NEW HAVEN TRAILER PARK FULL

“I see deer grazing often, I see beaver over there foraging, and we have heron and egrets. Smith’s home sits directly opposite a quiet bend in the Charles River, and she said it makes her feel “like I’m in the country a little bit.” But while she and other residents relish the affordability of their homes, they also treasure their unique location. Resident Monica Smith, who works as a waitress and bartender, said she couldn’t afford Boston if it weren’t for the Boston Trailer Park - where she’s lived for 22 years. Because they are factory built, McCarthy added, they’re a boon in the current

small, standalone houses that can be placed on the lot of an existing home. While McCarthy estimated that another half-million units of housing could be added to existing mobile home parks around the country, he also wants to see cities ease zoning restrictions to allow new uses for manufactured homes, including multi-family homes and accessory dwelling units When planners and others actually look at the housing, McCarthy said, “they’re stunned to see how nice it is.”Īcross Massachusetts, there are only about 250 mobile home communities housing roughly 35,000 residents - less than 1% of the state’s population and a tiny fraction of the state’s housing.

NEW HAVEN TRAILER PARK FULL

“They ask me about running water, or how do I flush my toilet,” she said, laughing.Ī tour of her two-bedroom home showed its modern kitchen and full sized washer/dryer. “We’ve been fighting a lot of the stigma that has been part of Hollywood, and, you know, television shows for the last 50 years,” said George McCarthy, president and CEO of the Cambridge, Mass.–based Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.Īthena said, when people hear she lives in a mobile home, they assume it’s primitive living. Land prices are one reason that few new communities are being built, but experts cite zoning and the “not-in-my-backyard” opposition - or NIMBYism - as even larger hurdles. Most mobile home owners own the homes themselves but pay rent for the land they live on. In the Northeast, a basic single unit goes for about $87,000, according to U.S. Mobile home prices have also gone up, but they are still roughly half the cost of traditional houses. The park’s affordability seems even more significant in the current landscape since then, the median home price for single-family homes in Massachusetts has gone up over 100%, according to data from The Warren Group. He helped the community take ownership of the land under their mobile homes in 2011 to protect it from developers.

, half of the median annual income of owners of traditional homes.įormer Boston Mayor Tom Menino recognized the affordability of the Boston Trailer Park. The median annual household income of residents who own those homes is

Texas and Florida have the largest concentration of mobile homes. Twenty-two million Americans live in mobile homes - once known as “trailers,” a vestige of the days when the homes were all on wheels. But obstacles like zoning restrictions and a lingering image problem stand in the way of mobile homes taking a larger role in Massachusetts’ market. They have gained more proponents, at the local and national level, in the hunt for solutions to the housing shortage. Mobile homes are one of the most affordable forms of housing in the country. Massachusetts renters are fighting for the right to buy their buildings

New haven trailer park