20 ms·

The potential of mobile housing

93 points by jseliger 4y ago

3qz 4y ago
Stop trying to make me live in a pod
moistly 4y ago
Yah, why advocate for real housing, when we can just stuff people into 100sq.ft. mobile tiny homes. That way we can ensure the working poor never set down roots or enjoy the stability of a neighbourhood; we’ll be able to keep them moving, always travelling to the next temporary wage-slave job. Brilliant idea, Tim, fuckin’ brillo! Why should we ever aim higher than that! Next, let’s stack the tiny homes. Kowloon Walled City, here we come!
- jaclaz 4y ago
  Mobile tiny home which costs US$ 10,000 [1] according to the Author, that then proceeds to illustrate it with the picture of a non-mobile (and not so tiny) house that was estimated US$ 25,000 in 2016 [2] [1] What? [2] and which at first sight won't be anything less than US$ 50,000-60,000 today
  - moistly 4y ago
    I just looked up tandem 10000lb flat deck trailers, e.g. suitable platform on which to build a tiny home. They’re about $5000 a pop. Maybe if you steal everything from a construction site, a tiny home could be built for $10K.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Real talk, a tiny home we’ll equipped will run $40k to $100k; you only get close to the low end with lower end materials and supplying the labor yourself (I’ve helped build and haul to their final location more than one). With that said, the greatest challenge is the stigma of a trailer park. The local community NIMBYs fight hard to not permit new communities from being established (speaking as someone who optioned a parcel of land in central Florida for this purpose and had to go plead the case at planning meetings), and existing ones are getting snapped up by private equity and real estate investors to turn the financial screws on people who have nowhere else to go. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098193173/what-happens-when-private-equity-takes-over-mobile-home-parks https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098193173/what-happens-when-... https://rejournals.com/investors-appetite-for-manufactured-housing-keeps-growing-during-pandemic/ https://rejournals.com/investors-appetite-for-manufactured-h... I think this model works as a coop or non profit land trust, where the resident owns the home but the community protects their stake in the lot. Think “A Tiny Home For Good” Tiny Home Park Edition. You need to defend against the Capital vultures. https://www.atinyhomeforgood.org/ https://www.atinyhomeforgood.org/ (Tangentially, someone from YC should reach out to the above non profit to have them go through their next non profit accelerator cycle)
      - notch656a 4y ago
        Tiny home dream for me died once I found out I couldn't park it as primary residence on residential zoned land in my city. Any big cities where you can do this and own the property? Paying rent for a house you own in the clear is a non-starter.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        All zoning is local. You’ll have to research prospective locales to understand the nuance. Tiny homes kept on trailers are done for a reason; to be regulated as RVs instead of a fixed structured, avoiding typical ADU or structure to lot size ratio issues.
        hattmall 4y ago
        You can build a permanent structure that's the bare minimum really cheaply and then just park the tiny home there, and that really only matters if you want to get grid utilities.
        bombcar 4y ago
        “Bare minimum really cheaply” varies from a shack with power and no water to a three bedroom house with geothermal. It’s all down to localities.
        lh7777 4y ago
        The article mentions a few: "In the last few years, some US cities made a surprising break with the mobile-exclusionary tradition by legalizing residence in RVs or tiny houses on wheels on residential lots. First Fresno, then Los Angeles and San Jose, and various cities & states now allow mobile Accessory Dwelling Units. Portland allowed one movable home per residential lot in the 2021 Shelter to Housing Continuum zoning reforms, and Oakland created a new residential type, “Vehicular Residential Facilities,” which allows multiple vehicle dwellings on sites with sufficient area."
      - xrd 4y ago
        Are you still in Central Florida? Maybe you never actually were, just optioned the land? I'm a recent migrant to this area and would be interested in hearing more about the challenges of this region. Where can I learn more about what you are doing?
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  I personally do live in the way described, and it's fantastic. Why does a person need a ton of private space? There's plenty of space outside, and life's more rewarding out there too. A space to sleep, shit, shower, shave and cook is everything a person needs. And the ability to go wherever is best for you with minimal difficulty is wonderful. My life got immeasurably better the day I started living like this, and I did it with low 4 figure capital investment. Imagine reducing housing costs by 2 orders of magnitude. Most people dont need what they think they need. The only thing I wish I had is ownership over the land I'm parked on, which is coming soon enough.
forgotmypw17 4y ago
I loved out of a minivan for 1.5 years and it was one of the best experiences I've had. Cost almost nothing, too.
- danny_codes 4y ago
  What did you do for showering, cooking, etc?
  - jrgoff 4y ago
    I lived out of a tent for a couple of summers. Getting a gym membership was an easy way for me to have access to showers. At the time I mostly just ate food that didn't require cooking though I certainly could have used a camp stove easily.
  - forgotmypw17 4y ago
    I showered less frequently, but there are many options out there, such as: Friends and allies, beach and camping showers, gyms, pirate bath. I did not cook much, and just ate things like nuts, bread, and cheese. But I had a simple wood stove that runs on little sticks. (Look up rocket can stove.) Generally speaking, for most things, it was just a matter of "stay calm and improvise".
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      I had a friend doing the van living thing, he was coming by every day or so to shower at my immobile home. It got kind of old and I told him he was going to have to start cleaning it once a week to continue on. He said fine. Then he proceeded to never show up again lol other than to drop by and say howdy.
      - forgotmypw17 4y ago
        Sounds fair... It helps to have a habit of leaving every place cleaner than you found it. It sounds like your friend had other options, and you were able to remain friends?
AlexandrB 4y ago
There's a 15 minute documentary about the takeover of the mobile housing industry by large conglomerates: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQa3Ajhzv8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQa3Ajhzv8 The key takeaway is that many/most of the people living in this kind of housing cannot afford the expense of moving it (video gives a price tag of around $5000), especially on short notice. Older mobile homes may not have enough remaining structural integrity to be moved at all. Meanwhile the land their house is on is rented and they can still be evicted from the land at anytime which typically results in the loss of the home that they "own". This catch 22 means that residents are seen as ripe for rent and fee increases since moving means losing their investment in the home. I'm sure mobile housing is great for middle class people looking for a nomadic lifestyle where they plan to move their home from time to time. As low-income housing though, it seems mobile homes are in a nasty grey area between renting and owning.
- smegsicle 4y ago
  "buying a house but renting everything that doesn't depreciate"
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    It's only profitable to rent the things to you that you would be better off buying.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Rental cars, hotel room, and certain machinery/tools? Owning something has costs too, and if you are not interested in learning how to or paying someone else to maintain and secure something, then it can make sense to not buy it also. I need a vibrating plate compactor once in 10 years, and Home Depot has a stream of customers who need it all the time. I could buy it and rent it to others when I am not using it, but I have other things I want to do with my time. Therefore, it is profitable for Home Depot to rent it to me, and for me to pay a slight premium to never have to worry about it outside the few hours I needed to use it. Similarly, I have rented apartments in my 20s in places I had no intention of setting down, and buying would have been a waste of time and effort.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Yeah the article is about semi-mobile non-RV houses, but really it's the same use case as an upscale RV. Between solar panels, an EV drivetrain which comes with a HUGE battery for running appliances, skateboard design for more space, better acceleration/handling/regen braking, room for a "range extension" ICE generator as backup, and the final killer killer feature: ... stay with me ... Highway self-driving, even if it's just supervisory. I'd sell everything I own and live in a mobile home. If it drove me between places at night with better-than-human safety (and maybe a big huge airbag in the bedroom)... my god. Keep in mind that highway self driving should be much much easier than general self driving. You can get convergent evolution of the infrastructure with embedded sensors and warning broadcasts. You can get highly optimized pre-calculated route "programs" rather than rely entirely on some generally trained AI agent. You'll have a lot more room for sensors. You don't have to travel as fast at night either, so the RV can putter along at 40mph for excellent energy efficiency and better safety, and not offend any daytime drivers. When it gets to the destination, if you don't wake up there can be huge self-driving parking lots where the RV can park (and recharge) while you wake up. And the picture in the article says a 1000 words: I really like a design of a house where there is a central courtyard and a bunch of buildings around it. Japanese houses (well, the rich ones in anime and stuff) were designed like this. Your mobile home could simply drive up to part of that courtyard, and become part of your house. Need a new bedroom? buy a new segment and plop it next to the courtyard. COVID kind of killed a lot of commuting, but the idea of my bedroom driving me to work in the morning is a good one, and if you need to drop a #2 at work you can walk out to the RV and do it there (I'm not a huge fan of crapping in public bathrooms, but that might just be me, the #1 thing I like about WFH is crapping in my bathroom). Heck you'll have a shower and a change of clothes and a place to nap if you need it at work. Supports longer hours if you need it. If the RV has an attached office, and your workers tend to have this, you can simply have a pop-up office where a smaller building has meeting rooms but people work in their RV-offices. Your RV can drive you home in traffic while you get the last couple hours of work done, so even 100 mile commutes can be tolerable. Currently the RV industry, as I understand it is based in Indiana mostly, is pretty slow to change. It astonishes me that RVs haven't been hybrid drivetrains for a decade (that relates to my frustration that PHEVs weren't forced in adoption in the 2000s, 10 years after the prius and insight hit the market). I guess the pickup trucks never adopted the drivetrain, but there were hybrid SUVs in droves ten years ago. I think the Tesla semi and other BEV semis will be what does it. You can take a short range BEV semi and make it longer range with an attached ICE generator for the long haul. I'm hoping that "inside out" rotary or other small engine designs optimized for battery recharging can work here. With the skyrocketing cost of housing, would you rather have a luxurious mobile home for 500k and spend 300k for a house in the boonies, or have a 1 million dollar crap house closer to the job? And right now RVs are kind of expensive because they are too bespoke. If demand skyrockets due to all the advantages listed above, we may actually get economies of scale in housing, since the footprints are all shipping container sized essentially. Heck, the skateboard design of an EV may mean that the entire drivetrain is simply an underbody and the top living part is relatively swappable. Also, some BEV drivetrains (million mile battery) may be far more long term and reliable, a lot of RVs have an issue of ricketly ICE drivetrains that don't age well.
_8j50 4y ago
One of the main appeals of a house is having a backyard and a garage. I can't tinker with and work on various project ideas or get certain pets because I live in an apartment,that won't change with mobile homes, you just end up doing your own maintenance, still make payments on it and pay a few hundred bucks to park the mobile home. There should be giant city-buildings with hundreds of thousands of dwelling spaces each with a large outdoor patio. A lot of problems like power distribution from certain powersources get resolved with this as well as many other resources like fresh water and fresh food (land is freed up for agriculture),waste disposal,transportation, medical care,etc... The urban sprawl made sense in the nuclear era but I believe the technology exists to make highly defensible mega buildings (10s of miles wide,50+ stories high).
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  Sounds like you and Buckminister Fuller would have gotten along. [0] Count me in, too. That said, if the 70s couldn't birth a few concrete proto-arcologies, I'm not sure it's ever going to be politically possible. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project
  - ianai 4y ago
    It definitely requires a culture level buy-in. Maybe places already having high density populations could birth such a project. But that’s a catch22 itself.
    - _8j50 4y ago
      Yes it would. My idea was to start with the california coastline. Have it be very close to the ocean. 100k units facing the ocean, it makes it both economically viable (people will pay for it) and help bring housing prices and homelessness down. You will also have to fight a lot less NIMBY battles. The main problem is you need to commit billions of dollars to start with. The rent/hoa alone is probably not gonna give good ROI short term but having so many people there means a potential to design a very profitable center of economic activity. Ideally, the lowest levels would be stores. You would also be providing them with their supermarket, mall,hospitals,etc.... with an average total household income of 80k that's at least 3-4billion/year
xrd 4y ago
One on hand, you've got Adam Neumann and his new startup providing new types of homes for the endlessly mobile young worker. On the other hand, you've got proposals like this one in Oregon, my home state, which has many problems. HB2001, if I understand it correctly, forces all cities over 25k to allow multiple homes, duplexes and quadplexes, on any plot. But the problem is, you can't add them if you already have something on there, and try finding an empty lot in the Portland metropolitan area under $250k. I certainly did. Sadly, I'm betting Adam Neumann will win here. Too much money to lobby and align with the tides.
- moistly 4y ago
  > for the endlessly mobile young worker How does this differ from what we used to call the “Displaced Person”?
  - colinsane 4y ago
    i think the thing GP is talking about is a setup where you buy membership that grants you the ability to live in any of N places owned by the company. you have the ability to live in any of these as long as you want; you only move when you want to and it’s decoupled from your financial situation since your membership costs the same regardless of where you live. on the other hand “displaced” usually means that you were pressured into moving. Neuman’s thing is new, so i may have misunderstood exactly how it works, but if i got the intent right then that’s how they differ.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Can you buy a house and turn it into an empty lot? More expensive but if you end up with a quad …
ww520 4y ago
People need to see the downsides of owning a RV. https://youtu.be/IP_u2JR51_Y https://youtu.be/IP_u2JR51_Y
- penner_im_auto 4y ago
  That's interesting. I'm traveling since 2 years and many times I had the discussion of "bought" vs "self-built". This video is gold.
golemiprague 4y ago
I don't see how one storey on wheels is going to solve anything. The main cost is the land, a decent mobile home will not cost much less than a house of the same size. Once everybody are going to roam around in their mobile house the cost of parking land and infrastructure will be exactly the same but with added strain on the roads and cost of fuel to move those houses around. Not to mention the psychological cost of being a nomad with no roots and no community, especially with children. In addition not every country has so many empty spaces like the US, in many countries even a single storey home is something only rich people can afford and most people live in apartment buildings, like in NY city. Why not just build high buildings with various sizes of apartments, not too many limiting zoning laws and good public transportation like they do in Tokyo for example? This is already a proven way to solve those issues.
hollywood_court 4y ago
I lived in a mobile home from 1st grade until I left home at 16. My own family will never live in a mobile home. Regardless of the sacrifices required, I will never have them experience that. In addition to the safety concerns, it’s a poor financial decision. I replaced two water heaters and a toilet in a mobile home for a realtor about 18 months ago. I was shocked that the trailer was listed for $90k and sold the next week. We’ve got to do a better job of teaching financial literacy in this country.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  Genuinely curious, what's wrong with a mobile/manufactured home? Do you object to the "trailer park" aspect, or simply the entire concept of the structure? I'm a detached, on-our-own-land double wide with a foundation, and I've no problems with the house at all. It's a higher end manufactured, we have drywall, quartz counters, upgraded electrical, etc, but... most people don't even realize it's a manufactured unless they already know what to look for (strong marriage line, all the water on one half of the house, etc).
  - hollywood_court 4y ago
    Mostly the quality and safety aspects. I made all of my money with my trades. My first and most lucrative trade is carpentry. There is no way anyone will ever be able to convince me that a mobile home is as safe as a traditional built home. I spent many an anxious night as a child in Alabama fearful that I wouldn’t live until the next morning due to inclement weather. And they are depreciating assets. I come from a single parent violent home where I had to leave before I even finished high school. I somehow managed to become what I am with nothing but a high school education. I worked hard and sacrificed a lot to escape that lifestyle. I don’t want my own child to see me ever make poor financial decisions. Edit: The above makes me sound like an incredible asshole. So the best answer would be: there are far better ways to spend my money and energy than on a mobile home. Ways that are better at ensuring my family’s safety and financial wellbeing.
    - Syonyk 4y ago
entropicgravity 4y ago
Why not just make it a largeish van like a long, tall Sprinter? All electric will make everything work more reliably and way more practical and cheaper(eventually).
- molotovh 4y ago
  These are definitely being done, but in many cases, the well-done ones cost more than a trailer home. Look up some of the van life channels on You Tube; most of them have early videos detailing the cost outlays required. It's a lot easier to get a loan of $90k for something that technically qualifies as a home vs. a loan of $150k+ for what the bank considers a recreational vehicle.
adrianmonk 4y ago
It's more or less a nonstarter in tornado-prone areas. From https://www.weather.gov/jan/swpw_mhsafety https://www.weather.gov/jan/swpw_mhsafety : > Mobile homes are not a safe shelter when tornadoes threaten. NOAA and FEMA recommend that mobile and manufactured home residents flee their homes for sturdier shelter before storms with tornadoes hit. On average, a total of 72 percent of all tornado-related fatalities are in homes and 54 percent of those fatalities are in mobile homes. I don't know the percentage of people who live in mobile homes, but I'm sure it's nowhere close to 54%.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  On the other hand in fire prone areas I'd want something I can drive out.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Nowadays, in more than just some areas you'll want something you can drive out. (I was thinking of the risk of civic or general quality degradation of the area (unrestrained emergent actors, general emergent pollution), but also climate issues can be important today - some of us tried to spend the current Summer in altitude as much as possible, as the plains were in dire conditions.)
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      Yeah, my holiday plans are more like refugee plans these days. Find an area not currently experiencing some type of disaster and unlikely to for the next x months. Visit until normalcy returns. I missed basically all of covid by judiciously running away whenever a lockdown or mass infections were about to happen. Looking at people who didn't, man they've gotten weird and mean.
- em-bee 4y ago
  it's not the percentage of people living in mobile homes but fatalities in mobile homes during a tornado. it could well mean that noone survives a tornado in a mobile home
transfire 4y ago
What if build a Lost in Space style spaceship… I mean house. Where can I legally locate it?
rdtwo 4y ago
Mobile housing is only good as a way of getting wrong either permits or local labor shortages
8jef 4y ago
Most people here comment on past experiences involving 1970's mobile homes in trailer parks, people living in cars, and large RVs. Modern mobile housing, as per the article, is different. It's about large vans or tiny homes built on trailers, not made to permanently sit on ciment blocks. Not necessarily with children in it. Anyway, where there's a will there's a way. With over 1M people living the vanlife in the US alone, we are not far from future outdoor and/or indoor private communities regrouping migrating short term tenants. A bit like camping grounds, but geared toward vanlifers.
aaron695 4y ago
betaby 4y ago
Build 'projects', seriously. Also see Vienna housing model. There is no potential in mobile housing history tells us over and over.
rossjudson 4y ago
The linked article mentions something particularly interesting: the "Mobile Accessory Dwelling Unit" rules that a few cities are putting in place. I'm guessing this means that you can designate a part of your property, install suitable hookups (water/sewer/electricity) using RV standards, and then find a tenant who will be bringing their own mobile unit (tiny home/RV). That's...quite good. Landlords can interview tenants and inspect their rigs to make sure they're in good shape/suitable. The mobility of the unit becomes more important, so the tenant can keep their bargaining power. Landlords get something too -- they don't have to build expensive living space, and there's definitely less involved in ending a lease (the tenant is much more able to move their dwelling, which should stay in the "ready to move state").
zivkovicp 4y ago
Anyone who's been to a "real" trailer park will probably never want to come near a mobile home, let alone romanticize about it. The "high end" units that are shown in architectural design magazines and the like are really cool, they're modern, stylish, and really just someone's hobby... but the reality of mobile home living is very different. I've have friends who lived in mobile homes and all I can say is that I'm thankful that I didn't have to.

93 points by jseliger 4y ago

3qz 4y ago

Stop trying to make me live in a pod

Yah, why advocate for real housing, when we can just stuff people into 100sq.ft. mobile tiny homes. That way we can ensure the working poor never set down roots or enjoy the stability of a neighbourhood; we’ll be able to keep them moving, always travelling to the next temporary wage-slave job. Brilliant idea, Tim, fuckin’ brillo! Why should we ever aim higher than that! Next, let’s stack the tiny homes. Kowloon Walled City, here we come!

jaclaz 4y ago
Mobile tiny home which costs US$ 10,000 [1] according to the Author, that then proceeds to illustrate it with the picture of a non-mobile (and not so tiny) house that was estimated US$ 25,000 in 2016 [2] [1] What? [2] and which at first sight won't be anything less than US$ 50,000-60,000 today
- moistly 4y ago
  I just looked up tandem 10000lb flat deck trailers, e.g. suitable platform on which to build a tiny home. They’re about $5000 a pop. Maybe if you steal everything from a construction site, a tiny home could be built for $10K.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Real talk, a tiny home we’ll equipped will run $40k to $100k; you only get close to the low end with lower end materials and supplying the labor yourself (I’ve helped build and haul to their final location more than one). With that said, the greatest challenge is the stigma of a trailer park. The local community NIMBYs fight hard to not permit new communities from being established (speaking as someone who optioned a parcel of land in central Florida for this purpose and had to go plead the case at planning meetings), and existing ones are getting snapped up by private equity and real estate investors to turn the financial screws on people who have nowhere else to go. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098193173/what-happens-when-private-equity-takes-over-mobile-home-parks https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098193173/what-happens-when-... https://rejournals.com/investors-appetite-for-manufactured-housing-keeps-growing-during-pandemic/ https://rejournals.com/investors-appetite-for-manufactured-h... I think this model works as a coop or non profit land trust, where the resident owns the home but the community protects their stake in the lot. Think “A Tiny Home For Good” Tiny Home Park Edition. You need to defend against the Capital vultures. https://www.atinyhomeforgood.org/ https://www.atinyhomeforgood.org/ (Tangentially, someone from YC should reach out to the above non profit to have them go through their next non profit accelerator cycle)
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Tiny home dream for me died once I found out I couldn't park it as primary residence on residential zoned land in my city. Any big cities where you can do this and own the property? Paying rent for a house you own in the clear is a non-starter.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        All zoning is local. You’ll have to research prospective locales to understand the nuance. Tiny homes kept on trailers are done for a reason; to be regulated as RVs instead of a fixed structured, avoiding typical ADU or structure to lot size ratio issues.
      - hattmall 4y ago
        You can build a permanent structure that's the bare minimum really cheaply and then just park the tiny home there, and that really only matters if you want to get grid utilities.
        bombcar 4y ago
        “Bare minimum really cheaply” varies from a shack with power and no water to a three bedroom house with geothermal. It’s all down to localities.
      - lh7777 4y ago
        The article mentions a few: "In the last few years, some US cities made a surprising break with the mobile-exclusionary tradition by legalizing residence in RVs or tiny houses on wheels on residential lots. First Fresno, then Los Angeles and San Jose, and various cities & states now allow mobile Accessory Dwelling Units. Portland allowed one movable home per residential lot in the 2021 Shelter to Housing Continuum zoning reforms, and Oakland created a new residential type, “Vehicular Residential Facilities,” which allows multiple vehicle dwellings on sites with sufficient area."
    - xrd 4y ago
      Are you still in Central Florida? Maybe you never actually were, just optioned the land? I'm a recent migrant to this area and would be interested in hearing more about the challenges of this region. Where can I learn more about what you are doing?
betwixthewires 4y ago
I personally do live in the way described, and it's fantastic. Why does a person need a ton of private space? There's plenty of space outside, and life's more rewarding out there too. A space to sleep, shit, shower, shave and cook is everything a person needs. And the ability to go wherever is best for you with minimal difficulty is wonderful. My life got immeasurably better the day I started living like this, and I did it with low 4 figure capital investment. Imagine reducing housing costs by 2 orders of magnitude. Most people dont need what they think they need. The only thing I wish I had is ownership over the land I'm parked on, which is coming soon enough.

forgotmypw17 4y ago

I loved out of a minivan for 1.5 years and it was one of the best experiences I've had. Cost almost nothing, too.

danny_codes 4y ago
What did you do for showering, cooking, etc?
- jrgoff 4y ago
  I lived out of a tent for a couple of summers. Getting a gym membership was an easy way for me to have access to showers. At the time I mostly just ate food that didn't require cooking though I certainly could have used a camp stove easily.
- forgotmypw17 4y ago
  I showered less frequently, but there are many options out there, such as: Friends and allies, beach and camping showers, gyms, pirate bath. I did not cook much, and just ate things like nuts, bread, and cheese. But I had a simple wood stove that runs on little sticks. (Look up rocket can stove.) Generally speaking, for most things, it was just a matter of "stay calm and improvise".
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    I had a friend doing the van living thing, he was coming by every day or so to shower at my immobile home. It got kind of old and I told him he was going to have to start cleaning it once a week to continue on. He said fine. Then he proceeded to never show up again lol other than to drop by and say howdy.
    - forgotmypw17 4y ago
      Sounds fair... It helps to have a habit of leaving every place cleaner than you found it. It sounds like your friend had other options, and you were able to remain friends?

AlexandrB 4y ago

There's a 15 minute documentary about the takeover of the mobile housing industry by large conglomerates: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQa3Ajhzv8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQa3Ajhzv8 The key takeaway is that many/most of the people living in this kind of housing cannot afford the expense of moving it (video gives a price tag of around $5000), especially on short notice. Older mobile homes may not have enough remaining structural integrity to be moved at all. Meanwhile the land their house is on is rented and they can still be evicted from the land at anytime which typically results in the loss of the home that they "own". This catch 22 means that residents are seen as ripe for rent and fee increases since moving means losing their investment in the home. I'm sure mobile housing is great for middle class people looking for a nomadic lifestyle where they plan to move their home from time to time. As low-income housing though, it seems mobile homes are in a nasty grey area between renting and owning.

smegsicle 4y ago
"buying a house but renting everything that doesn't depreciate"
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It's only profitable to rent the things to you that you would be better off buying.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Rental cars, hotel room, and certain machinery/tools? Owning something has costs too, and if you are not interested in learning how to or paying someone else to maintain and secure something, then it can make sense to not buy it also. I need a vibrating plate compactor once in 10 years, and Home Depot has a stream of customers who need it all the time. I could buy it and rent it to others when I am not using it, but I have other things I want to do with my time. Therefore, it is profitable for Home Depot to rent it to me, and for me to pay a slight premium to never have to worry about it outside the few hours I needed to use it. Similarly, I have rented apartments in my 20s in places I had no intention of setting down, and buying would have been a waste of time and effort.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Yeah the article is about semi-mobile non-RV houses, but really it's the same use case as an upscale RV. Between solar panels, an EV drivetrain which comes with a HUGE battery for running appliances, skateboard design for more space, better acceleration/handling/regen braking, room for a "range extension" ICE generator as backup, and the final killer killer feature: ... stay with me ... Highway self-driving, even if it's just supervisory. I'd sell everything I own and live in a mobile home. If it drove me between places at night with better-than-human safety (and maybe a big huge airbag in the bedroom)... my god. Keep in mind that highway self driving should be much much easier than general self driving. You can get convergent evolution of the infrastructure with embedded sensors and warning broadcasts. You can get highly optimized pre-calculated route "programs" rather than rely entirely on some generally trained AI agent. You'll have a lot more room for sensors. You don't have to travel as fast at night either, so the RV can putter along at 40mph for excellent energy efficiency and better safety, and not offend any daytime drivers. When it gets to the destination, if you don't wake up there can be huge self-driving parking lots where the RV can park (and recharge) while you wake up. And the picture in the article says a 1000 words: I really like a design of a house where there is a central courtyard and a bunch of buildings around it. Japanese houses (well, the rich ones in anime and stuff) were designed like this. Your mobile home could simply drive up to part of that courtyard, and become part of your house. Need a new bedroom? buy a new segment and plop it next to the courtyard. COVID kind of killed a lot of commuting, but the idea of my bedroom driving me to work in the morning is a good one, and if you need to drop a #2 at work you can walk out to the RV and do it there (I'm not a huge fan of crapping in public bathrooms, but that might just be me, the #1 thing I like about WFH is crapping in my bathroom). Heck you'll have a shower and a change of clothes and a place to nap if you need it at work. Supports longer hours if you need it. If the RV has an attached office, and your workers tend to have this, you can simply have a pop-up office where a smaller building has meeting rooms but people work in their RV-offices. Your RV can drive you home in traffic while you get the last couple hours of work done, so even 100 mile commutes can be tolerable. Currently the RV industry, as I understand it is based in Indiana mostly, is pretty slow to change. It astonishes me that RVs haven't been hybrid drivetrains for a decade (that relates to my frustration that PHEVs weren't forced in adoption in the 2000s, 10 years after the prius and insight hit the market). I guess the pickup trucks never adopted the drivetrain, but there were hybrid SUVs in droves ten years ago. I think the Tesla semi and other BEV semis will be what does it. You can take a short range BEV semi and make it longer range with an attached ICE generator for the long haul. I'm hoping that "inside out" rotary or other small engine designs optimized for battery recharging can work here. With the skyrocketing cost of housing, would you rather have a luxurious mobile home for 500k and spend 300k for a house in the boonies, or have a 1 million dollar crap house closer to the job? And right now RVs are kind of expensive because they are too bespoke. If demand skyrockets due to all the advantages listed above, we may actually get economies of scale in housing, since the footprints are all shipping container sized essentially. Heck, the skateboard design of an EV may mean that the entire drivetrain is simply an underbody and the top living part is relatively swappable. Also, some BEV drivetrains (million mile battery) may be far more long term and reliable, a lot of RVs have an issue of ricketly ICE drivetrains that don't age well.

_8j50 4y ago

One of the main appeals of a house is having a backyard and a garage. I can't tinker with and work on various project ideas or get certain pets because I live in an apartment,that won't change with mobile homes, you just end up doing your own maintenance, still make payments on it and pay a few hundred bucks to park the mobile home. There should be giant city-buildings with hundreds of thousands of dwelling spaces each with a large outdoor patio. A lot of problems like power distribution from certain powersources get resolved with this as well as many other resources like fresh water and fresh food (land is freed up for agriculture),waste disposal,transportation, medical care,etc... The urban sprawl made sense in the nuclear era but I believe the technology exists to make highly defensible mega buildings (10s of miles wide,50+ stories high).

revolvingocelot 4y ago
Sounds like you and Buckminister Fuller would have gotten along. [0] Count me in, too. That said, if the 70s couldn't birth a few concrete proto-arcologies, I'm not sure it's ever going to be politically possible. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project
- ianai 4y ago
  It definitely requires a culture level buy-in. Maybe places already having high density populations could birth such a project. But that’s a catch22 itself.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    Yes it would. My idea was to start with the california coastline. Have it be very close to the ocean. 100k units facing the ocean, it makes it both economically viable (people will pay for it) and help bring housing prices and homelessness down. You will also have to fight a lot less NIMBY battles. The main problem is you need to commit billions of dollars to start with. The rent/hoa alone is probably not gonna give good ROI short term but having so many people there means a potential to design a very profitable center of economic activity. Ideally, the lowest levels would be stores. You would also be providing them with their supermarket, mall,hospitals,etc.... with an average total household income of 80k that's at least 3-4billion/year

xrd 4y ago

One on hand, you've got Adam Neumann and his new startup providing new types of homes for the endlessly mobile young worker. On the other hand, you've got proposals like this one in Oregon, my home state, which has many problems. HB2001, if I understand it correctly, forces all cities over 25k to allow multiple homes, duplexes and quadplexes, on any plot. But the problem is, you can't add them if you already have something on there, and try finding an empty lot in the Portland metropolitan area under $250k. I certainly did. Sadly, I'm betting Adam Neumann will win here. Too much money to lobby and align with the tides.

moistly 4y ago
> for the endlessly mobile young worker How does this differ from what we used to call the “Displaced Person”?
- colinsane 4y ago
  i think the thing GP is talking about is a setup where you buy membership that grants you the ability to live in any of N places owned by the company. you have the ability to live in any of these as long as you want; you only move when you want to and it’s decoupled from your financial situation since your membership costs the same regardless of where you live. on the other hand “displaced” usually means that you were pressured into moving. Neuman’s thing is new, so i may have misunderstood exactly how it works, but if i got the intent right then that’s how they differ.
bombcar 4y ago
Can you buy a house and turn it into an empty lot? More expensive but if you end up with a quad …

ww520 4y ago

People need to see the downsides of owning a RV. https://youtu.be/IP_u2JR51_Y https://youtu.be/IP_u2JR51_Y

penner_im_auto 4y ago
That's interesting. I'm traveling since 2 years and many times I had the discussion of "bought" vs "self-built". This video is gold.

golemiprague 4y ago

I don't see how one storey on wheels is going to solve anything. The main cost is the land, a decent mobile home will not cost much less than a house of the same size. Once everybody are going to roam around in their mobile house the cost of parking land and infrastructure will be exactly the same but with added strain on the roads and cost of fuel to move those houses around. Not to mention the psychological cost of being a nomad with no roots and no community, especially with children. In addition not every country has so many empty spaces like the US, in many countries even a single storey home is something only rich people can afford and most people live in apartment buildings, like in NY city. Why not just build high buildings with various sizes of apartments, not too many limiting zoning laws and good public transportation like they do in Tokyo for example? This is already a proven way to solve those issues.

hollywood_court 4y ago

I lived in a mobile home from 1st grade until I left home at 16. My own family will never live in a mobile home. Regardless of the sacrifices required, I will never have them experience that. In addition to the safety concerns, it’s a poor financial decision. I replaced two water heaters and a toilet in a mobile home for a realtor about 18 months ago. I was shocked that the trailer was listed for $90k and sold the next week. We’ve got to do a better job of teaching financial literacy in this country.

Syonyk 4y ago
Genuinely curious, what's wrong with a mobile/manufactured home? Do you object to the "trailer park" aspect, or simply the entire concept of the structure? I'm a detached, on-our-own-land double wide with a foundation, and I've no problems with the house at all. It's a higher end manufactured, we have drywall, quartz counters, upgraded electrical, etc, but... most people don't even realize it's a manufactured unless they already know what to look for (strong marriage line, all the water on one half of the house, etc).
- hollywood_court 4y ago
  Mostly the quality and safety aspects. I made all of my money with my trades. My first and most lucrative trade is carpentry. There is no way anyone will ever be able to convince me that a mobile home is as safe as a traditional built home. I spent many an anxious night as a child in Alabama fearful that I wouldn’t live until the next morning due to inclement weather. And they are depreciating assets. I come from a single parent violent home where I had to leave before I even finished high school. I somehow managed to become what I am with nothing but a high school education. I worked hard and sacrificed a lot to escape that lifestyle. I don’t want my own child to see me ever make poor financial decisions. Edit: The above makes me sound like an incredible asshole. So the best answer would be: there are far better ways to spend my money and energy than on a mobile home. Ways that are better at ensuring my family’s safety and financial wellbeing.
  - Syonyk 4y ago

entropicgravity 4y ago

Why not just make it a largeish van like a long, tall Sprinter? All electric will make everything work more reliably and way more practical and cheaper(eventually).

molotovh 4y ago
These are definitely being done, but in many cases, the well-done ones cost more than a trailer home. Look up some of the van life channels on You Tube; most of them have early videos detailing the cost outlays required. It's a lot easier to get a loan of $90k for something that technically qualifies as a home vs. a loan of $150k+ for what the bank considers a recreational vehicle.

adrianmonk 4y ago

It's more or less a nonstarter in tornado-prone areas. From https://www.weather.gov/jan/swpw_mhsafety https://www.weather.gov/jan/swpw_mhsafety : > Mobile homes are not a safe shelter when tornadoes threaten. NOAA and FEMA recommend that mobile and manufactured home residents flee their homes for sturdier shelter before storms with tornadoes hit. On average, a total of 72 percent of all tornado-related fatalities are in homes and 54 percent of those fatalities are in mobile homes. I don't know the percentage of people who live in mobile homes, but I'm sure it's nowhere close to 54%.

thrown_22 4y ago
On the other hand in fire prone areas I'd want something I can drive out.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Nowadays, in more than just some areas you'll want something you can drive out. (I was thinking of the risk of civic or general quality degradation of the area (unrestrained emergent actors, general emergent pollution), but also climate issues can be important today - some of us tried to spend the current Summer in altitude as much as possible, as the plains were in dire conditions.)
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    Yeah, my holiday plans are more like refugee plans these days. Find an area not currently experiencing some type of disaster and unlikely to for the next x months. Visit until normalcy returns. I missed basically all of covid by judiciously running away whenever a lockdown or mass infections were about to happen. Looking at people who didn't, man they've gotten weird and mean.
em-bee 4y ago
it's not the percentage of people living in mobile homes but fatalities in mobile homes during a tornado. it could well mean that noone survives a tornado in a mobile home

transfire 4y ago

What if build a Lost in Space style spaceship… I mean house. Where can I legally locate it?

rdtwo 4y ago

Mobile housing is only good as a way of getting wrong either permits or local labor shortages

8jef 4y ago

Most people here comment on past experiences involving 1970's mobile homes in trailer parks, people living in cars, and large RVs. Modern mobile housing, as per the article, is different. It's about large vans or tiny homes built on trailers, not made to permanently sit on ciment blocks. Not necessarily with children in it. Anyway, where there's a will there's a way. With over 1M people living the vanlife in the US alone, we are not far from future outdoor and/or indoor private communities regrouping migrating short term tenants. A bit like camping grounds, but geared toward vanlifers.

aaron695 4y ago

betaby 4y ago

Build 'projects', seriously. Also see Vienna housing model. There is no potential in mobile housing history tells us over and over.

rossjudson 4y ago

The linked article mentions something particularly interesting: the "Mobile Accessory Dwelling Unit" rules that a few cities are putting in place. I'm guessing this means that you can designate a part of your property, install suitable hookups (water/sewer/electricity) using RV standards, and then find a tenant who will be bringing their own mobile unit (tiny home/RV). That's...quite good. Landlords can interview tenants and inspect their rigs to make sure they're in good shape/suitable. The mobility of the unit becomes more important, so the tenant can keep their bargaining power. Landlords get something too -- they don't have to build expensive living space, and there's definitely less involved in ending a lease (the tenant is much more able to move their dwelling, which should stay in the "ready to move state").

zivkovicp 4y ago

Anyone who's been to a "real" trailer park will probably never want to come near a mobile home, let alone romanticize about it. The "high end" units that are shown in architectural design magazines and the like are really cool, they're modern, stylish, and really just someone's hobby... but the reality of mobile home living is very different. I've have friends who lived in mobile homes and all I can say is that I'm thankful that I didn't have to.