In the late fifties, more mobile homes were built than prefabricated homes, yet municipalities continued to look down on them. In 1962, in an important New Jersey court case, the majority ruled that a rural township could prohibit trailer parks within its limits. Still, the judge who wrote the dissent exposed the dangerous implications of this decision: “Trailer dwellers” had become a class of people, he explained, through which discrimination was tolerated under the vague language of protecting the “general welfare.” For at least this one jurist, inherited social biases had reduced the owners
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