I lived in one for a year and it was cool. I liked the trailer because you can have these things rolled in with almost any combination of design inside, fully furnished, for half the price of a house, from single wide to double, from one bedroom to 4. New trailers (mobile homes, thank you!), smell good, but you have to get used to ‘bouncing’ a little when you walk and thin walls (1 inch thick) inside and out and clumping. The floors are thin, so you clump even through carpet.
One I visited had a real fireplace, and since it was winter, drizzly and gray and damn cold, I was instantly pleased when I saw and felt it! I was delivering goods, and after all day in the truck, these folks place was warm, toasty, cheerful and smelled very faintly of burning Oak. I wanted to curl up on the thick run in front of the hearth and snooze for an hour or so, but figured they might get upset.
Trailers are cool and the image comes from junky parks, full of small, portable trailers, of all types where beer guzzling guys hang out in dirty T-shirts, hot chicks prowl in poverty and in heat, fights break out and 4 people live in an aluminum home designed for two while shirtless, shoeless kids of around 7 or 8 run around screaming and playing and ugly old men and women gather at the laundry, drinking beers, bitching and lanky, hairy guys look like they’ll stab you for a pot roast in your 'fridge.
A friend of mine lived in a slightly better place and an argument down the street resulted in a .38 caliber bullet entering his spare room wall, going through the room door and exiting the back wall to imbed itself in the neighbors hallway. He had a slight problem with that.
Other places have rules and are bastions of neatness and pleasantry, but the walls are still thin. Those such places are fine to live in though, especially with the availability of different designs incorporated in the trailers. My beef is only because the trailers can easily be flattened in a major storm and can burn up remarkably fast because the makers decline to put in the heavy amount of fire proofing that they can and because the things are just not able to be built affordable if they build them stronger. You need to actually tie them into the ground with metal straps built into the walls.
I know a lot of people who bought land out of State, cannot afford to build on it, so they sank a well, poured a cement pad and bought a used or new trailer to place on it and have happily used it as a summer or winter home for years so far. Some use them as getaways, hunting lodges, ‘secret solitude’ spots or even rentals.
Basically, in a State that pretty well has the market cornered on mobile home parks for the retired, I figure they’re cool. The bad image started in the 50s and 60s and stuck and I still know of several parks where people live in used, battered trailers because that’s the cheapest home they can find. One guy I know lives in one old park because of the excitement, the activity, the quickly changing neighbors, the available and often interested ‘pussy’ (he moved in with a new looking, 5 year old trailer and he works, so he’s the local ‘rich folk’) and the interesting and calming night life plus, when he sits on his porch in the dark, he hears people talking, TVs playing, people walking, smells 10 different meals being cooked, pot smoke in the breeze, along with the familiar scent of spilled beer, cigarette smoke and cheap perfume.
He likes it all and when bored, he moves his entire house cheaply to the next place.