After living in a mobile home park for most of my childhood, I don’t want those kind of neighbors.
The folks that think it’s wise to spend $70k+ on a trailer are often the same folks who think it’s ok to have multiple broken down cars in the yard and/or multiple unfixed and unrestrained dogs running around and/or the worst of all: people who don’t see the irony of waving a Gadsden flag right next to their thin blue line flag.
I can confirm, just down the street there are two mobile homes. (Within less than a few minutes walking distance, before they were evicted, one of these homes had several instances of domestic violence, repeated calls to the animal control who on entering the house found several dogs days into starvation eating their own feces from hunger (they also would growl and bark at anyone attempting to walk or bike down the road). They were close enough that every so often we could hear the angry yelling for hours on end as the woman and her partner(s?) would fight. The other one, while quieter has approximately 3 unused vehicles, assorted junk, and lots of other good stuff dangerously close to spilling on to the neighbor territory, I'm living in a very rural state and can assure you this is the norm
Let’s be honest: it varies widely. There are parks with age restrictions: they tend to be okay. There are parks that do enforce their bylaws, including visual appearances, and they’re pretty good. A well-managed small park of newer double-wides and larger pads can be a nice place to live.
As with all housing, there are good neighbourhoods and bad. Hell, my in-law is in a nice millionaires neighbourhood and his immediate next-door neighbour is a swinging cokehead wife abuser who throws ragers every few months. It’s hell, but the properties are all freehold: short of a lawsuit, ain’t nothing to be done.
My family bought one of the very first lots in a new lake front property development way back in the 60s. After a very slow sale of these other lots in the development, the developer halved the size of the lots and opened them for mobile homes. The lots sold, the mobile homes moved in, and my family's property valued plummeted.
There were more than a few neighbors that fit the very stereotype you imagine, and they were the ones that lived there full time. Most of the direct neighbors were just weekenders (as were we).
sounds like a good outcome to me. more affordable housing and all it costs is a drop in the resale value of vacation homes, (that also comes with a drop in property taxes for those same vacation homes.)
One version I've heard is the concern that land value will decline if neighboring property turns into a kind of holding grounds for run-down, ill-maintained old trailers.
It does seem like our vernacular in this space is ripe for change; perhaps "homes on wheels" is teasing open that door...
hollywood_court|3 years ago
The folks that think it’s wise to spend $70k+ on a trailer are often the same folks who think it’s ok to have multiple broken down cars in the yard and/or multiple unfixed and unrestrained dogs running around and/or the worst of all: people who don’t see the irony of waving a Gadsden flag right next to their thin blue line flag.
Avicebron|3 years ago
moistly|3 years ago
As with all housing, there are good neighbourhoods and bad. Hell, my in-law is in a nice millionaires neighbourhood and his immediate next-door neighbour is a swinging cokehead wife abuser who throws ragers every few months. It’s hell, but the properties are all freehold: short of a lawsuit, ain’t nothing to be done.
dylan604|3 years ago
There were more than a few neighbors that fit the very stereotype you imagine, and they were the ones that lived there full time. Most of the direct neighbors were just weekenders (as were we).
pasquinelli|3 years ago
hollywood_court|3 years ago
gardenfelder|3 years ago
banannaise|3 years ago