Former Model Who Quit ‘Party-Girl’ Life in L.A. to Live In an Off-Grid Bus With Her Baby Says She’s Saving Thousands in Rent—and Is Happier Than Ever

A former model has revealed why she ditched her glamorous Hollywood lifestyle and moved into an old school bus in Ojai, CA, where she has created a makeshift homestead with her baby daughter, saving herself thousands of dollars in rent per month.

Laura La Rue, 32, is originally from Thousand Oaks, where she began modeling at the age of 13—ultimately leaving school and moving to Los Angeles at 16 to pursue her fashion career in front of the camera.

For close to a decade, she embraced a lifestyle that she described as her “party-girl days” in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, which reports that she regularly partied with big-name celebrities, including Seth MacFarlane, Jared Leto, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

However, after eight years, the stress of the job—and that seemingly glamorous lifestyle—took a severe toll on her mental and physical health, she recalled. She opted to walk away from it all and return home to live with her mom.

“I thought, ‘I don’t like this at all.’ I could feel my cortisol levels shoot through the roof. I had health issues brought on by stress,” she told the Times. “I had been on a ridiculous model diet, and I wanted to turn myself around. I started going to therapy and spent time alone to work on myself.”

During that time, she moved into a cabin on her mother’s ranch, before relocating to a property in Ojai. However, the costly rent quickly drained her finances.

“I was living in a really cute cabin in Ojai and I loved it, but the rent was really expensive,” she recalled in a video posted to her popular YouTube account.

It was at that point that a man she was dating introduced her to the off-grid lifestyle, inviting her to live with him in his trailer, which was parked on a plot of land in Carpinteria.

Though she was apprehensive at first, she decided to seize the opportunity to embrace a new adventure—particularly if that adventure had the potential to save her thousands of dollars in rent.

“He invited me to come live with him, and I’m always down for an adventure. It was going to be off-grid living though, and I didn’t know anything about that,” she admitted.

“We started looking for trailers on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, and we found this 1981 Silver Streak in really good condition,” she revealed. “I put in my 30 days notice at my cabin.”

The couple moved into their Silver Streak and lived there for four years. They had no running water or a bathroom, and they had to learn to live with the different “creatures” populating the land around them.

“I had birds laying nests if I left the door open. I had snakes make their way in, lots of spiders. I became very cozy and friendly with all creatures,” she recalled.

They eventually built a pit toilet, she said. “It was a hole that we dug in the ground and then we built a toilet seat over it and you would hike up to it. It was very lush back there and it was so freeing just sitting on a toilet and looking around knowing that nobody’s around and you’re just surrounded by nature.”

During the four years that she spent living in Carpinteria, La Rue learned a host of different skills.

She learned how to start a generator, check various batteries, and check the solar panels and propane tanks on her own. She also started a small farm growing crops and flowers.

La Rue also launched her own business, a tie-dye company now known as Ride or Dye Ojai.

In September 2022—as her relationship was beginning to crumble—she discovered that she was pregnant. She realized that her remote, off-grid lifestyle needed to change for the safety of herself and her unborn child.

“I needed cell service in case there was an emergency, and I needed community,” she told the Times. “I didn’t want to rely on the generator if I needed power or hiking to the pit toilet.”

She had been looking at potential new dwellings online when she saw an Instagram post about an inexpensive plot of land that was available in Ojai. She immediately knew she’d found her new home.

“I love it here, this is where all my friends are, it’s where my business is,” she explained. “It was so clear that this was where I needed to be and to raise my kid, so I signed the lease on this place.”

Initially, La Rue said, she’d planned to live with friends while she figured out her living situation when, as luck would have it, a friend told her that they had an old green school bus that they were looking to sell.

“It just kind of felt again so meant to be, so I bought the school bus,” she revealed. “We only had to move it 30 feet but it was so stuck in the mud because there was a lot of rain at this time.”

While moving the green bus to its new location was tricky at best, La Rue recalled how blissfully happy she felt when it was finally in its spot. In the 20 months since then, she has steadily transformed it into a cozy dwelling for her and her daughter, Lasca, who was born in April 2023.

“I’ve made this bus really sweet. It has the perfect little co-sleeping nook for Lasca, ” she said, adding that she knows her child will have an “interesting, fun life” there.

“Growing up in a school bus, I mean I’m stoked for her,” she shared. “I wish I grew up in a school bus. So, yeah, we will see what the future holds. I’m just trying to take everything one day at a time and be as present as possible.”

Today, La Rue and her daughter live a seemingly blissful life—along with La Rue’s current partner, and their dog and cat. While the former fashion star has no regrets about living in an off-grid oasis, it is not without its difficulties.

In a recent video, she opened up about the highs and lows of off-grid living.

There’s no air conditioning, which can be torture in the blistering Ojai summers.

“I can’t even think straight, it’s so hot,” she confessed while filming on a 108-degree day. “It’s times like these when it would be nice to have a house with insulation and air conditioning.”

Then, there are the rodents that regularly invade the bus.

“You do tend to deal with more of that when you live in a trailer or a bus. … We’ve had to rip off parts of the bus because I can hear rodents making little homes in parts of it,” she shared.

The “limited space” of their dwelling can be difficult when you are caring for a young baby, La Rue admitted.

“It can get a little irritating at times when we’re trying to walk past each other in this narrow hallway. … It can feel a little restricting at times,” she said.

The lack of a fully functioning toilet requires her to “bag up” her refuse, which is among the least enjoyable parts of her lifestyle.

But there are many pros to her living situation, not least the financial freedom she has gained, she said.

“It’s very inexpensive,” she said. “California is quite pricey because it’s a beautiful place to live in. … Since I was 17 years old, I’ve been paying, on average, $1,500 a month for rent, making it impossible to save money.”

She estimated that she had spent around $270,000 on rent in her lifetime, a figure that she described as “so depressing.”

One of the most positive aspects of her experience has been her renewed “connection to nature,” which she said has completely transformed her mental and physical health.

La Rue also believes that raising her daughter in such a unique environment helps to “encourage creativity and adaptability,” adding that she encourages her daughter to learn everything she can about living off the land around them.