Trailer Parks?

[PrettySquareGal]

An Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode (perhaps the first? I have it but I'm on my way out the door and can't check) featured a trailer park with Frances Bavier as a neighbor. And Vera Miles as the wife. Classy trailer park denizens.

Believe it or not, that is the exact reason I started this. I just watched that one not long ago and it got me thinking, and then today I came across some 1950's trailer park advertising. But yes, any place that can house Aunt Bee is fine by me!

 

[Elaina]

Wow, makes me not want to admit I just bought a mobile home, lest I be picked apon for being trailer trash.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Wow, makes me not want to admit I just bought a mobile home, lest I be picked apon for being trailer trash.

I don't think anyone is thinking or implying it is trashy to live in a mobile home. There are stereotypes of which I am sure you are aware, and I was inquiring about the history of those. It seemed that at one time such stereotypes did not exist for trailer park residents.

 

[Bebop]

There are some very nice mobile homes and parks. They are under rated, especially in California. Generally speaking, the homes are well made, the parks are pretty much gated and the people that live in the parks seem to be pretty good folks. Nothing to be ashamed of if you live in a trailer park. I think the two words, 'trailer park', are just easy fodder for comics and the like to talk about a stereotype.

 

[Orgetorix]

I've known a lot of very nice people who lived in mobile homes. Nothing necessarily wrong with that.

However, it isn't a wise investment, from a financial standpoint. A mobile home, like anything with wheels, depreciates from day one. A normal attatched-to-its-foundations home does the opposite.

 

[Haversack]

I think that we differenciate RV Parks from Trailer or Mobile Home Parks because, although they have similar rootstock, they grew in different directions.

In the 1930s travel campgrounds started to appear along America's highways and offered an inexpensive way for people to overnight with a tent. Autocamping was also promoted by the car manufacturers. (Folding barbecues and Kingsford charcoal were originally sold at Ford Dealerships). After the war, self-contained travel trailers started to be made both by hobbyists, (teardrops), and increasingly by idled aircraft factories, (Airstream). These self-contained trailers were quickly adopted by people needing housing during the post-war housing shortage. Coupled with the GI Bill, most universities created trailer parks for their married student housing. The general view of these were that this was temporary housing and as the trailers of that time were quite small, this proved true as families grew. Also, migratory workers in both agriculture and construction quickly took to trailers as they were more secure and comfortable than relying on what might or might not be available. Some modern trailer parks grew from migrant workers camps

Where the permenent mobile home park grew from was from retired people who would move south for the winter. Initially, these 'snowbirds' would hook up their trailer and drive south to Florida, Arizona, or Southern California and camp for 2-4 months. Parks with ammenities were built to cater to this traffic. Gradually, more people stayed once they got there. Trailers also grew in size and luxery. Recognizing that more people weren't really traveling with these trailers, manufacturers started making 'mobile homes' which were designed to be professionally trucked to a site and then more or less permenently set up. This industry in turn has grown into the 'manufactured housing industry' and led to the creation of 'double-wides' and 'triple-wides'.

RVs in which people actually travel and move around are relatively modern, (aside from actual travel trailers which continue to be made.) The self-propelled RV is a child of the 1960s. If you remember from _Travels With Charley_, Steinbeck had to go to GMC and have Rocinante specially built. In the early 1950s, even campers for pick-ups were not available. People who wanted a self-propelled, self-contained vehicle had to special-order them or build one themselves. Popular Mechanics magazine from 1945 to 1970 is full of articles on doing just this. The counter-culture movement also had a hand in making business and the public aware of the market for RVs. The conversion of old busses into RVs, often with wood stoves, porches, and sleeping lofts, and painted psychodelically, became something of a cottage industry and definitley attracted the public's attention. (Ken Kesey's _Further_ for example. It should come as no surprise that most of the modern world's manufaturers of very high end, luxury RVs based on commercial bus chassis are located just outside of Eugene, Oregon.

RVs continue to be popular with retirees and there are also entire sub-cultures devoted to RV camping. (There is also a class hierarchy based on the type and brand of RV you drive/live in. Airstreams are the aristocracy). Because of their popularity, camps for RVs remain popular. Some are formal, commercial camps with ammenities. Some are public campgrounds with hook-ups. Some are informal where people just park. (There is a stretch of Hwy 101 in Northern California running between the ocean and a large lagoon which for years has had a continuous camp of RVs.

As to the negative social view of trailer parks and the people who live in them, there are several reasons. First, there has always pretty much always been a certain amount of animosity and suspicion between sedentary and nomadic people. Consider the popular view of migrant workers, carnies, gypsies, and even university students. The whys and wherefores of this are more the realm of cultural anthropologists than this thread. However, it fuels the popular view of trailer folk just as it does the Rodger and Hammerstein song, "Oh, the farmer and the cowboy should be friends" from Oklahoma. Second, living in a trailer park is no longer considered to be a rung up on life's journey. Instead, it is seen in modern society as rung downward. It is a symbol of economic failure, and by implication, social and educational failure. Why? In part, mobile homes have replaced the 'hillbilly shack' in peoples' minds as a symbol of rural blight. (Because it has become cheaper and faster to bring in a mobile home to a piece of rural land than it is to build a shack.) Second, trailer parks have pretty much been zoned away from most peoples lives. Because they tend to be cheap and aesthetically ugly, (as well as being considered downmarket), trailer parks over the years have been zoned into marginal and industrial areas which are out of sight of most people. You also tend to get high fences or hedges around older trailer parks. Out of sight. Out of mind. Poverty is a sin which must be shunned. We even make jokes about them. ("I'm happier than a tornado in a trailer park!")

The stain of poverty associated with trailers and mobile homes can also extend to RVs and other forms of manufactured housing. Consider the number of residental suburban neighborhoods where RVs are not permitted to be seen. Similarly, many towns do not permit even modular housing because it is built in a factory like mobile homes. (No matter that it can build two-story houses with Cape Cod roofs that look just like a site built house.)

Short of a national depression or disaster which forces a substantial number of people out of their homes, I doubt that the popular culture of the USA will change its view of trailers, trailer parks, and the people who live in them.

Haversack.

 

[Bebop]

I've known a lot of very nice people who lived in mobile homes. Nothing necessarily wrong with that.

However, it isn't a wise investment, from a financial standpoint. A mobile home, like anything with wheels, depreciates from day one. A normal attatched-to-its-foundations home does the opposite.

Most mobile homes do not have wheels. That would make them trailers. In comes the 'pre-fabricated homes'. I suppose those are what are called mobile homes also?
Not a wise investment from a financial standpoint unless you own the land that sits under your mobile home. If you rent the land to put your mobile home onto, it is a huge loss and you might not even be able to ever sell without approval from the park owners. I think owning the mobile home and renting the space on which it sits is a part of real estate that I would avoid.

 

[Tourbillion]

I believe that trailer parks were acceptable in the 40's and 50's. However, I also believe that trailers were frequently used for homes while travelling by people that already own homes, much like many people with RV's today.

So in that sense, having a trailer would be a perk.

Also, homes were a lot more affordable in the 50's:

1950
House: $14,500
Income: $3,216

Now:
House: $264,000 (but much, much more in many areas)
Income: $44,000

 

[MAGNAVERDE]

I'm still working toward image-posting status, but here's a great painting Douglass Crockwell did for a beer ad in 1953, when they seem to have been the height of respectability.

http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a286/MAGNAVERDE/desk--1953--trailerpark--beer--croc.jpg

I'd love to have a small two-tone model discreetly installed behind the parapets on the roof of my 1926 Tudorbethan apartment building in Chicago, as my weekend getaway place so I wouldn't have to rent a car. Properly situated so the 1990s condo highrise down the street didn't intrude on my view, I could almost recreate the setting in the ad: a few potted palms in the foreground, then nothing but water & sky as far as the eye can see. I already have a slew of optomistic postwar leisurewear & clothes furniture & crockery stashed in my closets just waiting for the right spot. Give me a few years. M.

 

[Lady Day]

Also, homes were a lot more affordable in the 50's:

1950
House: $14,500
Income: $3,216

Now:
House: $264,000 (but much, much more in many areas)
Income: $44,000

I took that to a caculator (just so I could see lol ) Thanks for listing that.

1950 a home was 4.5 times the income of its residents.

Now (at that very cheap home price) its 6 times the income WOW


LD

 

[dr greg]

ratios

In this country the average house price is 7 times average earnings, and in the west where the mining boom is on, prices are ridiculous, there are places where they've risen 1000% in a year.

 

[Tourbillion]

Well I live in Los Angeles, where the average salary is supposedly $40,180, and the average home $568,000. That's 14 times the average salary. However, I've heard you have to have an income of something like $128,000 in Los Angeles to buy a house. Persons making less than that even qualify for low income housing assistance in the City of Santa Barbara north of here.

I checked the LA Times and there were only 5 listing for mobile homes, they ranged from a low of $38,000 up to $215,000(still have to pay space rent). Obviously though, only 5 homes for a county of 10 million isn't enough. I believe that you can rent space for around $500+ per month here.

There's really nice and really horrible parks though. It is actually really hard to get a space in the really horrible ones. I have a friend who is a documentary photographer who has been looking forever and hasn't been able to find a space. His plan is to go deep undercover and get prize winning photos.

There was a romantacized version of the "vagabond" life in the late 40's and 50's, but I suspect that most folks were really looking down their noses at the "gypsies."

Anyway, I found an article that said that negative attitudes towards living in trailers started in the 1930's:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0016-7428(198007)70:3<276:WTHITS>2.0.CO;2-2

I think that one reason it was seen as especially bad is that there was still a lot of homestead grants going on back then. You could get free land in many less inhabited parts of the country if you agreed to build a small home on it and live there. Back in the 20s and 30s there were still a lot of folks who were trying to make a living by farming (even in currently urban areas like Los Angeles), however the "dustbowl" and then during and after the war most just gave up on it and moved to the city.

I am too cheap to buy the artice (I can't even afford a trailer in Los Angeles), but I am thinking that attitudes towards trailers are going to have to change since almost NO ONE can afford to buy a home anymore.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I think that we differenciate RV Parks from Trailer or Mobile Home Parks because, although they have similar rootstock, they grew in different directions...

Short of a national depression or disaster which forces a substantial number of people out of their homes, I doubt that the popular culture of the USA will change its view of trailers, trailer parks, and the people who live in them.

Haversack.

Thank you for your thoughtful post on this.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I took that to a caculator (just so I could see lol ) Thanks for listing that.

1950 a home was 4.5 times the income of its residents.

Now (at that very cheap home price) its 6 times the income WOW


LD

Yes...wow!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

In this country the average house price is 7 times average earnings, and in the west where the mining boom is on, prices are ridiculous, there are places where they've risen 1000% in a year.

This makes me feel better about the mere 100% increase in housing prices my area.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I am thinking that attitudes towards trailers are going to have to change since almost NO ONE can afford to buy a home anymore.

Interesting...

 

[Ben]

There was an article in the New York Times not too long ago about how trailer parks have become respectable housing in California precisely because of the hosuing costs. The story focused on a trailer park near the ocean where the trailers were as much or more than many of the houses.

Also, there are some cities where the city has purchased trailer parks that cater to senior citizens as a way to meet low income housing requirements. There ae laws that say cities have to provide a certain amount of low income housing and trailers are an easy way of doing that. I don't recall whether the set aside was a California or federal law, but the City of San Dimas, home of Bill and Ted, issued bonds to buy a trailer park for that purpose.

Also, this si way off topic, but if anyone is familiar with They Might Be Giants, is the movie, "The Long Long Tailer" what the band is referencing in the song "Everything Right is Wrong Again"?

 

[BegintheBeguine]

It is the same movie.
I passed a lot of well-kept trailer parks during my trip to Central Florida.
There was a cool trailer park in the backyard of the Monroe County International Airport or whatever the Rochester, NY airport is called. I acted in a movie in one of the trailers, a spilt-level! Not that kind of movie. They knocked down the park or moved them or something when the airport spiffed itself up a few years back.

 

[Tourbillion]

Well I can see why the dust bowl put folks off to trailer living:

 

[Tourbillion]

Here's another one, the "golden era" seems a bit tarnished.

These images are from the CSULB digital collection on the Farm Security Administation. Here's the link if you want to see the rest.

http://www.lib.csub.edu/special/farm/FSA_photos.html