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.
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.
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.
> 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.)
It takes years to decades for a tax situation to reach the level of fourclosure on reasons of property tax and if a reasonable issue for health or otherwise the state could even waive it due to non-use.
I'm sure every state is different, but there are places where the state can enforce their tax lein by foreclosing and taking ownership of your property.
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.
> Considering property taxes, do you really ever own your house?
Your basic point is correct. But, consider that a renter is also paying the property tax on behalf of the owner (+ some percentage profit), so you're always better off being the owner instead of paying it for someone else.
Not really and depending on where you live, definitely not. But you have a lot more and very different from rights and responsibilities when you own vs rent.
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.
Human's are naturally short housing. Owning a home closes the short. We unfortunately don't have a suitable financial product to "own" shelter, but not be bound to a location.
I'm kinda surprised that a suitable contract for permanent fractionated ownership of an abstract housing unit which you can live in doesn't exist. Granted it's a complex set of incentives to balance.
Some tenancies are temporary, and renting can be beneficial in those instances, but most tenancies involve occupants who permanently live in the area and would buy if it were financially feasible.
> most tenancies involve occupants who permanently live in the area and would buy if it were financially feasible.
What exactly do you mean by “if it were financially feasible”? Like yeah, if a mortgage were cheaper than rent, of course renters would do the cheaper thing.
I have no doubt there are plenty of people who rent permanently in an area but would rather own. But "most"?
Half of renters are under 40; according to one analysis, half of renters are young folks just looking for what they can afford in a place they're not sure they want to settle into yet: https://www.naahq.org/who-are-todays-renters
Granted all this is in the US, where homeownership rates hover around 65-66%. I sadly (happily?) don't know anything about the rent/own dynamics in places I have not lived.
By area, I mean a metropolitan area, and I think most residents of a metropolitan area at any given time have no active plan to leave that metropolitan area.
Yes, I understand what you mean, and I am disagreeing with you that “most” (as in > 50%) renters who have no active plan to leave a metro area would rather buy, but don’t because they can’t afford to. Some, sure. But doesn’t seem like it’s “most”.
Moving has extra costs associated with it, but you still build equity. After ~30 years, you don't have to pay a mortgage anymore.
Any money you saved from renting better go straight into your IRA, because you're still going to be paying rent when you retire. 30 years of mortgage is a lot cheaper than 60 years of rent.
Even if you have plenty of money to just buy the apartments and houses you want to live in in Germany, you must pay a tax on the purchase which is effectively a tax that only owner occupiers who move frequently pay, which massively advantages long term landlords over owner occupiers.
Moving every 8 years means paying a lot of taxes if you want to own the property.
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".
Exactly. In California every county I've researched thus far prohibits living in a home on your own land that's not on a permanent foundation, unless there is a home under construction on that lot and the mobile home is merely temporary housing (if any of you know of any counties in California that don't prohibit this, please let me know). I've even looked at counties quite far from the populated metro areas, and I've encountered the same restrictions while reading their zoning laws. Even the jurisdictions that have allowed "tiny homes" typically only allow those on a permanent foundation and must be registered as ADUs (accessory dwelling units) and not as main properties on the lot.
I live in an apartment near Silicon Valley and would love to have a house with a garage for hobbies, but buying a house anywhere near the area in a safe location is prohibitively expensive for me; I'd have to go either deep in the Central Valley (think Fresno County and beyond), the Sierra Foothills, or the Mojave Desert to find affordable places.
I'm not an expert on building codes, but here are my assumptions based on what I've read thus far regarding zoning for residential properties:
1. The structure built on top of the permanent foundation must comply with the building codes of the municipality that the permanent foundation is located in. This requires obtaining permit(s) before bolting the structure onto the foundation.
2. The municipal planning department will have some definition for what would be a legally permissible foundation and what constitutes "bolting down."
There are many companies that specialize in the building of mobile and manufactured homes that are compliant with state- and local-level building codes. But it's very important that people do their proverbial homework, making sure that the mobile/manufactured home does truly comply with the regulations of the intended permanent location.
That tracks. My understanding is that part of the genesis of mobile homes was the industry lobbying for exclusions to residential building codes "because mobile homes are mobile." So I'd expect any mobile home (read: excluding prefab or factory-built) would fail a standard code check.
Whenever I buy a piece of land, I make certain there are as few restrictions on the use of that land and that no NIMBYs or HOA types are anywhere near the borders.
Then how do you ensure mobile homes are not allowed anywhere near you? Overly restrictive zoning areas? At any rate, many of my own family members have lived in trailers or currently do, and I'm rather disgusted by your comment above.
All of the land we’ve bought has included clauses from the sellers that require that no mobile homes are allowed to be visible from the road. It’s the community working together to keep things pleasant.
I grew up in a mobile home so I know firsthand what I’m trying to avoid.
I’m not responsible for your emotions. But if me sharing my opinion about living near a mobile home truly does disgust you, perhaps you’ve had enough internet for the day.
You shouldn’t allow me to have that kind of power over your mind. I’m just a stranger after all.
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
People generally like to have aesthetically pleasing views with their surroundings. Heaping piles of junk in a yard is considered unsightly by many, and often associated with other problems.
Shaming people because they don't want to live next to a scrap yard isn't helpful or appropriate.
Telling people what you find acceptable about the aesthetics of their home and property is the flip side of the same coin…
I don’t want to live next to a junkyard property, but I dislike restrictions on my property even less, so I choose to live in an area where I can do what I want, and my neighbors can do what they want.
If you have a dislike of “unsightly” properties, the solution is to live in a place where that is not allowed, not to try to impose your will on others who are living in a place where that is allowed.
One of the benefits of living in a rural area/area without HOA is that you can do many things that you wouldn’t be allowed to elsewhere.
One of the dangers is that your neighbors can do the same.
Is there any data/studies that proves that derelict properties actually drag down adjacent property values? My own anecdata and property valuation suggest otherwise, but I hear the property value line often enough that I would like to know if it’s true.
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.
I shouldn't have specified "mobile home parks." In my personal experience, the people who buy plots of land and move mobile homes in are often worse than anything you'll find in a mobile home park.
The park I grew up in had some rules and regulations, but everything goes whenever you buy a plot of land out in the county.
Ah, yes, the infamous small acreage with an old, failing mobile home. I grew up in the wilds. Many of the people were not living in town for good reason. It was not an environment packed with high-functioning people. A lot of abusive families. A lot of hard-scrabble survival.
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.)
It's attitudes like this that have caused my wife and I to build our forever home in the middle of a a huge plot of land. The house will not be visible from the road and I'll be able to fire a gun in any direction without worrying about hitting anything or anyone. We've both grown weary of allowing our comfort to be dictated by neighbors and however they decide to behave on a particular day.
We’ve already bought the land fortunately. I’m just building up another nest egg before I start construction while I clear out a home site and improve it with trees and a road and such in the interim. We don’t take on debt so it’s going a bit slower than one would expect.
Don't make any modifications to the land until you are ready to build. I don't know what the full definition of "unimproved lot" would be, but clearing land for construction site, adding roads, etc definitely sound to me as improvements. Those improvements will have a not friendly affect on your taxes. If your plot is big enough, add the minimum number of head of some sort of animal to possibly qualify for ag exemptions.
Lots of games to be played that you might be unaware of to keep from slowing the growth of that nest egg.
A Roth IRA is a long term retirement investment for when you are 60. “A Roth IRA is an Individual Retirement Account to which you contribute after-tax dollars. While there are no current-year tax benefits, your contributions and earnings can grow tax-free, and you can withdraw them tax- and penalty-free after age 59½”.
For many people, their home and their retirement funds are their two biggest assets. If most of your retirement fund is tied up in real estate next door to your home, then the risk profiles are interlocked. That could be worthwhile for other benefits (avoiding bad neighbours), or because you want to chase the rewards of swinging for the fences (concentration also has the chance to win big), but that needs to be weighed up against the financial downside risks of severely concentrating your asset portfolio (a big loss on both the home property asset and retirement assets would be horrid for many people).
i guess in the sense that we aren’t the only animals to enforce territory. on the other hand we probably are the only animals to have conceived of “rights”.
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...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
Opinion: High density planned communities that try to take care of almost everything, like you describe, are a at serious risk of being insipid, mediocre, uninspiring, and worse. I think it’s something about the incentive structure, probably, but this is largely an empirical opinion; in my experience it’s just far better to live with a diversity of landlords in the area. New York has a great set of examples: A neighborhood like SoHo or Hell’s Kitchen or the Lower East Side is a magnet. An overproduced condo/office/retailplex like Hudson Yards, without much competition next door, is dull and insipid and soulless. A big complex like Rockefeller Center is actually kind of okay — because it’s embedded in a neighborhood where everyone has a dozen dozen places in a five minute walk they could go to instead. The D terminal at LaGuardia where everything is seamlessly integrated as a managed OTG Experience? The worst crime against commercial aviation in America in the past twenty years. Buy a hamburger there, I dare you.
You’ve hit on three of the four of Jane Jacobs’s conditions for a healthy, high-density neighborhood in her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”!
- Variety of building age/quality, to have rent levels that allow diversity of activities (low rent hole-in-the-wall for an art club; high rent, new construction, ground floor retail for luxury shopping)
- Variety of building use schedules to ensure eyes on the street at all hours and full utilization of infrastructure (including restaurants). A pure residential area or pure office park will fail this and turn into a ghost town at some hours. Hudson Yards might hit 2 schedules but not 3, which is the ideal.
- “a dozen dozen places in a five minute walk” allows niche businesses to survive, since the large effective service radius includes enough people to find some customers. Rockefeller Center’s arcade is actually quite important and covered in the book, since it cuts some too-long blocks into short enough blocks.
I don’t remember the fourth condition, so read the book to find out.
I suspect that if the developer/landlord is out to capture all the value possible (as he is directly incentivized to do) having multiple floors just isn't going to be nearly enough.
You're comparing the past with the future. I am not proposing one giant managed thing like an airport but much like a small town where you can rent store space and open up any business you want. Although, even it would be for most basic needs. You would still be able to travel to other cities and megabuildings easily because transportation via rail and other means would be much cheaper and convenient. If this was central coast cali for example, you can have one hour rail to LA,San Francisco, and perhaps close enough to most state and national parks and beaches. I do not support people never living the megabuildings but to your point my local fastfood, walmart or even chinese,indian,mexican,etc... foods unless I venture out a bit are mediocre as is the case in most smaller towns.
The thing is, there cannot and should not be another new york or manhattan. We need future cities to be energy efficient, sustainable and defensible. A city that would last the next two or three centuries allowing our current culture and history to be passed on is important and I am not sure cities like new york will be pleasant to live in by the end of the century nor are they or will they be cheap. That said, there many millions of people and they can still continue to live in existing cities but we can't just keep building more LAs and NYCs or continue to pretend homelessness, high rent/house prices, the ridiculous infrastructure required to support cars and the ever depletion of agriculture friendly land and sustainable water are not a problem. Now is the time to fix them not when famine and disasters are killing millions.
But to counter your point about mediocrity, vegas is a good example. I have terrific food and entertainment there despite the seemingly endless interconnected structures of hotels and casinos. Perhaps given the proper financial incentive things can be not so mediocre?
Rent plus,groceries and most bills, if that is at least 50% of income (rent alone is typically a third of income) on 80k/yr that is 40k * 100k = 4B. Even with just 1500/mo rent that is 1.8B gross/yr and 18B in 10 years if net profit is only a 3rd of that (assuming it won't collect taxes like cities!) it will be 6B/10y. My point is, to recover costs in 10 years, you need to make it at a cost of 60k/unit which seems low but I am hoping economy of scale would make things cheaper. Like, it would make sense to have your own factories close by just for the concrete,wiring,etc... but at least with 100k/unit cost(10B) it should still be possible and the recovery time isn't too bad given mortgages go 30+ years. And picking a good location can guarantee occupancy.
Only if a few hundred million dollars to change their mind plus making it within walking distance of the ocean but not beachfront might help or worst case a few miles from the beach with railway taking people from their units straight to a few of the nearest beaches. I can see calabassas be a good candidate or topanga if buying out all thr people there is economically viable.
A person doesn't need to add much friction to a hobby that they would otherwise dabble in opportunistically during their leisure time for it to become a pursuit that isn't practical without structuring various other things in their life around it. If people had to drive to a self-storage unit to watch television or partake in baking, I imagine we'd see rates of television viewership and baking go way down.
Friction is the problem here. Even if it is 5 minute walk, well, it's PITA in winter, and the moment you have to move anything bigger than a backpack.
10 minute and 15 minute task turns into 10 + 15 + 10 minute task.
Any longer and you're pretty much talking "I either go there for half a day or it is not worth it".
Like, if there is no other option sure, but else it's major PITA for hobbies, something that's supposed to be fun.
It would be cool if it was for example a bunch of rooms to rent in basement of apartment complex, but even then I can't imagine them being big enough (or with door big enough) to say work on a car.
Even if it is 5 minute walk, well, it's PITA in winter, and the moment you have to move anything bigger than a backpack.
10 minute and 15 minute task turns into 10 + 15 + 10 minute task.
It really isn't a big deal. I moved to Norway some years ago. I walk to the grocery store. I carry groceries back home. I'll walk for 30-45 minutes to get to a specialty store in the downtown area. I can take a bus for the longer trip, but the grocery stores are just as convenient as the bus stops. I carry more than can fit in a backpack. I do this on snow and ice and in rain and in sun.
And basically, you dress in clothing that is appropriate for the weather and you treat the walk just like any other commute time. Walking 30 minutes to work and driving 30 minutes to work are both 30 minute commutes.
I don't know what the restrictions are but I have one within walking distance, I will look into that, thanks for the suggestion. My only concern is for safety and liability reasons they may not allow things like welding and working with chemicals that require good ventilation that and noise are the main restrictions with apartments.
All the storage units I have seen explicitly disallow this. They will then direct you to their business units which cost a thousand or more dollars in rent.
>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...
This only works so long as they don't shade each other. Which means you end up with something like the Line from Saudi Arabia or ground level NYC where you're lucky to see the sun at noon.
Ideally they would be on mountains or have a pyramid like crescent shaped outline that is south facing so all units get sunlight and can grow vegetation,etc...
I don't understand. How do you get hundreds of thousands of units, each with an outdoor patio?
Is this building very long, but very thin? Is it some fractal that bends in on itself? At that point, I don't understand the benefit of having it be one contiguous structure. It sounds like a normal city but more expensive.
I can see how a massive rectangular building is more space efficient, defensible, etc. But then most of the residents will never see the sun or get fresh air.
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).
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.
Can I ask what rough year the homes you're familiar with were built in? And if you've been around anything ~recent (2010 or later)? The standards changed in the 80s, and quality has continued improving since then.
If your experience with mobile homes is pre-1980 or so, yes, they were... sketchy. But in the late 70s, the standards changed rather dramatically, so experience with older manufactured homes doesn't really translate. None of the older ones (within a rounding error) meet the newer standards.
I've got 2x6 exterior walls, a concrete foundation with the house quite tied into that, a metal roof, drywall, etc. I've also done a factory tour, and was quite impressed with how everything was put together. They're able to do things like "assemble the roof separately at a safe working height and then tie it to the rest of the house without having to do roof work," so lower insurance rates and such for workers.
It's a bit noisier in high winds than I'd prefer, and the combination of metal roof and vaulted ceilings make the rain sound harder than it actually is, but it doesn't rain that often out here, so... not going to complain too hard about that.
I wish the local tax authorities would agree with you that it's a depreciating asset, though. They certainly like to argue that the value keeps going up (and as I get the property and house tax bills separately, I can see the house-only values climbing rapidly - I didn't do the paperwork to merge them, as I simply don't care).
You're clearly opposed to the concept, which is fine, but I just don't see any of your assertions being true of manufactured homes from the past... oh, 20 years or so. I know an awful lot of people who live in them, though it's not "mobile home parks" - they're just a standard enough style of housing out where I live, usually on foundations. And I consider having spent less money on a perfectly suitable house than having something built onsite to be a very reasonable financial decision.
The mobile home I grew up in was a 1987 Sunbeam. I've been in and out of hundreds during the course of my career. For the past 12 years my base of operations has been a college town where it is popular for parents to buy trailers for their children while they attend college. I made a great deal of money repairing those trailers which allows for my (maybe worthless) anecdotes.
The accessories and fittings like faucets and toilets and such are often lower than "builder grade" which is perfect for someone like me who makes repairs, but not so good for the home owner.
Is your mobile home on a cinder block perimeter foundation or a slab? I imagine the slab would allow for a great deal more peace of mind, but the cinder block perimeter would not.
You're absolutely correct that I am a bit biased and am opposed to the concept. But I'm also opposed to owning any vehicle that isn't a Honda/Acura or a Toyota/Lexus. Simply because my shop never made any money repairing those just like I never made much money repairing modern traditional homes built by credible and competent builders.
Depending on where you're located in the US, if you're going to raise a family in a mobile home please at least consider having an underground storm shelter installed. That would allow for more peace of mind. I lost a few friends in high school due to storms when they lived in mobile homes. And more recently I lost a handful of clients who perished when storms ripped through Beauregard, AL.
I bet most people wouldn’t tag your house as a mobile home. Those have very specific groups that count. Once it’s no longer mobile without a house moving company it’s a manufactured home (of which there are way more than people think).
>We’ve got to do a better job of teaching financial literacy in this country.
Reducing the complexity of every day finances would be a much better option. We can't keep trying to cram more course work into high school/college to fix society's complexity (and maintain the same time frame). We can't even address teacher quality-of-life and pay for the regular course work.
And also, RVs and mobile homes should not cost near what they do for the shit that they are, and there shouldn't be a rent/own situation with mobile home lots.
For all the time and effort/money we invest into education, the education system never seems to teach students what is actually required in life.
Personally, I never had so much as a single class/lesson on any of life's necessities: Taxes, credit cards, banking, and other financial know-how for day-to-day life; cooking; laundry; driving a car; fundamental electric and plumbing know-how; etc.; and I forever detest society for failing/ignoring me.
We demand kids to spend at least a decade and a half of their lives in school. I ask you: Why the fuck are we teaching them worthless things like calculus and programming and world history and wasting their (and our) time?
Their time would be far better served being taught how to crunch and file their annual taxes. How financial debt (read: loans and credit cards) works. How to operate a car so nobody gets runover. How to clean their own clothes and bedsheets. How to fix a leaky faucet or a faulty electrical appliance (Britons were once taught how to wire their electrical gadgets in school).
Eek what a hot take. This sounds particularly like a US centric view of the education system. In Scotland we were taught a lot of the things you have mentioned although:
* fundamental electric and plumbing know-how
I disagree, these two things are dangerous when done incorrectly and are regulated industries in most countries. People with a little knowledge are dangerous. If you want to understand electrical you need to be full time on that for a while. School is for foundational things like can you read and do Maths.
> Why the fuck are we teaching them worthless things like calculus and programming and world history
How are these things "worthless" says a lot about you if you think world history is worthless ...
> Their time would be far better served being taught how to crunch and file their annual taxes
Again this is very much a US centric viewpoint in UK for example you don't need to know this as the government does it for you.
> How to operate a car so nobody gets runover
There is a whole industry that you pay money to do this. Operating a car is a dangerous activity and must be taught correctly. It also requires you actually drive in a car the practicality of teaching a whole school this just isn't there.
> How financial debt (read: loans and credit cards) works
You do get taught this at school I remember going through these types of examples.
> How to clean their own clothes and bedsheets
We had a course that everyone had to attend called "home economics" which taught this sort of thing. I think the name has changed. It also covered basic cooking.
> How to fix a leaky faucet or a faulty electrical appliance
Not sure you've thought that through but an incorrectly repaired electrical appliance can burn your house down and an incorrectly fixed leaky faucet can flood your house.
> Britons were once taught how to wire their electrical gadgets in school
They still are! In Scotland it was called technical studies and taught things like basic woodwork with handtools and how to wire a plug that sort of thing.
>This sounds particularly like a US centric view of the education system.
It is based off my own experiences and knowledge, which are US and Japan centric. Make of that what you will.
>I disagree, these two things are dangerous when done incorrectly and are regulated industries in most countries. People with a little knowledge are dangerous. If you want to understand electrical you need to be full time on that for a while. School is for foundational things like can you read and do Maths.
Knowing very simple things like how to operate circuit breakers and electrical panels, or how to fix faucets and toilets go a long way towards making life more fulfilling. Hiring a plumber or electrician to do what is practically a $10 job could run you several hundreds instead, and waste time and nerves if you end up with a lousy professional which the vast majority are.
Life is just more enjoyable in general if you can do more things yourself, and/or taught the attitude to become so.
>How are these things "worthless" says a lot about you if you think world history is worthless ...
Fact of the matter is, knowing what Abraham Lincoln said during the Gettysburg Address or what year Queen Victoria was coronated aren't going to help me file taxes or otherwise live a life. Likewise calculus, algebra, etc.
We can teach students such superfluous knowledge after teaching things that are essential to life first. Teach people how to file taxes so nobody has to deal with Quickbooks/Intuit or hire a costly CPA. Teach people how to budget their money so less people become destitute. Teach people how their government works so they can be productive and contribute, rather than uselessly bitch about it.
>There is a whole industry that you pay money to do this. Operating a car is a dangerous activity and must be taught correctly. It also requires you actually drive in a car the practicality of teaching a whole school this just isn't there.
Neither is it practical to tell someone "go and practice on the highway", unless it's absolutely okay to go around hitting and running things over.
Something as fundamental to life as driving a car should be standard and mandatory school curriculum.
>You do get taught this at school I remember going through these types of examples.
I certainly didn't, and my impression is most people haven't either since it's quite common for them to lambast credit cards without knowing how they even work.
> How to clean their own clothes and bedsheets
Personally, my mother taught me it (along with cooking), but not everyone necessarily has that luxury for one reason or another.
Again, life's necessities should be part of school curriculum in lieu of superfluous knowledge with questionable value.
>Not sure you've thought that through but an incorrectly repaired electrical appliance can burn your house down and an incorrectly fixed leaky faucet can flood your house.
It is always better to know how things around you in life work than it is to not know, much less not know while being taught things that will never be relevant to your life.
It is striking how ignorant of the basics a lot of people are, and I blame that in part to schools never bothering to teach them. If someone doesn't know how to calculate wattage from voltage and amperes, for example, something in the education system has failed.
>They still are! In Scotland it was called technical studies and taught things like basic woodwork with handtools and how to wire a plug that sort of thing.
That's actually good to know, and I wish practical classes like that would become more prevalent in schools everywhere.
There used to be a class in junior high and high school called “Home Economics.” People will give you varied opinions on why we know longer have that class, but it certainly was useful.
How to balance a budget and a checking account. How to plan purchases for the month such as grocery lists. And the other stuff like cooking and sewing buttons onto clothing.
That makes sense, I guess I got a watered down version. The amount of deviation out there is wild. At least with math you can have clear and translatable standards. For home ec, I've met people whose classes basically ran the school's lunch and breakfast programs. I don't think the kids where I'm from could've handled that responsibility.
It probably turned out not to be a such poor financial decision for the seller, in this case. I think the whole "mobile homes don't go up in value" rule is no longer true, if we continue to see the degree of housing price increases / inflation we have seen in the last 3 years.
> 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%.
That must suck for the 0.00002388059% of people who die every year from tornadoes in the US. I can't imagine living such a boring risk-free life that I'd care about such unlikely scenarios.
For comparison, driving is something like 0.0117% fatalities/yr
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.)
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.
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.
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").
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.
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.
At different times, I did part-time remote work, which was more than enough to sustain me, worked as a home assistant for a family member, and did not work at all (living primarily freegan lifestyle then)
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.
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".
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.
Is there anyway to do this without having CPS seize your children or the school refusing their enrollment? Theoretically if you live in a minivan can you just park it in the best school district and have at it?
In the US if a child meets the definition of homeless in the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act then schools must allow them to register without proof of residency. Children living in cars meet this definition.
Note though that homeless students can still be required to provide reasonable proof of residency in order to receive an admission preference based on where they are temporarily living.
That sounds awesome. Might be worth looking into the best school district in the US and buying a minivan, if that life is amazing as it sounds. Property taxes would be non-existent. Wonder if we could just get 2 or 3 minivans and make a 'room' out of each one. You could use one to tow the other ones every 3rd day to avoid violating park laws, so they wouldn't even all have to run.
Most of the military kids i knew that grew up moving around every couple of years fucking hated it. Just when you were getting ready to really know some friends really well it was time to go. I would hate that. I have a few true, friends who are like family that I've known since grade school. I would hate to deny my kid those long term friendships. I'm sure it depends on the kid though.
I lived that sort of childhood for different reasons, and it was trying at times, though I didn't hate it. Life-long friendships are nice.
I don't think vanlife necessarily means a life of roaming the country without a stable location. For example, I spent most of my van living within the same couple of cities, more than half in just one.
The other thing I want to say is that the factory model of education is on its way out, and I personally would not send my child to a public school if I had a choice to home-school. Socializing and making friends is important, and I think there are better ways to socialize and make friends than in a prison-like forced boredom complex.
not everyone has that opportunity though. over here kids are so busy with learning after school that they have no time to be outside making friends, and any kid not in school would be completely isolated.
but if you are staying for a few years in the same place why not rent a house or apartment? i guess it comes down to a cost comparison. but also, in fact, if the point is to have the freedom to move then i feel renting makes me much more free, because everything i own is easy to transport, easier than a trailer even, and so the whole world becomes accessible to me. (as long as i can get a resident visa at least)
I'm 99% certain it would completely suck with children. It could be cool on your own, or maybe even as a couple, but with kids I can't see it. Not to mention the social stigma the kids would face at school, especially in the best district.
I'm not so certain, if only because how many obstacles and problems people imagined for me when I told them the idea, compared with how surprisingly easy it was when I actually went for it.
I think mindset is still the biggest factor.
For example, there are all sorts of things you can get picked on for at school, and I think the most important bit is teaching them to navigate the process itself.
Going to what is almost certainly a rich kid area while your child lives out of a minivan that gets towed around every three days is 100% going to make them a social pariah and miserable at school. Maybe when they're 16 and can drive the car away on their own feelings could change.
I think it depends on the district. Sure a rich neighborhood or private school would probably make their lives a living hell, but poor->lower middle class probably wouldn't get bullied any more than any other kid.
Not sure what poor or lower-middle class communities you've lived in, but where I grew up, kids who were insecure about being clearly being disadvantaged by society's standards made a pretty big deal about the little they did have, and readily lorded it over those who didn't. If you all lived in the same shitty apartment complex but one kid had a nice pair of kicks, it was pretty noticeable. Beyond that, the only other people in poorer communities visibly living in vans are probably severe addicts and other folks not willing to or capable of living their lives in closer step with most other folks. Those are some pretty tough social stigmas to overcome.
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).
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 $150k+ for what the bank considers a recreational vehicle.
Anyone who's been to a "real" trailer park will probably never want to come near a mobile home, let alone romanticize about it.
The "high end" units that are shown in architectural design magazines and the like are really cool, they're modern, stylish, and really just someone's hobby... but the reality of mobile home living is very different.
I've have friends who lived in mobile homes and all I can say is that I'm thankful that I didn't have to.
Yah, why advocate for real housing, when we can just stuff people into 100sq.ft. mobile tiny homes. That way we can ensure the working poor never set down roots or enjoy the stability of a neighbourhood; we’ll be able to keep them moving, always travelling to the next temporary wage-slave job. Brilliant idea, Tim, fuckin’ brillo! Why should we ever aim higher than that!
Next, let’s stack the tiny homes. Kowloon Walled City, here we come!
Mobile tiny home which costs US$ 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
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.
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.
I had some stigma against trailer parks, but due to housing costs, I got serious about them once. I could actually afford a home on my single salary! That got my hopes up. There was even a trailer park near me, close to transit, close to a grocery store, close to some nice parks, it even had some vacancies! Awesome.
But then I looked at the terms. The trailer park is on a 99 year lease, coming up in about 5 years. The homes are the property of their owners, the land is not. Most of the homes are functionally immobile. A new build is more expensive than buying used, so to get an actually mobile home doubles the cost -- add disposal fees to that.
Trailer park residents are living on the edge, a ticking timebomb where they might get evicted without the ability to move their homes, or if they're lucky, they can move their homes but they'll still be forced out of their neighborhood at a time when all their neighbors are also trying to move under duress to the same closest trailer parks they can find. And if they can't find a place, they lose the home and pay for its disposal.
The stigma is real, but it's not the greatest challenge. The soaring land prices are.
Obviously the answer would be to let the owner of the mobile home buy the land the mobile home is sitting on or to let the government manage the land lease directly and only charge property tax.
Around here, the lease-land mobile-like homes are retirement communities. It is admittedly getting close to the time when we’ll see community-wide leasing agreements come up for renegotiation. The concept really works out well for the Boomer-aged. Good luck if you’re a Gen Z.
Freehold land prices are up ten-fold. Lease rates? TBD.
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?
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
I’m amusing myself thinking about a giant airbag for a sleeping person. I can’t think how anything like that could work. Airbags in cars work effectively by inflating near instantly in a car crash, cushioning the occupant from the near instantaneous >27G (iirc) deceleration. Seatbelts do this very effectively, especially with the crumple zones of a modern car. An airbag keeps your head from decelerating against the steering wheel. I’d imagine an effective safety mechanism for a bed going at 40mph would be something more akin to a really tight blanket affixed to the bed, which itself was bolted to the floor, to take advantage of the protection of the crumple zones of the vehicle. So basically a cocoon.
Airbags have about 2 feet of "cushion" to catch the driver. A "Bedroom Airbag is going to have more room and time to inflate. Also, I suppose you could strap yourself in. And RVs have a lot more momentum and are inherently safer in crashes, kind of like how schoolbusses don't have seat belts.
As you alluded, you could have a "safety blanket that is normally loose but tightens on impact.
Finally, typically head on crashes are the danger for RV, and the bed is in the back, so that is a gigantic amount of the vehicle to absorb impact and damage.
Check out National Indoor RV Centers (NIRVC). They are a perfect signal of the terrible engineering of even current high-end Class A’s because they built their business around how much these contraptions need servicing. They themselves do an awesome job of that servicing, but generally the industry needs to ship marine grade engineering design and instead mostly opts for very unsustainable and marginally serviceable designs that don’t nearly stand up to what marine engineers are expected to deliver. I wish there was a Dashew for RV’s.
If there is highway self driving in the near future for RV’s, I’d expect it to piggyback onto what the commercial trucking industry builds and uses.
Point taken for the current average customer. I wrote the above within the context of the article of the "potential" of considering long-term options with alternative housing, and within the context of the thread discussing RV's as an alternative to a broken housing market for younger generations.
Within that narrower scope, pretty much the only way a Z or Millenial young family making good money in our industry but tired of seeing their down payment savings keep getting blown out by rampant dirt real estate asset inflation could reasonably consider going full time RV as an option is to learn a range of maker skills and DIY build their own, or buy a used RV off someone who knows what they are doing like an RV inspector who fixed up design flaws over time to round out the sharp edges.
RV's depreciate with alarming speed so I find the "put your $500K down payment into an RV instead of SV real estate" proposals specious. Probably the only way to blunt that steep depreciation is to build from a Class 7 or 8 chassis that you can resell later to recover much of the cost; even a full-time RV family would not put the kind of load and miles onto that chassis that a normal CDL holder does, so they will hold their value nicely.
But those Heavy Duty Trucks are expensive capex and opex, easily pushing the total build and opex into $1M+ territory in the first 7 years. And most people don't haul around enough mass to justify a Class 7 or 8 chassis, usually a Class 6 is plenty even for a reasonably McMansion'y RV build on a steep mountain climb. I'd only go Class 7 or 8 if I was expecting to haul around my workshop with me, for example.
But like many artifacts in today's world, unless there is a commercial market for it, I find I have to procure what I want by building it myself to satisfy my own quality standards for what are usually my long-term use cases.
your dream is my nightmare having to share road with a mobile bedroom on the highway with person in bed, you know that's essentially illegal right now, passengers should be seated & belted... giant airbag... good grief.
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.
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.