Have we Overlooked Trailer Parks as a Solution to Affordable Housing?

My grandmother was over 80 when she moved out of our house. My youngest sister was off to college in 1970, and that left grandma with not much work—and only older folks, my folks, around the house. She moved into a very nice trailer park between Oceanside and South Oceanside in Southern California.

Hers was a singlewide, and could not have been more than 500 square feet. She soon had a small but bountiful garden, and when we all went down for her 100th, she made a huge fried chicken dinner and baked two pies.

Meanwhile, dad and mom had for some years parked a 17-foot travel trailer beside our house, which we pulled to Minnesota every other year and used as a bedroom for the visiting Minnesotans (and other relatives from wherever) on the off years. After a quick recent swing through western Idaho and northeast Oregon, I realize that we were at least 50 years ahead of our time.

My first a-ha! was in McCall, Idaho, where houses sell for $800,000 and working folks live in two RV parks a few miles on either side of the expensive town. The RV parks are a riot of old singlewides, a few actual RVs, and maybe a fancier doublewide or two. Many have gardens, and there are one or two rigs of various vintages at the doors. It’s a close drive into the hotel, restaurant, or construction company for work. They are not RV campers!

I took the back road home to Joseph, stopping in the town of Halfway to talk with Steve Backstrom at my new newspaper, the Hells Canyon Journal. Steve confirmed that a one-time RV park I’d passed on my way up from the Snake River was now pretty much full-time residences for people who work at the dams on the Snake River or in Halfway itself.

There’s a pattern here. People using what we once thought of as temporary housing or vacation housing as full-time housing. We talked about places in Halfway, and Steve pointed to a few older singlewides that have peaked roofs and small stick-built additions that have been added over the years.

When I got back to Joseph, I found a few of the same in a quick drive-through of my town. I think that Joseph has a prohibition against trailers on city lots now, and know that we require anything to be 1000 square feet. I then went to nearby Enterprise for a quick inventory. There are two older trailer parks in Enterprise, and another that has about 20 oddball trailers and RVs crept up to a one-time motel that is now also “apartment” rentals.

There’s also an RV park on the Lewiston highway that now includes several more permanent dwellings. Ditto a motel half way between Joseph and Enterprise, and more of the mix in Wallowa, our Lower Valley town.

I guesstimated 200 trailer/singlewide/RV living units in Enterprise, and maybe 400 in the county. That would be 10 percent of our total housing units, listed at 4,000 in a couple of data bases. And I did not do any counts of such units sitting in driveways and yards and serving as quest quarters or mother-in-law units. Or some nice RVs with hookups and satellite dishes that are obviously summer housing for friends, relatives, or renters.

The question is why this entire area of housing seems to be omitted in serious discussions of the workforce housing crisis here and the nation-wide housing crisis everywhere. It seems to me a case of a wide range of citizens doing what they can to address their own individual housing needs.

And it could be more. There is a once-nice trailer park on the edge of Durkee that now looks not-so-good. The two trailer courts in Enterprise are not what they were 30 years ago. Is it a matter of jacked up rents on trailer spaces, declining middle-class interest in these homes, and/or the negative connotations that have built up over this entire industry over generations?

My recollection of grandma’s trailer home and trailer court is neat streets and flower and vegetable gardens, and the neighbors she said checked up on each other every morning and went to Las Vegas to play the nickel slots once a year.

There are sales lots of pretty good-looking singlewides and used RVs near Boise, and one near Baker City. Would the NIMBYs allow nicely appointed trailer courts with space rentals held at a minimum? Could we as communities look into the older “courts” that have fallen into disrepair and bring them up to acceptable standards? And maybe secure long-term space rental agreements?

Could the tiny house movement make room for factory-built units? I’d guess they would be significantly cheaper than even the most modest 800-square-foot unit built on-site. I don’t have answers, just a bunch of sightings of a housing movement that is happening right under our diverted eyes.