Trailer Park Nation: Love the Double-Wide

Nov. 8, 2002 -- Could it be that the beleaguered trailer park is finally getting some respect?

Well, trailers have gotten a foothold in swanky Beverly Hills, and appear set to get their own historic monument.

And trailers today — now called mobile homes, or "manufactured housing" by the industry — offer perks such as Jacuzzis and custom kitchens, and dealers insist you'd be hard pressed to tell one from a traditional "site-built" home.

"They've made incredible strides," says Brian Ballinger, a service manager at Tom Raper RVs in Richmond, Ind., one of the largest RV and mobile home dealers in the nation.

"Basically anything that you'd want in a site-built home, we can do."

For several years, the industry has been pushing to move upscale from the much-ridiculed boxlike single-wide.

At Coastal Homes in Brunswick, Ga., a typical customer these days will spend around $40,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bath double-wide, with a dining room and "huge kitchen."

"Those days of single-wide sales that used to drive our sales, they're gone," says Coastal Homes owner Joe Barlow.

People who conjure up images of low ceilings, thin walls and a floor with the "trailer-park bounce" would be surprised by the quality of a modern mobile home, he insists.

"You probably wouldn't recognize it," Barlow says proudly. "If I didn't tell you what it was, you probably wouldn't know."

Mobile homes today can have garages, porches, breezeways, and steeped roofs likes those found in traditional homes. They come in styles ranging from Victorian to Cape Cods.

The move toward more elaborate mobile homes is evident nationwide. Single-wide trailers accounted for only a quarter of all new mobile home sales last year, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute.

And despite the name, most mobile homes are never moved.

In 2000, 22 million Americans lived full-time in "manufactured homes," according to the MHI. Residents — typically retirees or young, lower-income couples — have an average age of 52.6 and a median income is $26,900.

They are cheaper than traditional homes — averaging $48,800 each, plus the cost of renting land, compared to $207,000 for an typical new standard home — but they have other costs associated with them. Lenders typically charge significantly higher interest rates for mobile home mortgages, and mobile homes lose value over time, unlike the typical traditional house.

Buyers at Coastal Homes these days pay 8.5 percent to 10 percent interest rates on their mortgages, significantly higher than owners of permanent homes.

Brushing Up the Image …

The move upscale isn't the only way mobile homes are trying to burnish their image.

The Los Angeles City Council is pushing to make its Monterey Trailer Park a historic monument. If the council approves the L.A. Cultural Heritage Commission's request, the Monterey site would join such Southern California icons as the Hollywood hillside sign.

As the Monterey Auto Camp, the park appeared soon after Model T's first hit the roads.

Down the road in Beverly Hills, the rich and famous are chowing down on Wally Burgers and "Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love" pancakes at the Airstream Diner — a converted trailer that offers a warm-hearted — albeit kitschy — take on trailer-park culture.

Many mobile-home residents just shrug off the bad image.

"I'm just really happy there," says Joan Benkoil, who lives with her husband in a mobile-home community by the Pacific Ocean, in San Pedro, Calif. "I just can't complain about anything."

The 55-and-over residents have a nine-hole golf course, a heated pool, saunas, and a dog run, among other amenities.

"It's not the picture one conjures up at all," Benkoil says. "It certainly should not be put down that way anymore as trailer trash."

If she has any gripes over mobile home living, it's the cost. A rental plot can run upward of $900 a month.

"I wish it was a little cheaper," she admits.

Even at more traditional trailer parks, poverty does not always mean desolation.

With a monthly rental charge of as little as $110 a month, the Shady Acres Mobile Home Park, in Albany, Ill., may be one of the least expensive housing options in the region. But the retirees and young low-income families at the 48 mobile homes there keep their trailers tidy, nonetheless.

"It's nice and clean," says Mary Main, the park's manager. "Everybody takes care of their own yards."

… But a Long Way to Go

Still, fancier mobile homes, historic monuments, and a hip diner have not overcome the trailer's image as the barely adequate last refuge of the poor.

The jokes are everywhere, and can be downright cruel. You know you are "trailer trash" when the Halloween pumpkin on your porch has more teeth than your spouse, according to one attempt at humor. Or when you've been married three times and still have the same in-laws. Or if you think the last words of "The Star-Spangled Banner" are "Gentlemen, start your engines."

The list goes on and on.

"There is a stigma," admits Betty Tripp, the founder of the Mobile Home Board, which publishes newsletters for mobile-home parks throughout California. "It's 'trailer trash — these people can't afford anything else.'"

Even the effort to rehabilitate the trailer park's image has become fodder for critics.

"First it was a 'trailer,' then a 'mobile home,' and now the preferred nomenclature is 'manufactured housing.' We predict the next moniker will be 'candominiums,'" jokes Drbukk.com, one of the many satirical Web sites devoted to mocking trailer life.

Problems From Drugs to Forced Relocation

And of course many trailer parks are as grim as critics imagine.

Some — like the Valley Village Mobile Home Park, in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles — are filled with rusted out, ramshackle homes that authorities say are littered with drug dealers and prostitutes.

Even well-kept trailer parks often fight with neighboring communities over water and sewage access, and zoning laws.

In areas of steady growth and suburban sprawl, longtime residents face the threat of rising rents and forced relocation.

Since they typically rent the land underneath their homes, trailer park dwellers find they have little power in the face of market forces.

At the Lakeside Trailer Court, located in one of Detroit's most exclusive areas, residents were told over the summer they may be forced to relocate, in order to free up the riverfront land for development.

And of course, mobile home residents face being stereotyped as ignorant and lazy.

"There are wealthy homes next to trailer parks; it's tough on kids in the schools," says Carol Snively, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia's School of Social Work, who has worked with residents of local mobile home parks.

The industry has been hit hard in recent years. Lenders have shied away from providing mobile homes loans, after a wave of bad debt in the mid-1990s. Mobile home shipments are down this year again — the industry expects to ship 177,925 homes this year, compared to 304,000 in 1994.

At Joe Barlow's dealership in southeast Georgia, the economic downturn has also hurt sales.

"One of our largest paper mills [in the area] just shut down," he says. "That's a humongous negative that we're absorbing right as we speak."

‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Site-Built!’

Mobile home sales have fallen in the last few years, but the gradual move toward alternatives to the traditional house may be inevitable.

In some areas of the country, mobile homes now account for half of new housing. And some experts predict the line between mobile homes and traditional housing will continue to blur, as builders create factory-built homes with the same materials and code regulations as a site-built house.

These houses — known as "modular housing," as opposed to "mobile homes" — account for only a tiny percentage of new housing today, but they have several advantages, says Fred Hallahan of Hallahan Associates, a Baltimore-based industry consultant.

They can be custom-built in areas with lower labor costs and then transported around the country. Once in place, few people would suspect it is a descendent of venerable single-wide.

"For all intents and purposes, there's no way to distinguish a completed modular home from a completed conventional home," Hallahan says.