It's been the case for a little while. /r/vandwellers has been getting busier and busier, with a lot of new builds. Once you've seen a couple of dozen different builds there, you start recognizing the vehicles on the road everywhere else.

It seems to be an aggregation of a few different communities. There are some people doing it because they can't afford anything else, but also a lot of people who just want a cheap way to travel for a while, people who are dumping tons of money into their builds so that they can join the Instagram community of outdoor photos from the back of your van, and folks who make okay money but want to spend as much time climbing as possible.

So it's probably a little bit related to rising housing costs, but that's not all of it.