Managing Mass Eviction: Forced Relocation in Mobile Home Parks and the Paradox of State (Mis)intervention

• In Event: 461 - Regular Session. Ethnography/Ethnographic Studies 2

Abstract

This ethnography examines the effects of forced residential relocation in low-income communities by investigating incidences of mass eviction that occur when mobile home parks are closed. Today there are 22 million Americans living in manufactured housing, which provides the single largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S. but is installed primarily on the private lands of for-profit developers who can close parks and force residents to move themselves and their homes with as little as 30 days notice. Mobile home park closures result in the legal mass evictions of whole communities, oftentimes containing hundreds of households. These evictions have not been systematically documented in any region of the U.S. Through a 2-year comparative ethnography living inside closing parks in Florida and Texas, this research juxtaposes sites of interventionist and hands-off state strategies. In doing so it demonstrates that state policy plays an important role in mitigating or aggravating the effects of forced relocation and reveals a paradox of state intervention in the management of evicted residents. As I show, the sites of explicit intervention and codified regulation for mobile home park closures are precisely the sites in which the relocation process produced prolonged disruption and disorientation in residents’ lives. In Florida the more protective regulatory environment incubated a more protracted and detrimental fallout for residents after their parks were closed, while in Texas a completely hands-of approach created a sudden, acute crisis that was nonetheless limited to a moment in time as residents mobilized alternative strategies of support.

Author

• Esther Sullivan, University of Texas-Austin