People nowadays make references to “trailer park trash” – I guess it seems they are “safe” to make fun of! Has any one on this message board actually lived in or near a trailer park? If so, what is it like? What is the “straight dope” on life in a trailer park?
I think the answer is going to greatly depend on what kind of trailer park it is (e.g., my grandmother moved into a seniors-only trailer park for a while, and it was well-maintained and quiet) and where it is (trailer park spots in Westlake, CA can run $360k; trailer park spots in Wise County, Texas probably go for considerably less…)
Yeah, not all trailer parks are the stereotypical white-trash type. There’s one in the town where I work, which is a relatively affluent suburb north of Chicago. One of my co-workers lives there with her husband and kids. They’re nothing like the people you associate with the worst of Jerry Springer’s shows. Just regular folks.
When we were just married, and had no money at all, some friends let us stay at their trailer for the summer while they traveled. We saved some money and learned a little bit about each other and the world around us. It was a very fun summer.
I remember the heat more than anything else. It was like sleeping in a toaster. There was a window air conditioner that would slightly cool the bedroom, and we would turn that on when it was really stifling, but for the most part we didn’t bother. I know that as soon as you walked in the front door of the place, it felt like it had to be 15 degrees warmer. Higher temperatures can cause more problems than just physical ones too, and there was a bit of that kind of thing–shorter tempers and shorter fuses.
This trailer park was located right next to an airport. Some nights I’d get home from work at around 11.30, and just as I was about to drop off to sleep, the walls would begin to shake and you’d think the place was going to explode, but it just meant that there was a flight coming in from the east.
If the neighbors were fighting, you would hear every word. In fact, a discussion in a regular tone of voice over the kitchen table was pretty audible from next door. And speaking of next door, the old guy who lived on the other side (called Skeeter, I kid you not) was hard of hearing, so when he made a phone call you could hear EVERYthing he said; and frequently he would repeat what was said to him, just to make sure he was hearing it correctly, so you got the full conversation. He called his son a lot, and I remember he talked to some health-care professional pretty frequently about various ailments of old age. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.
Across the street there was a really cute high school age girl living with her parents. Her boyfriend would come to get her in his '73 Monte Carlo. He had what would now be called a mullet I think, and she was just flat-out gorgeous. His car with the bad muffler would announce itself, she’d run out the door, hop in the car, and they’d both be firing up a cigarette before pulling away in a cloud of exhaust. At about one in the morning he’d drop her off, muffler blazing.
I mean, in reality it wasn’t a whole lot different from neighborhoods I’ve lived in since then. The big difference is that the trailers are flimsey, and offer very little real privacy. If you wanted to, you could easily learn everything about your neighbors just by watching and listening. I always felt like a little an outsider, since we were only staying there for a few months, and I spent a lot of my time at work, and on weekends we would be traveling for my wife’s work. The bulk of the people around us were full time inhabitants, and not too interested in us. We were the transients.
It was a pretty nice trailer park, in a really funky location, and I look back on that summer fondly. A buddy of mine always refers to it as, ‘when you were living in the love shack.’
“Has anybody here seen Kelly?”
(Whatever happened to her, anyway?)
My brother and his wife recently bought a mobile home on a trailer lot.
They’re pretty much living up to the “trailer trash” stereotypes…but they were doing that before they moved into a trailer.
They’re cheap affordable housing, so you’ll find a variety of people who seek cheap, affordable housing. That’s a pretty broad spectrum of people. The trailer homes and the communities/parks they are in vary in quality and niceness, just like neighborhoods of more permanent homes.
I grew up in a college town where it wasn’t uncommon for a family to buy a trailer for their kid(s) to live in (with roommates) until graduation. My sister and her husband lived in one for a few years after they were married.
It depends.
When I think of “trailer trash,” it’s not so much the thought of someone living in a trailer, but its setting; usually plopped down on a lot by itself or with a couple other battered trailers, and enough oil and antifreeze-dripping junk cars to get the lot declared a Superfund site.
Formal mobile home parks – sorry, “manufactured home communities” – range from well-kept, lushly landscaped, strictly regulated subdivisions of double-wide mobile homes, to what are essentually dirt parking lots where, for a couple hundred bucks a month, the landlord will let you plop down anything from a tin-sided single-wide to a school bus on blocks. The lower-end mobile home parks, along with the battered, pre-HUD trailers situated alone on rural lots – tend to have more “trailer trashy” residents.
Outside of booming regions where site-built housing is unaffordable to all but the very wealthy, those living in the high-end trailer parks – high-end, relatively speaking – tend to be either senior citizens or lower-middle-class blue-collar families. I’ve found that people who tend to live in the better trailer parks are a bit more “country” than the norm; you’ll see Beanie Babies and state spoons proudly displayed in a duck wallpaper-surfaced living room, a Ford F-350 with duallies and a metal saddle box in the driveway, or more patriotic displays than what might be shown in a middle-class neighborhood of site-built houses. Think of someone more like Jean Teasdal rather than a toothless Springer guest.
Areas prone to energy booms and busts, like Wyoming, have trailer parks filled with relatively well-off transient workers. Somene who expects to leave the area in a few years probably won’t invest in permanent housing, so a mobile home can be appealing. The inhabitants of those parks may be rough and gruff, but they’re not Springeresque white trash; their annual incomes are probably higher than 90% of us posting on the SDMB.
I used to rent them when I was 19 and following rigs around the state roughnecking during summer break. Far as I remember all my neighbors were pretty decent folk. I lived with a couple of guys in a trailer when I was packing cantelope too right after H.S. come to think of it. We all ended up edumacated and prosperous so, sorry, nothing to make fun of there.
The only trashy neighbor I’ve had wasn’t in a trailer park but a gated, very nice golf community. Go figure.
Here (that being eastern MA) trailer parks are more associated with retirement homes than redneck ghettos. You’re more likely to see Town Cars than Firebirds, more likely to hear gossip about who died than who’s pregnant, and more likely to watch Lawrence Welk than Jerry Springer
Or as I like to say “The average age is deceased” (apologies to Red Greed)
Mind you, this comes from a guy who’s brother-in-law drives a BMW and lives in a single-wide. Oh yeah, he and my sister have four cats in that little place.
The one time I visited a family who lived in a mobile home park, I was impressed by the huge size of the trailer itself. It must have been a double-wide, because it was easily as big as my parents’ suburban home that I grew up in. It was clean and well-maintained. The family was definitely “country” as elmwood described above, complete with Dale Earnhardt memorabilia (his) and geese-in-bonnets decor (hers), but they were solid middle-class citizens with well-behaved young kids and a few cats. This was in Broward County, Florida, which is a real melting pot for ethnic and racial groups.
A friend’s mom recently bought one that is pretty nice. It was around $17,000 and is relatively new (late 80s, early 90s model). This is in an Indiana town with about 30k people and her neighbors are just regular people who are not high up on the economic ladder. She is a nurse, but is having job troubles right now. I’d probably buy one myself if they didn’t depreciate in value so much. If I do buy one, everyone here is invited to my annual barbeque during Nascar. You have to bring your own airhorns and cowboy hats as I only have 11 to go around. Just follow the Toby Keith songs until you find it.
I live in one that’s pretty nice. I rent the lot and make payments on the trailer to a finance company, but the combined cost is still much less than apartments go for in this town (and it’s not even an affluent community). The landlord has no trouble evicting people who don’t obey the rules. Right after I moved in her, a couple just across the way had a nasty, drag out fight about something. It ended with the wife walking away from the trailer, screaming obscenities at the husband. They got evicted. I told the landlord about losing my job and that I wouldn’t be able to pay him the rent until I got my unemployment check, and he said he didn’t have a problem with it.
I’ve gone away for hours at a time, forgetting to lock the front door or my shed, and so far, no one’s broken in and stolen anything. It’s a lot better place than some of the rental houses or apartments I’ve lived in.
It’s been mentioned that it’s hot in the summer. Are they cold in the wintertime?
If you have winter there.
Regards,
Shodan
There’s a difference between a trailer and a mini-home. The trailer parks are filled with small, old mobile homes, with the main window at the narrow end, which is facing the street. The lot is scarcely larger than the trailer.
Mini-home parks are small manufactured homes, larger, and hardly mobile (unless you count the delivery to the community.) The mini-homes are larger, wider and parallel to the street, so you have an actual yard (though not a huge one).
Would I live in the first? Not a chance. I have no desire to be that close to my neighbours. The second? The homes themselves are nice enough but I would never buy a home that is going to depreciate in value, as well as having to pay lot rent and maintenance. I want to own my land.
I’ve never known anyone who has lived in a trailer park. Mini-home parks are popular around here for first time home owners, and I can’t say I’ve noticed that their standard of living or attitudes are any different from the general population.
When I was in college, I babysat for some classmates who lived in a doublewide. The only problem I had with it was the day the sky got all dark looking - this was in Indiana. I know that those things attract tornadoes, so I was just a little nervous. But we didn’t get blown away, so it was good.
How cool you are in the summer and how warm you are in the winter is directly related to how much money you’re willing to spend. I leave the thermostat set a 80 in the summer, and this keeps my light bills about 2/3rds of what they are in the winter. In the winter, I put the thermostat on 60 and use a kerosene heater to heat the room I’m in to a comfortable temp. Doing this, I can keep my lightbills under $100/month. Sometimes just barely, though.
An old girlfriend of mine had a “trailer” in a mobile home park near the lake. She had one of the lots at the edge with woods at the back. It was nice for a single person. Had a nice attached garage and was low maintanence.
The drawbacks were the fast depreciation and the $400+ month lot rental.
My retired Aunts and Uncles live next door to each other in a couple of double wides in a very quiet huge complex. Inside seems damn near as big as my three bedroom ranch. With Pella hardwood floors and other upgrades like the attached porches and garages that make moving them approach 0%
I like my yard and distant neighbors but thought about buying one.
Wow, she must be a double wide.
The one I am living in is mostly young families or single like me that are saving money. Mostly on the lower end of the economic scale, but not really any different from most people. I could afford to move, even buy a place, but I don’t want the hassles of owning a house and sure couldn’t rent one this cheaply.
It is hot in the summer, no AC, and cold in the winter, but as Tuckerfan says, that is largely dependent on how much money you want to spend. My heat is natural gas, so I electric bill is not too bad, but January and February were bad until I got on the budget plan at the gas company.