6 ms·

This is one of those positions that's so obvious, I struggle to articulate what the contrary position would even be. And yet, my community continues to squeeze

This is one of those positions that's so obvious, I struggle to articulate what the contrary position would even be. And yet, my community continues to squeeze out its trailer parks, even though I live in an area with plenty of land. Usually the former trailer park sits vacant for 3-8 years after the evictions are done.

brudgers 6y ago
The contrary position is public housing. If you desire non-market rate housing, it's the only solution. Because by definition, the market will always produce market rate housing.
- mjevans 6y ago
  Alternately, engineer the conditions of the market to achieve the desired result... rather than engineering the conditions of the market to preserve what's already been built at the cost of future (now current) generations who have no where to call home and establish value or community.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    I mostly agree but I think it's important to have perspective that things like historicity or the quality of a neighborhood can be a public good. And a democratic population might choose to invest in such a public good. Obviously it would be better though if the coat of these public goods were being paid more directly by the public and not externalized onto those living most precariously.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      You can have that to a certain extend. When people are saying you should build more they don't mean modern style 10 story buildings next to a single family home. They mean a duplex or triplex that fits in with the rest of the neighborhood or a 2-3 story apartment with a nice facade that is in the spirit of the neighborhood.
      - DubiousPusher 6y ago
        Uh, I think it's both. Have you been to Houston TX? Housing is cheap there for a large city. They also happen to often have 10 story buildings right up next to single family homes.
        dublinben 6y ago
        Houston is only a "cheap" city if you look at housing costs but not transportation costs. The ridiculous sprawl of Houston increases transportation costs so much that it is actually less affordable than "expensive" cities like New York City.[0][1] This doesn't even take into account the externalities of the higher emissions that come from living in a car-dependent place. [0] https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=29.7604267&lng=-95.3698028&focus=place&gid=25649#fs https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=29.7604267&lng=-95... [1] https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=40.7127753&lng=-74.0059728&focus=place&gid=16861#fs https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=40.7127753&lng=-74...
        DubiousPusher 6y ago
        I'm not making the case that Houston is a good solution to the housing problem. My whole point is that Houston is evidence of what happens when you ignore most preferential factors and just build. I've enjoyed visiting there but the city is aesthetically unappealing, feels vacant of community and yes is a nightmare to traverse.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      > the quality of a neighborhood can be a public good. And a democratic population might choose to invest in such a public good. This manifests as keeping poorer people out by restricting zoning to larger plots of land and detached single family homes, which also has a nice side effect of making cars a necessity. Everyone wants to live around others at or above their own socioeconomic level.
      - DubiousPusher 6y ago
        I agree. But the solution is not to throw out all considerations and give developers their way. There must be a way to balance the interests of those who want a neighborhood to remain a nice place to live with open space, gardens and services while also preventing Nimbys from filibustering density.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The article argues for a public housing model for trailer parks. Because of the pseudo ownership model where you don't own the land but still own a house sitting on the property that is expensive to move, the operator of the trailer park can just increase rates. It's exploitative compared to the rental market. You basically lose your housing investment unless you can find another trailer park and you can afford the moving fees. Renters can just move on to the next apartment.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    It’s often nastier, because the trailer is often rent to own or mortgaged by the owner. It’s a depreciating asset, so these arrangements are often exploitive, and the more slumlordy types will find ways to get liens on the trailer.
- imgabe 6y ago
  Public housing has most of the same problems - poorly maintained, high crime rate.
  - throwmxncj 6y ago
    Not if done properly. https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housing-basic-human-right-vienna-model-social-housing https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housi...
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  I'd like to think if funded properly, public housing would improve but I'm not confident. I grew to in a trailer in a trailer park and honestly, it was good for my family. We had 3 loud, boisterous, boys living together and we needed our own four walls. I think it's fair to say subsidizing this kind of private housing might be a bit selfish. After all, why does everyone in a park get a yard when people are just trying to find a studio or a rentable room just to work in the city? But I think that's the wrong question for two reasons. 1) The choice isn't usually between dense urban developments or trailer parks. I don't even think this type of land use comes into conflict all that much. Occasionally a park is shut down to build a shopping center but most parks are at the edge of cities. They are not usually blocking density. 2) It goes beyond market rate housing. Parks are often limited or banned. Perhaps encouraging parks is manipulating the market but so is what is happening now by law.
- captainmuon 6y ago
  Public housing is one option. Or you have to counter the price hikes. Prices are rising in many parts of the world because people are investing more and more money in housing, as an alternative to stocks or other investments. The expected returns mainly come from the rise in value, and not from the rent income. So the companies holding the houses must get rid of the existing tenants and renovate the appartments to increase their market value. Basically, private investments currently don't create much housing, they destroy affordable housing. So you need to create incentives to maintain and expand the affordable segment.
  - lmm 6y ago
    > The expected returns mainly come from the rise in value, and not from the rent income. So the companies holding the houses must get rid of the existing tenants and renovate the appartments to increase their market value. Nah. Housing rises in value even if you don't touch it. Demand is rising and supply isn't. The solution is to make it easier to build more.
    - brudgers 6y ago
      The market prefers higher priced housing over lower priced. When there is demand for higher price housing the market builds housing. When there is not demand for higher priced housing the market tends to wait out the down cycle. The market has no preference for building unprofitable housing. Bankers don’t have enthusiasm for loaning money to build it either. Finally housing is one of the less profitable real estate development types. That’s why commercial property often sits vacant...the long term ROI from sitting out low demand is better than conversion in the present.
      - lmm 6y ago
        > The market prefers higher priced housing over lower priced. When there is demand for higher price housing the market builds housing. When there is not demand for higher priced housing the market tends to wait out the down cycle. It's not the market, developers don't building cheap housing because regulations generally make it illegal. > The market has no preference for building unprofitable housing. Bankers don’t have enthusiasm for loaning money to build it either. Sure, but profitable isn't the same thing as expensive. "Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap" is a perfectly valid business model that bankers and businesspeople alike are happy to follow. But when the planning rules make it so expensive to build anything at all, building expensive housing is the only way to make a profit.
gnopgnip 6y ago
The article doesn't really clarify the difference between trailer parks where the residents own the lot and home, just the home, or the landlord owns everything. The latter is just renting. The middle one here is not really affordable. Owning the land is ideal, but in most of the country you can't do this in a mobile home park, you need to buy a relatively large lot. At that point you have a lot of the same issues with single family homes in developing area, the infrastructure/future maintenance is more expensive than people expect and eventually that will need to be dealt with.
- cowsandmilk 6y ago
  There is an existing legal framework for multiple owners sharing a lot, condominiums. That isn’t the barrier. Zoning excluding mobile homes is the barrier.
  - gnopgnip 6y ago
    It is both zoning and permitting. Most of the desirable parts of the US have exclusionary zoning and permitting and would not allow a condo HOA of mobile/manufactured homes to form today
michaelt 6y ago
> This is one of those positions that's so obvious, I struggle to articulate what the contrary position would even be. The UK has a housing crisis, but it's not due to the cost of constructing the house - it's due to the cost of land with planning permission. If the cost of a conventional home is 75% land, construction costs are almost irrelevant: Nobody's going to buy a £325,000 trailer in preference to a £400,000 conventional home.
Spooky23 6y ago
It’s pretty obvious if you look into the issue at all. Trailer parks are modern tenements, and the abusive practices of the owners usually make it a home of last resort. Most of them predate modern zoning or other laws in the jurisdiction as well, so they are usually an environmental nightmare, often with unsafe wells, or off-code sewers that release sewage.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Ask the HN demographics what "good poors" live like (though you'll have to be more tactful than that to get a real answer) and you'll probably get some answer about a cheap apartment in a city, maybe with roommates, taking public transit, etc. When the smoke and drink they do it inside. Their kids play video games or go to the park. When they want extra money they pick up another job. You get the picture. They're out of sight and out of mind. The trailer park life is pretty much the opposite of that. Poors that have space, even if just the small space of a trailer sized lot, use it efficiently. They have 1.x cars per person because 1 isn't enough redundancy. They hang their laundry on a clothes line. They litter their lawn with "unsightly" stuff they're flipping for extra cash. They sit around drinking beer while burning something in an old washing machine drum. It's the same old superiority complex and desire to tell other people how to live that's plagued humanity for all of history.

brudgers 6y ago

The contrary position is public housing. If you desire non-market rate housing, it's the only solution. Because by definition, the market will always produce market rate housing.

mjevans 6y ago
Alternately, engineer the conditions of the market to achieve the desired result... rather than engineering the conditions of the market to preserve what's already been built at the cost of future (now current) generations who have no where to call home and establish value or community.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  I mostly agree but I think it's important to have perspective that things like historicity or the quality of a neighborhood can be a public good. And a democratic population might choose to invest in such a public good. Obviously it would be better though if the coat of these public goods were being paid more directly by the public and not externalized onto those living most precariously.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    You can have that to a certain extend. When people are saying you should build more they don't mean modern style 10 story buildings next to a single family home. They mean a duplex or triplex that fits in with the rest of the neighborhood or a 2-3 story apartment with a nice facade that is in the spirit of the neighborhood.
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      Uh, I think it's both. Have you been to Houston TX? Housing is cheap there for a large city. They also happen to often have 10 story buildings right up next to single family homes.
      - dublinben 6y ago
        Houston is only a "cheap" city if you look at housing costs but not transportation costs. The ridiculous sprawl of Houston increases transportation costs so much that it is actually less affordable than "expensive" cities like New York City.[0][1] This doesn't even take into account the externalities of the higher emissions that come from living in a car-dependent place. [0] https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=29.7604267&lng=-95.3698028&focus=place&gid=25649#fs https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=29.7604267&lng=-95... [1] https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=40.7127753&lng=-74.0059728&focus=place&gid=16861#fs https://htaindex.cnt.org/fact-sheets/?lat=40.7127753&lng=-74...
        DubiousPusher 6y ago
        I'm not making the case that Houston is a good solution to the housing problem. My whole point is that Houston is evidence of what happens when you ignore most preferential factors and just build. I've enjoyed visiting there but the city is aesthetically unappealing, feels vacant of community and yes is a nightmare to traverse.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    > the quality of a neighborhood can be a public good. And a democratic population might choose to invest in such a public good. This manifests as keeping poorer people out by restricting zoning to larger plots of land and detached single family homes, which also has a nice side effect of making cars a necessity. Everyone wants to live around others at or above their own socioeconomic level.
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      I agree. But the solution is not to throw out all considerations and give developers their way. There must be a way to balance the interests of those who want a neighborhood to remain a nice place to live with open space, gardens and services while also preventing Nimbys from filibustering density.
imtringued 6y ago
The article argues for a public housing model for trailer parks. Because of the pseudo ownership model where you don't own the land but still own a house sitting on the property that is expensive to move, the operator of the trailer park can just increase rates. It's exploitative compared to the rental market. You basically lose your housing investment unless you can find another trailer park and you can afford the moving fees. Renters can just move on to the next apartment.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  It’s often nastier, because the trailer is often rent to own or mortgaged by the owner. It’s a depreciating asset, so these arrangements are often exploitive, and the more slumlordy types will find ways to get liens on the trailer.
imgabe 6y ago
Public housing has most of the same problems - poorly maintained, high crime rate.
- throwmxncj 6y ago
  Not if done properly. https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housing-basic-human-right-vienna-model-social-housing https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housi...
DubiousPusher 6y ago
I'd like to think if funded properly, public housing would improve but I'm not confident. I grew to in a trailer in a trailer park and honestly, it was good for my family. We had 3 loud, boisterous, boys living together and we needed our own four walls. I think it's fair to say subsidizing this kind of private housing might be a bit selfish. After all, why does everyone in a park get a yard when people are just trying to find a studio or a rentable room just to work in the city? But I think that's the wrong question for two reasons. 1) The choice isn't usually between dense urban developments or trailer parks. I don't even think this type of land use comes into conflict all that much. Occasionally a park is shut down to build a shopping center but most parks are at the edge of cities. They are not usually blocking density. 2) It goes beyond market rate housing. Parks are often limited or banned. Perhaps encouraging parks is manipulating the market but so is what is happening now by law.
captainmuon 6y ago
Public housing is one option. Or you have to counter the price hikes. Prices are rising in many parts of the world because people are investing more and more money in housing, as an alternative to stocks or other investments. The expected returns mainly come from the rise in value, and not from the rent income. So the companies holding the houses must get rid of the existing tenants and renovate the appartments to increase their market value. Basically, private investments currently don't create much housing, they destroy affordable housing. So you need to create incentives to maintain and expand the affordable segment.
- lmm 6y ago
  > The expected returns mainly come from the rise in value, and not from the rent income. So the companies holding the houses must get rid of the existing tenants and renovate the appartments to increase their market value. Nah. Housing rises in value even if you don't touch it. Demand is rising and supply isn't. The solution is to make it easier to build more.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    The market prefers higher priced housing over lower priced. When there is demand for higher price housing the market builds housing. When there is not demand for higher priced housing the market tends to wait out the down cycle. The market has no preference for building unprofitable housing. Bankers don’t have enthusiasm for loaning money to build it either. Finally housing is one of the less profitable real estate development types. That’s why commercial property often sits vacant...the long term ROI from sitting out low demand is better than conversion in the present.
    - lmm 6y ago
      > The market prefers higher priced housing over lower priced. When there is demand for higher price housing the market builds housing. When there is not demand for higher priced housing the market tends to wait out the down cycle. It's not the market, developers don't building cheap housing because regulations generally make it illegal. > The market has no preference for building unprofitable housing. Bankers don’t have enthusiasm for loaning money to build it either. Sure, but profitable isn't the same thing as expensive. "Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap" is a perfectly valid business model that bankers and businesspeople alike are happy to follow. But when the planning rules make it so expensive to build anything at all, building expensive housing is the only way to make a profit.

gnopgnip 6y ago

The article doesn't really clarify the difference between trailer parks where the residents own the lot and home, just the home, or the landlord owns everything. The latter is just renting. The middle one here is not really affordable. Owning the land is ideal, but in most of the country you can't do this in a mobile home park, you need to buy a relatively large lot. At that point you have a lot of the same issues with single family homes in developing area, the infrastructure/future maintenance is more expensive than people expect and eventually that will need to be dealt with.

cowsandmilk 6y ago
There is an existing legal framework for multiple owners sharing a lot, condominiums. That isn’t the barrier. Zoning excluding mobile homes is the barrier.
- gnopgnip 6y ago
  It is both zoning and permitting. Most of the desirable parts of the US have exclusionary zoning and permitting and would not allow a condo HOA of mobile/manufactured homes to form today

michaelt 6y ago

> This is one of those positions that's so obvious, I struggle to articulate what the contrary position would even be. The UK has a housing crisis, but it's not due to the cost of constructing the house - it's due to the cost of land with planning permission. If the cost of a conventional home is 75% land, construction costs are almost irrelevant: Nobody's going to buy a £325,000 trailer in preference to a £400,000 conventional home.

Spooky23 6y ago

It’s pretty obvious if you look into the issue at all. Trailer parks are modern tenements, and the abusive practices of the owners usually make it a home of last resort. Most of them predate modern zoning or other laws in the jurisdiction as well, so they are usually an environmental nightmare, often with unsafe wells, or off-code sewers that release sewage.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

Ask the HN demographics what "good poors" live like (though you'll have to be more tactful than that to get a real answer) and you'll probably get some answer about a cheap apartment in a city, maybe with roommates, taking public transit, etc. When the smoke and drink they do it inside. Their kids play video games or go to the park. When they want extra money they pick up another job. You get the picture. They're out of sight and out of mind. The trailer park life is pretty much the opposite of that. Poors that have space, even if just the small space of a trailer sized lot, use it efficiently. They have 1.x cars per person because 1 isn't enough redundancy. They hang their laundry on a clothes line. They litter their lawn with "unsightly" stuff they're flipping for extra cash. They sit around drinking beer while burning something in an old washing machine drum. It's the same old superiority complex and desire to tell other people how to live that's plagued humanity for all of history.