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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.yo

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.
    - janef0421 4y ago
      I think temporary rentals and indefinite rentals are fundamentally distinct products, so analysing them together doesn't make a lot of sense.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        An indefinite rental sounds like a misnomer better stated as “being too poor to buy <x>”. Or maybe “insufficient supply of <x>”. Which, in this discussion would be land, in certain locations.
      - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        Considering property taxes, do you really ever own your house?
        pdonis 4y ago
        Paying taxes on something you own in order to support services provided by a municipality is not the same as renting something you don't own. Not to mention that the cost of property tax on a typical home is much less than the rental of an equivalent home would be.
        ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        Well sure, but if you fall in a coma for a year, you might wake up homeless (i might be exaggerating the timeframe a bit, but the case stands).
        scythe 4y ago
        A lot of the time this is simply handled by placing a lien on the property due at sale or transfer. Your kids might not be able to inherit it, but inheritance is another question altogether.
        pdonis 4y ago
        > if you fall in a coma for a year, you might wake up homeless No, you would wake up, as scythe has already pointed out, with a tax lien on your property--which you could of course remove by paying the taxes owed. If you own your home, you can't be evicted from it the way a renter can. The only way to force you out of your home would be to take away your title to it. I'm not aware of any jurisdictions where this is actually done for non-payment of taxes, though. A much better case can be made that you don't fully own your home if you have a mortgage on it, since the lender has the right to foreclose, which means they take title to the property, if you don't make your mortgage payments for some period of time. (Ironically, your property taxes if you have a mortgage are being paid out of an escrow account, so your mortgage lender will see the consequences of non-payment well before your municipality will.)
  - pkphilip 4y ago
    Agreed. It is a lot cheaper overall to buy used rather than renting something - especially when you plan to use it for years
  - ChadNauseam 4y ago
    Even ignoring things like renting skis, why do so many people rent their homes?
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      They are paying for a service. They don't want to worry about maintenance, they want to be able to move frequently, etc.
- cbsmith 4y ago
  This is the main catch that the article skips over.
Quequau 4y ago
There are broad swaths of non-rural residential spaces which are zoned to excluded most mobile homes. These facts are part of what is driving the popularity of "Tiny Houses on Wheels".
- hollywood_court 4y ago
  Whenever my wife and I buy a piece of land, we always make sure to be certain that no mobile homes will be allowed anywhere near the borders.
  - evandwight 4y ago
    Why?
    - gardenfelder 4y ago
      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 4y ago
      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.
      - Avicebron 4y ago
        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
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
It seems to me this is an issue with how we approach this kind of housing, rather than an inherent issue with this housing. For example we could use community land trusts to hold land in a not for profit organization to provide land for mobile housing. A big part of the problem you are describing is a problem with landlords, not with the housing.

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.
  - janef0421 4y ago
    I think temporary rentals and indefinite rentals are fundamentally distinct products, so analysing them together doesn't make a lot of sense.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      An indefinite rental sounds like a misnomer better stated as “being too poor to buy <x>”. Or maybe “insufficient supply of <x>”. Which, in this discussion would be land, in certain locations.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      Considering property taxes, do you really ever own your house?
      - pdonis 4y ago
        Paying taxes on something you own in order to support services provided by a municipality is not the same as renting something you don't own. Not to mention that the cost of property tax on a typical home is much less than the rental of an equivalent home would be.
        ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        Well sure, but if you fall in a coma for a year, you might wake up homeless (i might be exaggerating the timeframe a bit, but the case stands).
        scythe 4y ago
        A lot of the time this is simply handled by placing a lien on the property due at sale or transfer. Your kids might not be able to inherit it, but inheritance is another question altogether.
        pdonis 4y ago
        > if you fall in a coma for a year, you might wake up homeless No, you would wake up, as scythe has already pointed out, with a tax lien on your property--which you could of course remove by paying the taxes owed. If you own your home, you can't be evicted from it the way a renter can. The only way to force you out of your home would be to take away your title to it. I'm not aware of any jurisdictions where this is actually done for non-payment of taxes, though. A much better case can be made that you don't fully own your home if you have a mortgage on it, since the lender has the right to foreclose, which means they take title to the property, if you don't make your mortgage payments for some period of time. (Ironically, your property taxes if you have a mortgage are being paid out of an escrow account, so your mortgage lender will see the consequences of non-payment well before your municipality will.)
- pkphilip 4y ago
  Agreed. It is a lot cheaper overall to buy used rather than renting something - especially when you plan to use it for years
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  Even ignoring things like renting skis, why do so many people rent their homes?
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    They are paying for a service. They don't want to worry about maintenance, they want to be able to move frequently, etc.
cbsmith 4y ago
This is the main catch that the article skips over.

Quequau 4y ago

There are broad swaths of non-rural residential spaces which are zoned to excluded most mobile homes. These facts are part of what is driving the popularity of "Tiny Houses on Wheels".

hollywood_court 4y ago
Whenever my wife and I buy a piece of land, we always make sure to be certain that no mobile homes will be allowed anywhere near the borders.
- evandwight 4y ago
  Why?
  - gardenfelder 4y ago
    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 4y ago
    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.
    - Avicebron 4y ago
      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

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

It seems to me this is an issue with how we approach this kind of housing, rather than an inherent issue with this housing. For example we could use community land trusts to hold land in a not for profit organization to provide land for mobile housing. A big part of the problem you are describing is a problem with landlords, not with the housing.