The Case for Trailer Parks

Houses made in a factory are a cheap and energy-efficient way for poorer Americans to become homeownersplus, these days, the mass-produced units can be pretty spiffy.

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Youve seen it before: a house, on a truck, on a highway, slowing down traffic with its yellow OVERSIZED LOAD sign, its tan vinyl siding nearly screaming Trailer Park!

The snobs among us may judge these pre-fab homes as shoddily built, cheap eyesores in a country thats increasingly eschewing the suburbs for walkable urban areas.

But pre-fabricated homes just might be part of the solution to America's affordable housing crisis.

Home prices are continuing to rise, even as incomes on the lower-end of the scale remain flat, putting home ownership out of reach for many Americans. In some cities, thats led to renters flooding the markets, which in turns drives rental prices up. Homeownership in the U.S. was 65 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, down from 69 percent in 2005, according to the Census Bureau (PDF).

Families who can't afford homes often find that the apartments available to them are tiny, expensive, and old. Manufactured homes, affordable-housing advocates say, are spacious in comparison.

The manufactured home is probably the most cost-effective way to provide quality affordable housing, said Donna M. Blaze, the CEO of the Affordable Housing Alliance, which helped provide manufactured homes for Sandy refugees. Most of our new units are light years ahead of the apartments for rent in todays market.

The average sales price for a manufactured home in 2013 was $64,000, according to the Census Bureau, while the average sales price for a single-family home was $324,000. The single-family site-built home includes the land, though, while owners of manufactured homes often have to still grapple with landlords and leasing issues. But the structure itself is nevertheless significantly cheaper: New manufactured homes cost around $43 per square foot; site-built homes cost $93 per square foot.

"In many areas, working class families are priced out of the market to buy homes," said said Stacey Epperson, the president and CEO of NextStep, which connects the manufactured home industry with affordable housing groups. "But for us, homeownership is still part of the American dream."

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The Case for Trailer Parks