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February 17, 2009
Trailer parks
Apparently trailer parks could become an affordable yet highly livable housing options.
They do offer some advantages over apartment block living, but providing similar density levels:
- fresh air flow with windows on all walls;
- accessibility for those who struggle with stairs;
- expandability (you can add up as well as out);
- options to own or rent;
- with good landscaping the possibility of living amongst greenery
This comes from a summary of a forthcoming book by Bill Morrish — which opened my eyes to the possibilities. At first blush, the idea of trailer parks as solutions to increase density in inner-urban cores sounds inappropriate. But, upon reading the links above, I’m now more intrigued.
Topics: residential development |
February 18th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I had Morrish for a class last semester, and I can attest that modular housing units are a pretty big deal around here. It’s also a new idea to me, but certainly the adaptability more than anything could have some potential.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:04 am
[…] Trailer parks: a more viable way of achieving higher density than you might think. […]
February 18th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Trouble with trailer parks, in Canada at least, is they depreciate like cars, so there is little or no future value to support upkeep, etc., let alone resale. What you end up with is quickly deteriorating housing that the residents, often the lowest income people, can’t afford to keep up, with little or no equity to resell and move out. And when the redevelopment value of that grossly underutilized land exceeds the utilized value, those trailers are worth nothing (most jurisdictions won’t let you move them on your own, and where do you move a 40 year-old trailer to?), and hundreds of people are suddenly homeless.
At best, you can usually count on getting back what you paid for it, which means you lost money if inflation is taken into account. Thus, trailer parks appear to remain affordable because the price you pay to live there appears to reduce over time.
I suppose you could invent shared ownership models so that each trailer owner has at least a share of the property value to fall back on, but that would require (positive?) changes to strata or condo legislation, and in essence means those owners are forced to hold on to reap potential windfall if and when their sites get redeveloped - though why not, that’s what most property owners are counting on.
However, in our economy the main benefit of home-ownership is that the house will usually offer some return on investment over time, and for many lower income people, that is all the savings they are ever likely to have. Home ownership is not for everyone though, for a variety of reasons.
Far more promising are hybrid programs that enable people to own OR rent, with some form of shared equity, public or private, that reduces the month to month costs that are really all that matter in terms of low-income affordability.
They have worked in the Prairies, with public funding, and some variations are in the ground in Toronto and Ottawa. Habitat for Humanity is another variation that keeps building steam, the benefit to all of them being conventional dwellings in conventional neighbourhoods with conventional expectations of future asset value, to the residents and their respective communities.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
My grandparents lived in a huge trailer in a beautiful park in Kelowna - I remember all of our large family staying there and feeling like I was in a kid’s paradise, minutes from the beach and with fruit trees in the ‘backyard’. My grandma moved away from the park about ten years ago and somewhere along the way I grew into a snob and forgot all about that wonderful trailer and the park it was in. Thanks for reminding me! I’ve heard in recent years that these parks are becoming rarer as developers buy the land to build more condos . . .