Why do so many Americans live in mobile homes? pg2
Continued,.....
"My father was a railroad man and I was raised on a farm so I always collected antiques," says Butch Comer, 66(above with partner Eleanor), pointing to an array of collectibles around his bedroom. "I love it because you can come out and sit in a chair and no-one is raising hell."
Gary Miller, 72, is poking around in his shed, behind the 70ft home where he has lived for 27 years. "It's quiet. There'sno bunch of drunks hanging around having parties. After the five kids got off on their own, we moved down here. It's the first property we ever owned. I would rather live in a house, it seems safer. In storms, you have to watch these things but we don't have that many big ones."
The homes at Oak Haven are typical in that they are rarely moved but the first mobile homes were true to their name and towed.
"In the Great Depression in the 1930s, people started living in trailers which were designed for travelling and vacationing but out of necessity, people started to make these tiny mobile units their homes," says Andrew Hurley, author of Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks.
"They started parking them on the outskirts of cities and that's when they become associated with working class and impoverished people."
There was institutionalised discrimination, he says, as federal-backed mortgages were denied to owners of mobile homes, while zoning laws forced these communities to the very outskirts of towns and cities.
The 40s and 50s were their heyday, helped by the innovation of "double-wides", which meant they came in two separate units and formed a larger home.
"But the idea of permanent living in a mobile home didn't really catch on and by the 60s and 70s the private housing industry had caught up with demand so people that could afford to move out gave up their trailers for a more conventional suburban type of housing," says Hurley.
Trailer park in Baltimore in 1943
A tightening of credit since the recent crash has slowed sales of new homes but the market has been strong at the top end. Paradise Cove in Malibu is a trailer park inhabited by actors Pamela Anderson, Minnie Driver and Matthew McConaughey, where homes fetch up to $2.5m and come with marble floors.
If your budget won't stretch to that, there are communities like Parrish Manor in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is more like a health retreat - there's a football field, a community garden, playgrounds, a walking trail, picnic area and sports programmes for children. There's even a car maintenance shed.
But the US poor are still more likely to live in a trailer than the typical American. And they remain a largely US phenomenon. Although mobile home parks are found in Canada and there are sites for static caravans in the UK, they are not found in the same number.
Some parks, like this one in Thermal, California, are very deprived and tough places to live
"Housing in the US is cheap and land is cheap so it's easy to do minor modifications to provide electricity, some form of sewage and water supplies, even put in a clubhouse and a swimming pool. It's cheap to do all this in the US but in Europe it's prohibitively expensive," says Becker, speaking during a break at a conference in Illinois for trailer park owners.
"And public transportation is better in Europe so there's a comparative advantage to the poor living in a central urban area whereas in the US manufacturing is located up and down major highways so it's much easier for people with these jobs to not want to be in central city areas."
There's also the American ethos of private home ownership that runs very deep, says Hurley, so the alternative of a rented city apartment is not always attractive.
"And there's the American love for freedom and mobility. Even though in reality mobile homes are never really very mobile, it's the idea that you can pick up and leave any time if you didn't like your circumstances, in a way you can't with a house."
Plus there's a policy issue, he says - limited housing options in the US for low income people. The threshold at which they're eligible for subsidised housing is much higher than in European countries so people that might live in a council house in the UK don't have that opportunity here.
Bob Moore began photographing abandoned trailers 30 years ago, having lived in mobile homes for much of his life. This one in Yucca Valley, California, made the front of his book, Trailer Trash.
"I just liked the things and since I had been 'trailer trash' for a large portion of my life, it just seemed to be interesting to see these once former homes sitting lost," says Moore. This one is in Amarillo, Texas.
"Many people look upon the term 'trailer trash' as pejorative and take offence, which is one of the reasons I have attempted to turn it around with both the title of the book and my own pride in being 'trailer trash'."
"My father was a railroad man and I was raised on a farm so I always collected antiques," says Butch Comer, 66(above with partner Eleanor), pointing to an array of collectibles around his bedroom. "I love it because you can come out and sit in a chair and no-one is raising hell."
Gary Miller, 72, is poking around in his shed, behind the 70ft home where he has lived for 27 years. "It's quiet. There'sno bunch of drunks hanging around having parties. After the five kids got off on their own, we moved down here. It's the first property we ever owned. I would rather live in a house, it seems safer. In storms, you have to watch these things but we don't have that many big ones."
The homes at Oak Haven are typical in that they are rarely moved but the first mobile homes were true to their name and towed.
"In the Great Depression in the 1930s, people started living in trailers which were designed for travelling and vacationing but out of necessity, people started to make these tiny mobile units their homes," says Andrew Hurley, author of Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks.
"They started parking them on the outskirts of cities and that's when they become associated with working class and impoverished people."
There was institutionalised discrimination, he says, as federal-backed mortgages were denied to owners of mobile homes, while zoning laws forced these communities to the very outskirts of towns and cities.
The 40s and 50s were their heyday, helped by the innovation of "double-wides", which meant they came in two separate units and formed a larger home.
"But the idea of permanent living in a mobile home didn't really catch on and by the 60s and 70s the private housing industry had caught up with demand so people that could afford to move out gave up their trailers for a more conventional suburban type of housing," says Hurley.
Trailer park in Baltimore in 1943
A tightening of credit since the recent crash has slowed sales of new homes but the market has been strong at the top end. Paradise Cove in Malibu is a trailer park inhabited by actors Pamela Anderson, Minnie Driver and Matthew McConaughey, where homes fetch up to $2.5m and come with marble floors.
If your budget won't stretch to that, there are communities like Parrish Manor in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is more like a health retreat - there's a football field, a community garden, playgrounds, a walking trail, picnic area and sports programmes for children. There's even a car maintenance shed.
But the US poor are still more likely to live in a trailer than the typical American. And they remain a largely US phenomenon. Although mobile home parks are found in Canada and there are sites for static caravans in the UK, they are not found in the same number.
Some parks, like this one in Thermal, California, are very deprived and tough places to live
"Housing in the US is cheap and land is cheap so it's easy to do minor modifications to provide electricity, some form of sewage and water supplies, even put in a clubhouse and a swimming pool. It's cheap to do all this in the US but in Europe it's prohibitively expensive," says Becker, speaking during a break at a conference in Illinois for trailer park owners.
"And public transportation is better in Europe so there's a comparative advantage to the poor living in a central urban area whereas in the US manufacturing is located up and down major highways so it's much easier for people with these jobs to not want to be in central city areas."
There's also the American ethos of private home ownership that runs very deep, says Hurley, so the alternative of a rented city apartment is not always attractive.
"And there's the American love for freedom and mobility. Even though in reality mobile homes are never really very mobile, it's the idea that you can pick up and leave any time if you didn't like your circumstances, in a way you can't with a house."
Plus there's a policy issue, he says - limited housing options in the US for low income people. The threshold at which they're eligible for subsidised housing is much higher than in European countries so people that might live in a council house in the UK don't have that opportunity here.
Bob Moore began photographing abandoned trailers 30 years ago, having lived in mobile homes for much of his life. This one in Yucca Valley, California, made the front of his book, Trailer Trash.
"I just liked the things and since I had been 'trailer trash' for a large portion of my life, it just seemed to be interesting to see these once former homes sitting lost," says Moore. This one is in Amarillo, Texas.
"Many people look upon the term 'trailer trash' as pejorative and take offence, which is one of the reasons I have attempted to turn it around with both the title of the book and my own pride in being 'trailer trash'."
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