Mobile Home University, where the rich teach others how to rip off poor living in trailer parks

boing
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Usually space is an issue. Almost everyone I know who lives in a trailer has kids or has extended family living with them or both. In one case, parents were in one room, two kids in one room, and the third room was rented out to a friend.

There are also cases where a small piece of property is kicking around a family. In a rural area the land might not be worth too much but multiple trailers can be kept there as family moves on and off the property. In one case the trailers went from living space to band practice space as needed. Iā€™ve seen people living in truly ancient trailers too, with open seams or cracks to the outside.

A trailer or a camper is often something you feel you can hold on to, and rent is something you know you might not be able to pay one day, instantly loosing your home. I donā€™t think of them as a good investment but my dad just got a camper and for him it was definitely better than trying to rent an apartment somewhere. If the money wasnā€™t sunk into something concrete it would evaporate on him.

I rent b/c my lifestyle is completely different from my dad. My partner was in school forever and Iā€™ve moved in and out of the county twice now. I grew up with a real fear of ending up in a trailer but that has way more to do with the financial pit that so many people around me got stuck in, many of which had to do with medical expenses.

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Picture yourself living in a floor plan like this for $500:

Friendship_Singlewide_60115_14x46.84155944_std.jpg800Ɨ355 34 KB

Now picture living in that 2nd bedroom for 40% of your salary or more in a 20-40 year old manufactured home. This isnā€™t NYC apartment living. Outside of cities, this is often the best opportunity for finding shelter, and depending on the park, itā€™s not much.

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My parentsā€™ (well, now my motherā€™s) vacay trailer is in a very old trailer park right on the Indian River opposite Cape Canaveral. Very low rent, modest maintenance, modest community standards. The park was once mostly retirees. Not exactly impoverished, but of modest means. For an up-front investment of far less than a house, and a rent much less than an apartment, they got a house with two bedrooms (at least) and a bit of yard. Now as the old folks are dying off they are being replaced by scruffy folks. With her friends mostly gone I donā€™t think my mom will bother going down there again, other than to have a yard sale and sell the place. (Likely for under $5,000.)

The place on the other side of the fence is more upscale. Middle class retirees. The family friend who started my parents on the path to wintering down there couldnā€™t stand the rules and moved his trailer next door.

Even though sheā€™s now pretty well off, and could afford a nice condo, I suspect my mom wouldnā€™t mind living in a trailer up north. She and my dad had fun fixing up their place, the spare room let kids and family friends visit, it was easy to clean, and someone else did the lawn.

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Full disclosure- family has a mobile home, anchored with porch built on, that is our camp. It is in a nice friendly trailer park, where no one is rich, but no extreme poverty prevalent. Some of our friends there are very poor, though. Some live there, but most have their places as camps. Backwoods PA. We are not poor, middle class, but I live paycheck to paycheck. So I have some experience with living in these conditions, just not permanently.

I read the article- and see both sides. The poor have to live somewhere- especially the sex offenders. Imagine being the dude caught pissing on a tree by a cop just cause you had to go, and bam- sex offender. Harmless or serious, those folk have gotta have a nightmare the rest of their lives trying to find housing. So yeah, itā€™s good that there is a cheap option at least, beats homelessness. And all landlords do raise rent.

That said, the tone of the article is fucking infuriating. They are making it a celebration of joy to raise rents on poor people- not, yeah, you can see it that way, but they intentionally used that kind of phrasing in real shock, joy that they can get away with it because theyā€™re poor. What are they gonna do? They only leave when they die?

Christ, what assholes. They even made it overtly into a class thing with the sell to the masses eat with the classes line. Fucking christ. Sorry, but I canā€™t believe people this- not evil, but immoral exist. Who creates their mentality? Where does this joy at seeing people struggle to survive and happy to make a buck off it come from? How are people like that raised to arrive at that outlook in life in our country? Iā€™m speechless.

500$ for one of 3 bedrooms in a trailer?? Damn. I just signed a lease today on the first apartment Iā€™ve ever had on my own, for a little less than that, at 500 Sqft. Cheaper and nicer than a trailer, Iā€™m working poor though with little disposable income and student loan debts.

This article absolutely concretes my opinion about existing on land- everything, owning a home, renting, itā€™s all linked to either paying someone rent to exist in a spot safely each month, or boils down to the same thing thru mortgage, even property taxes. Paying even 1$ in tax on land you ā€œownā€ is paying someone else for the right to exist, because if you donā€™t pay it- itā€™s no longer yours, even if itā€™s paid off.

I refuse to stay in this system and pay people to exist when I can just barely make it to get this apartment and feed myself. Iā€™m building a motherfucking houseboat as soon as I can, and living where I please. I will pay no one to simply exist on a spot after that.

Welcome to modern enslavement- not just debt, but rent. Pay to exist, history of man. I just refuse to agree with it, even if my view of it is extreme. Modern society can go fuck itself.

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What is so bad about living in a trailer? I lived in a trailer for a bit while my dad was stationed at Fort Rucker. I recall being quite happy in living in a single wide at the trailer park. Even years later, back during the Y2K boom for IT workers, I was considering buying a trailer where I was contracting at the time because I didnā€™t know what my situation would be beyond any given 6 month contract renewal. Compared to the efficiency (motel room) I was living in at the time, a trailer would have offer more space in addition to being a much cheaper option on a per month basis.

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Agreed. Living in a trailer isnā€™t always a hellhole. Yeah, there are really bad ones, that are rotted through, like ours kinda was, but we fixed it up.

I think a lot of people just never have been inside a newer or even nice trailer- let alone a nice doublewide. Thereā€™s a reason they are popularly celebrated in some forms of music- some are nicer than a much larger house inside.

I think itā€™s just a deep stigma from people unfamiliar with something (history of the world there).

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I loved it. I lived in a doubewide trailer that I owned, in a park for 7 years. The yard was minimal, but the home was big enough to be three bedrooms, with a big full kitchen. I could effect whatever repairs and upgrades I wanted inside. I paid for mine outright, so the lot fee was cheaper than any rent Iā€™d otherwise encounter in my area. The neighbors were nice.

I lived not far from Seattle where houses were out of my reach. I paid 25K for a home, and sold it at the height of the bubble for 2K more than I paid for it. I canā€™t imagine spending more than that on a place to live, to be honest. I donā€™t want to own a house/property that I canā€™t walk away from if things go wrong for me financially.

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Boom. New guy. So easy to spot. Well, see you.

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from someone who joined us just to make that comment.

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Youā€™re in for a let-down when you find out about berthing/mooring fees.

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32

You Seem, Very Cool.

Your Comment, Well Written.

All Internets, You Win.

At Least, in Thread.

Got to, Go Now.

English Teacher, Hunts Me.

With Net, for Butterflies.
ā€¦

Anywayā€¦

I really like your post and I was going to write something about this here ā€“ but you covered not only the points I wanted to cover, but raised points I had not even considered. Thank-you for taking the time to write such a well-worded response.

Cheers!!!
~cdh

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Yeesh, the older trailers are asbestos city. If itā€™s old enough that the vinyls are all cracking & such then that asbestos is friable and getting into the air every time someone goes in & out of the trailer or walk around inside it.

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I lived in one for quite awhile, pretty nice one, because it was given to me for a buck after a trashcan fire melted some of the siding. Sometimes living in a trailer really is cheaper than anything else around.

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OTOH, I have a home - on a foundation, with walls made of 2x4s instead of 1.25x2.75s, with a little less than 1/3 an acre of yard - and my mortgage is less than $400/mo. Iā€™m older, white, and poor but privileged.

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The trailer park owners seem to be just fine, and residents seem to be as OK as being destituted can let you be. But if you watched the video, it is about a new class of smart investors that are buying out the owners and, ā€œfinallyā€, showing us how to make money.

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Yeah- I know about them. We have a small sailboat too- also was a little beat up, but fixed up nice.
You can get a decent used sailboat for around $6000 if you know what to look for.

Thatā€™s what anchors are for. And- the only way out of actual property tax as far as I know is to own a houseboat. Many people have done it. An old family friend back in the 70s did it, but it washed away down a river. And it was a surplus coal barge before he fixed it up. There are ways around mooring fees. There is no way around moving your house to a place that doesnt sit on land though.

I didnā€™t ask to be born. Iā€™m glad to be alive, but I be damned if Iā€™ll let someone charge me, in effect, for the right to BE alive by existing on property. Someone is at the top of the chain and gets it all- and Iā€™m not OK with that. I know thatā€™s fundamentalist way of looking at it, but itā€™s how I truly see it.

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Thanks! Iā€™m a bit too verbose, I fear- my posts are always long and detailed. I need to learn to be more terse.

And to clarify- I donā€™t live in the trailer- it is actually just that as I stated- a camp. In PA, at least, some people have camp shacks and whatnot they go to for hunting, and just in general to get away. Makes it sound like we are rich, but we arenā€™t. Just normal middle class. Still, I know thatā€™s more than many have, so maybe I come off like an asshole for even commenting on this. But I have experience living in trailers as such, so I think that counts for something.

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I agree that renting is an inefficient way to house people, butā€¦

I canā€™t say Iā€™m all that averse to property taxes.

Theoretically (Iā€™m talking entirely theoreticallly here) property taxes on the land where you live is supposed to be what pays for firefighters, police and sometimes education in the district, as well as roads to your house and utility build-out subsidies so you can have clean fluoridated water, electricity, internet in some cases and natural gas infrastructure.

So, while property taxes are often unfairly applied to the low end of the socioeconomic scale, they do serve a purpose, at least theoreticallly, and where theyā€™re unfair and unduly acquisitive, gentrification and ghettoization tend to happen, neither of which are usually good things either.

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Property tax doesnā€™t make sense because it makes the unfounded assumption that owning property equates to also owning liquid assets in proportion to said property. So if you inherit your familyā€™s ancestral estate assessed at half a million dollars, suddenly youā€™re on the hook for ~$7500/year even if youā€™re only working part-time minimum wage. You have to go into the landlord business or sell your only tangible asset of note. Maybe the house you were born and raised in. The one with all your petsā€™ graves in the yard. Maybe to some asshole speculator whoā€™ll ā€œfix it upā€ and flip it on HGN.

And then you get to keep on paying rent for whatever shithole of a hovel youā€™re stuck in.

(EDIT: I suspect property tax is a relic of an agrarian past where arable land did directly equate to income.)

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You know this brings to mind a thing that bothers me a lot with modern capitalism and worship of wealth. How much damn profit to you really need. I get making money and making a living but after a certain amount how much MORE is really necessary. I mean if mom and pop who previously owned the place were doing a good job maintaining things and living comfortably getting their needs and enough wants satisfied why should they raise rents just to have MORE which is what this guy is saying, you can get MORE AND MORE just cause you can. Does anyone ask these guys if they know the difference between can and should? Are they ever happy with what they have?

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