was $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom, one-bath. My husband was in sales and when the lockdown hit, he was basically making minimum wage. I was in events, so my job was basically nonexistent.
At the end of our lease in December 2021, we were notified that the owner was going to sell. At that point, for an unrenovated, small, studio apartment you were looking at $1,500 and if you wanted a regular apartment, easily $2,000. They wanted the first month’s rent, last month’s rent, a security deposit, 650 to 700 credit score, and three times the rent in income. So you’re looking at $6,000 to $8,000 to move.
We had proof of income, but our credit wasn’t there because of medical debt, student loan debt – things I wasn’t able to pay during lockdown. They could care less about our [reliable] rental history.
We spent a lot of what little savings we had on non-refundable application fees.
Unfortunately, we started living in vehicles.
Our plan was to sell as much as we could and keep what we absolutely need in storage. We’ve downsized from a 10ft by 20ft to a 10ft by 10ft to the unit we have now, which is just a closet. I’m a circus performer, so I keep a lot of equipment in there: fire props, huge aerial equipment, stuff for my work.
We thought we were going to save so much, but it’s a sick and twisted game. Food, gas, insurance are all going up. We just replaced the bearing on the van; that was $300 last week. My husband has child support from a previous marriage; it’s over $1,000 a month.
Collectively we’re making closer to six figures now. People ask, how do you live in a vehicle with almost six figures? But they probably don’t own their vehicle outright or their home. Everything is financed through the bank. If you don’t have credit, you don’t have anything. My credit score is 616. A debt consolidator helped me, so all I’m seeing is $12,550 in total debt now – not sure if that will adjust once they start collecting federal student loans again.
At this point, I can’t even imagine going back to regular housing. I don’t want to rent because you have no control over your living situation and rent keeps going up.
The real issue is our government is not sanctioning any type of actual affordable housing. It’s absolutely backwards that we could pay for a place to keep our stuff, but we couldn’t afford a place to live. More storage doesn’t solve anything.
‘A glorified shed’ turned art studio
Keiko Carter, 24, artist, Bloomington, Indiana
I started making a lot of art in 2020, and it got out of control. In 2020, 2021, and the first half of 2022, everybody was buying art … I live in my parents’ house. Their garage, guest room, my bedroom were completely overrun by my supplies and inventory. I started looking for office spaces. For a small room, it was $1,200 a month. An office downtown would be upwards of $2,000. It was more than if I just moved out and rented a two-bedroom house, but I didn’t have that option because I wasn’t making enough consistently. At the peak, I was consistently making 100 orders a month; now it’s maybe a dozen.
I called up my local storage place and told them I wanted to keep packing supplies and my inventory for my business in there, none of it was perishable, and that I would be in there a couple times a week for a few hours. He said: “Oh, yeah, that’s totally fine. We have a bunch of people who do that.” There was one unit that had cases of lightbulbs in it. Another guy looked like he was reselling antiques and rugs. I think another guy used his unit as a shop to fix bikes.
My unit was 10 by 15, and it was drive-in and completely covered. There was no electricity. The rule was that I didn’t have any employees come, just me. His other rule was I could only be there for three hours at a time, six hours altogether in one day; so every three hours I would have to leave.
There was a $40 sign on fee and my monthly fee was $97. Then a couple of months ago, I got an email that it went up to $183. I had lost a lot of inventory, probably $4,000 to $5,000 worth, at a vendor market over the summer. One little hiccup like that, for a startup, can take the whole thing out. My Shopify website costs more than it used to, and shipping costs are higher. The unit wasn’t worth it for me any more, so I just canceled my lease.
It’s insane it got that expensive because it’s a glorified shed. When I started my business in there, I thought: “I don’t know why they don’t let people who can’t afford to live somewhere live here.” But there are no amenities, and human needs would not be met there.
Still, I think a lot of people would move into storage units, and then you couldn’t catch a break as a business owner.
Profit and pain
Laura and Shantae, 45 and 41, owners of Locker Blocker, a storage auction buyer and reseller, somewhere in Texas
Laura: There’s so much drama with storage units. A lot of people are upset that we’re buying someone’s merchandise, and it is really emotional on our end as well. You find personal items, and it is someone’s whole life. It reaffirms 1. you can’t take it with you and 2. how short life is. One second you could be doing wonderful, and the next, it could all be gone.
Shantae: The vast majority of storage units go to lien because they can’t afford to pay the rent, not because they were abandoned, although there are people who pass away. Most storage units that go up for auction appear from photos to belong to the lower-income person, lower-end stuff.
Laura: But what we buy – we’ve literally bought a billionaire’s storage unit. There were all these gift cards that still had money on them, and a $5,200 gift card to Hermès.
One of the first units we purchased for $300 had a bunch of file cabinets in it. We start opening the drawers, and there is a gallon-size Ziploc bag full of marijuana. We go to the next drawer – multiple big bags of white powder. We call our lawyer; the lawyer calls the sheriff; sheriff comes and seizes everything. A court reporter had been stealing evidence from cases and packing them in her storage locker.
Shantae: The two units we spent the most money on had been stored since 1989 and 1991. This year we bought three more units, and they belonged to the same guy. He was a toy dealer constantly looking for deals. He had thousands of dollars in storage fees every month that he paid consistently for decades, over 30-plus years. That’s probably half a million dollars in fees. Then for whatever circumstances, he couldn’t any more. All of that money, just completely wasted.
Laura: People are attached to stuff, is what we’ve learned. The stuff we buy for the business is in a storage unit. My house barely has anything in my house because I hate stuff!
