Posted on 04/30/2016 11:56:20 AM PDT by Lorianne
Given that “redneck” and “hillbilly” remain the last acceptable stereotypes among polite society, it isn’t surprising that the stereotypical urban home of poor, recently rural whites remains an object of scorn. The mere mention of a trailer park conjures images of criminals in wifebeaters, moldy mattresses thrown awry, and Confederate flags. As with most social phenomena, there is a much more interesting reality behind this crass cliché. Trailer parks remain one of the last forms of housing in US cities provided by the market explicitly for low-income residents. Better still, they offer a working example of traditional urban design elements and private governance.
Any discussion of trailer parks should start with the fact that most forms of low-income housing have been criminalized in nearly every major US city. Beginning in the 1920s, urban policymakers and planners started banning what they deemed as low-quality housing, including boarding houses, residential hotels, and low-quality apartments. Meanwhile, on the outer edges of many cities, urban policymakers undertook a policy of “mass eviction and demolition” of low-quality housing. Policymakers established bans on suburban shantytowns and self-built housing. In knocking out the bottom rung of urbanization, this ended the natural “filtering up” of cities as they expanded outward, replaced as we now know by static subdivisions of middle-class, single-family houses. The Housing Act of 1937 formalized this war on “slums” at the federal level and by the 1960s much of the emergent low-income urbanism in and around many U.S. cities was eliminated.
In light of the United States’ century-long war on low-income housing, it’s something of a miracle that trailer parks survive. With an aftermarket trailer, trailer payments and park rent combined average around the remarkably low rents of $300 to $500. Even the typical new manufactured home, with combined trailer payments and park rent, costs around $700 to $1,000 a month. Both options offer a decent standard of living at far less than rents for apartments of comparable size in many cities. The savings with manufactured housing are a big part of the story: where the average manufactured house costs $64,000, the average site-built single-family house now costs $324,000. The savings don’t come out of shoddy construction either: manufactured homes are increasingly energy efficient, and their manufacturing process produces less waste than traditional site-built construction. With prosperous cities increasingly turning into playgrounds of the rich due to onerous housing supply restrictions, we shouldn’t take these startlingly affordable rents lightly.
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Not all trailers are built to the same standards. I lived in one in cold North New Mexico and found it was designed for South Texas.
The walls consisted of one sheet of aluminum, one thin sheet of fiberglass (no backing) one sheet of paneling inside. Froze my butt off that winter! Never again!
On the other hand, a trailer built to Colorado standards was warm and snug.
I’ve also lived in stick built houses that were just as cold as the Texas trailer house. Now I live in an old oak built house with blown in insulation that is so warm in winter it is nice!
We used to have a trailer manufacturer north of here. Their trailers were junk. While a trucker was pulling one down the road, the welds on the I beams broke and he pulled it in half.
We had a bad snow and ice storm come through and collapsed the building and put the manufacturer out of business. he never rebuilt and the ruins of his “business” are still there today.
Trailer parks are called “Tornado Magnets” in this area.
I hope he has some sort of way to notify the outside world by radio (since cell towers go down in tornados) that he is in there. Since he very likely wont be able to open the trap door to the outside.
***And some of these are just crap.***
I could show you a small town full of abandoned trailers. They do look like crap.
On the other hand, we had a home builder who built real shoddy stick built houses. His favorite way of shafting people was to buy an old termite ridden single story abandoned house, pull it to a new foundation, put nice siding on it, blow a little insulation in the attic, and I DO mean a Little, then pass it off to new buyers as a NEW HOME!
I mean if you dont need a large house why should you have to buy it? That just doubles the interest insurance and property taxes.
If you add the extra up I am sure that it would cut your payment quite a bit. Around here a average priced rental of 3 bedrooms and a garage goes for $1,200-$1,300 per month. Take just a third of that and save it and you have about $5,000 per year. After a couple years you could get a addition put on. Sooner if you can do it yourself. But that is illegal if you start with a one bedroom home.
And like I said earlier with a R21 wall. That adds about $400 in materials to the cost of a small 1200 square foot house with little benefit over the old R19 walls.
They are just pricing the younger people out of home ownership. There are so many ways to drop the price of the home if government got out of the way. Here is another example. It cost around $5,000 to have all the inspections done to a new house. But they are not held liable if they miss something. How much does it cost for a mortgage inspection? Not much and for a little more I bet they could do a new home inspection as it is being built. And they could carry liability insurance in case they miss something.
I hope he was sued to poverty for that.
Tornado magnets.
He knew when the jig was up so left the state and was never heard from again.
Say what you will. I had a friend who bought a mobile home on a lot when still in high school. He paid it off, sold it, and bought a larger one. He lives in a very nice home today and hasn’t had a mortgage for years.
It’s all about not buying more than you can afford. As a first home, a mobile is fine. For some; it’s enough forever. Kids buying $250k “starter homes” will never see the end of house payments.
In some rural areas of Texas, if you don’t have any permanent structures on your land, you can get away with paying the agricultural property tax rate of a few dollars per acre per year instead of a tax based on the value of the property.
This one is built tight as a tick. No movement in the floors and the walls were surprisingly thick. In his park they are slowly replacing the metal boxes with the manufactured homes. I believe for many boomers, myself possibly included, this will be retirement housing.
You would have roasted in that thing in Texas then. I lived in one for about six months right after college. My light bill was over $150 a month. This was in the late 70's when some Houstonians were paying less than that for their rent.
“most forms of low-income housing have been criminalized in nearly every major US city.”
This is an _incredibly_ under-addressed issue. The Left has made it ILLEGAL to be “functionally poor” (can live a sustaining lifestyle at sub-poverty-line levels). Never mind how quaint, high “quality of life”, or content the setting is, the Left will literally put you in jail for building and living in inexpensive housing which was the norm (if not luxurious) for most of “first world” human history.
Many on FR respond to such articles with “they’re trying to normalize bad living conditions! the Left wants us to live in third world huts!” etc. I disagree: the push for ever-higher minimum wages and rising welfare dependency is in part manipulated by demanding _higher_ standards of living, which in turn demand ever-growing confiscation of earned wealth.
If someone wants to, and can, live independently in low-income housing, let them. Buy a cheap lot and put up a yurt if you like.
My parents moved out of their stick built, 1958 vintage. They moved to another state and my dad ordered a double wide with 6” wall studs, argon filled double pane vinyl windows, 2300 sqft and metal roof for 60K back in 99. Far north western NM with much colder winters and they used less energy to heat it than we in W. Texas in a 65 stick built house. Their place was very well insulated, very quiet and well built.
So yes, well built house trailers are available but they do cost more for the custom better qualities.
Agreed. Someone buys a good chunk of property, then divides it up enough at prices his target customers can afford. “Trailers” make it easy to drop a house on the spot; they can be as cheap or luxurious as you like.
The article may discuss what is colloquially dubbed “trailer parks” with all the visual “white trash” baggage it entails. There are, in fact, other variations of the same which are much nicer: many large recreational campgrounds have permanent occupants with quaint & small “trailer” homes, various “tiny house communities” are popping up.
Get the government out of the way, and let capitalism solve the problem by letting people buy property, divide it up, and present solutions that poor people _want_ and _can_ afford. In comparison: Walmart has helped a whole lotta poor people by making necessities (and luxuries) affordable where government would have given little more than soviet-style queues for crud.
Has anyone here ever seen a confederate flag flown on/near a trailer? I haven’t.
When people want to live where living is expensive (because so many people want to live there), conservatism/capitalism dictates that you let property owners decide how to address the potential value: either raise rent (and perhaps improve units to attract & justify the money), or divide & modify the property so more people are willing to pay to use it - which may mean making tiny apartments or manufactured homes.
You may not like it, but - not being the property owner nor the renter/buyer - it’s none of your d@mn business. And that’s the point.
Sometimes consequences of Right & Left philosophies intersect. That doesn’t mean the point of intersection is wrong. The real question, per your concern, is whether people will be punished for instead opting to MOVE somewhere where they can get bigger properties for lower costs.
I agree. At one time a family could build a small home, even a one room cabin if that’s all they could afford, and then over time add on or build another larger structure, or move up. They could either sell the smaller home or help out another family member starting out.
Or single men could live in a boarding house while saving money to afford to get married, buy a small property or build a small house and start a family. Can’t do that today.
My great grandfather was a boarder near his job for 3 years and saved every penny he could until he could afford to marry my great grandmother.
***Has anyone here ever seen a confederate flag flown on/near a trailer?***
I have. Also seen them flown in fine high quality stick built mini mansions. There is several just down the road from me.
But then, I saw a trailer houses flying lots of Mexican flags on Cinco de Mayo. A nice double wide at that! They took care of their house.
“You may not like it, but - not being the property owner nor the renter/buyer - it’s none of your d@mn business. And that’s the point.”
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I assume when you say “you”, you are speaking generically, and not to me.
My post has nothing whatsoever to do with trailer parks or mobile homes.
It has to do with globalization and the push to force people into high density urban centers. I don’t care if they put in a free bike path and zone it so I can live in a pup tent, or in my car—no thanks.
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