Mobile Home Parks and Disasters: The Vulnerability of America’s Third Housing Type

• In Event: 1544 - Disasters

Abstract

Affordable housing is a key component of the built environment that is at-risk from natural hazards, but existing research has largely focused on owners and renters in site-built housing. Manufactured housing (“mobile homes”) located in mobile home parks represent a third housing type that makes up a critical portion of affordable housing in the United States. Mobile home parks (MHPs) are characterized by high levels of social vulnerability as well as a unique housing tenure in which residents own individual homes but rent the lot from a property owner. Existing studies have overlooked these unique features and are largely focused on the physical or structural vulnerability of mobile home units. The social, spatial, and institutional dimensions of vulnerability in MHPs have remained largely unexplored. To holistically examine the factors that interact to produce vulnerability in MHPs and assess whether mobile home parks are uniquely vulnerable compared to other housing types, we present an explanatory case study of six MHPs in three different communities impacted by the 2013 Colorado floods, a federally declared disaster. We draw on a) surveys of 101 households whose homes were significantly damaged or destroyed, including 44 MHP households; b) semi-structured interviews with 21 key informants who were active in the recovery of mobile home parks, including local elected officials and staff, state and federal recovery officials, housing experts and representatives from non-governmental organizations and c) observations at dozens of housing recovery-related events and analysis of government documents related to the recovery. Our analysis identifies five pathways through which MHPs contribute not only to the vulnerability of their residents but also to the vulnerability of the communities in which MHPs are located. We offer several avenues for further research.

Authors

• Esther Sullivan, University of Colorado Denver

• Andrew Rumbach, University of Colorado Denver

• Carrie Makarewicz, University of Colorado Denver