The Unknown World of the Mobile Home

Creating the North American Landscape

by John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, John T. Morgan

In American popular imagination, the mobile home evokes images of cramped interiors, cheap materials, and occupants too poor or unsavory to live anywhere else. Since the 1940s and '50s, however, mobile home manufacturers have improved standards of construction and now present them as an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes. Today one of every fourteen Americans lives in a mobile home. In The Unknown World of the Mobile Home authors John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, and John T. Morgan illuminate the history and culture of these often misunderstood domiciles. They describe early mobile homes, which were trailers designed to be pulled behind automobiles and which were more often than not poorly constructed and unequal to the needs of those who used them. During the 1970s, however, Congress enacted federal standards for the quality and safety of mobile homes, which led to innovation in design and the production of much more attractive and durable models. These models now comply with local building codes and many are designed to look like conventional houses. As a result, one out every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a mobile home, sited everywhere from the conventional trailer park to custom-designed "estates" aimed at young couples and retirees. Despite all these changes in manufacture and design, even the most immobile mobile homes are still sold, financed, regulated, and taxed as vehicles. With a wealth of detail and illustrations, The Unknown World of the Mobile Home provides readers with an in-depth look into this variation on the American dream.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 2002

About the author

John Fraser Hart was an American geographer. Over the course of his career, he published over 150 scholarly papers and over a dozen books. He taught over 50,000 university students in his 65 years of teaching from 1949 until his retirement in 2015.

Reviews

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must admit candidly, as it strongly affects my own view of this book, that the world of the mobile home is not unfamiliar to me. In many ways, my experience is fairly typical for those the authors are writing about, although not necessarily writing to. In this book, I find myself as the subject of observation, but not the intended audience, which is an uncomfortable position to be in. For the first fourteen years of my life I lived in three different mobile homes in two different states in families marked both by poverty as well as an extreme unwillingness to spend more money on housing than necessary [1]. The houses I grew up in were detached trailers on a certain amount of property and were not part of trailer parks. Many of my neighbors were, like me, people from working class backgrounds living in the rural South, of mixed backgrounds between poor whites like myself and Mexican-Americans who lived where they did because the picking was good. At times I visited my future stepfather’s family in the retirement trailer community they lived in, and have visited other such communities while traveling with friends of mine in the ministry in visits to different congregations. Other friends of mine have lived in trailers, even campers, for parts of their lives, and I have never viewed that as a reason to look down on anyone or to accept anyone looking down on me, or even to feel as if my childhood had been deprived because of the manner of residence.

The contents of this book are straightforward, and highly interesting as they represent sound scholarship on an area that few intellectuals pay attention to, and an aspect that is nearly entirely forgotten in discussions of affordable housing [2]. The first part of the book gives the background to how mobile homes came to fill the United States, looking at the development of trailers and early trailer parks, the use of such housing during World War II, the development of the HUD code, and the problems of siting mobile homes given the widespread hostility to such housing on the part of city planners and people interested in property speculation. The second part of the book looks at single-sited trailers in a diverse range of places from Kentucky to northern New Mexico to Mercer County, North Dakota (of the oil boom) to upstate New York, rural Wisconsin, the Spersopolis of the south, and coal fields. Part three looks at side by side trailers in Montana and Southern California, as a sign of the development of the West. The fourth chapter looks at trailer parks in their diversity from the Twin Cities to Southwestern Kansas to the Long Neck of Delaware to Florida and Southern California. The conclusion and epilogue present the trailer as an essential aspect of affordable housing in the United States, and its stigma as a sign of unproductive and lamentable prejudice.

I do not claim to be an unbiased reader of this book, seeing as parts of the book made it a point to look very close to where I grew up, a little too close for comfort (Zephyrhills, to be precise). This is a book that is painful and even a bit awkward to read, as it discusses the loathsome ways in which people in many parts of the country view those who grew up in trailers, and the long-term results of that stigma in a striking absence of affordable housing and in the creation of lengthy drives between areas sufficiently spacious and inexpensive for many people and their jobs. The book is a painful reminder of the external costs of long-held and inaccurate biases, and puts a light on a situation that has not received enough sustained attention in zoning and taxation, where it appears that the interests of cities and the sorts of people who do the work available are at cross-purposes, with little communication or mutual understanding.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

[jillian krinsky:) · Rating 4 out of 5]

started reading for capstone, ended up exploring a critical niche with housing needs. read it!!

[Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read, history of the mobile home/trailer from inception to 2000 or so. A bit long/heavy on vignettes of different high end trailer parks, and glosses over some of the lower points of trailer living. However this book does offer a lot of good background on the mobile home as affordable housing and other reasons individuals may choose one.

[janeann fessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hoping for more

As a resident of A middle income mobile home which sits on acreage, I was hoping more information on the construction and history of these types of homes. I did get a rudimentary outline of the very early days of Mobile homes as well as surprising info about their war time use. Likewise the basics of construction is briefly touched upon. The briefly was frustrating. I wanted in-depth depiction. The book is less than 180 pages and could have and should have been researched another 180 pages. If you need a quick introduction of mobile homes then this is your ticket.

I am thankful that the author addresses the preconceived notion that the media portrays of owners as somewhat less than savory characters only live in me bile homes. I did love that he does say that mobile homes can be an answer to today's housing crisis as an alternative to extremely expensive newer homes. Homelessness .verses the use of mobile home communities could have addressed also more. He does praise the quality of newer mobile homes and some of the luxury amenities that can be ordered. I love hat the author described varied types of residential communities/parks that span the range of price points.

[Lora Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've become something of a connoisseur of books about mobile homes lately, and this book is the most accessible of the ones I've read so far -- it's interesting and written in plain language that overviews the history of mobile homes and discusses why some people choose to live (or end up living in) mobile homes. This book, written by a group of geographers, also focuses on the distribution of manufactured home parks throughout the country, which is unique among the books that exist on mobile homes. I also appreciate the awesome maps featured in this books.

My qualms with this book arise from the fact that citations throughout the book are scant, and that the accessibility of this book also leads to oversimplifying some facts nearly to the point of misleading the reader. There are also just a lot of portrayals of different mobile home parks that seem to ramble on at times. Though all of these things might just be me being picky.

Overall, this is a fine book for a regular person who is merely interested in learning a bit more about manufactured homes; however, there are better books on the subject if you really want to get into the weeds.

[Russell Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful look into the mobile home lifestyle. Principally covers smaller mobile units more common years ago but still found today. The book adds to the historical knowledge surrounding mobile homes and mobile home parks. One of several must reads for advocates in this space.