Across the Manufactured Home Ownership Spectrum: Latino Immigrant Housing Experiences in Rural Communities of Southern California

• In Event: Latina/o Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 1: Migration, Place, and Latinx Belonging

Abstract

Manufactured homes are an affordable avenue to achieving housing stability and homeownership status but can be experienced as a form of “half-way” homeownership if residents perpetually rent the land their manufactured home is set on. Past studies of rural manufactured housing experiences have neglected the experiences and strategies of Latino immigrants and how immigration status may challenge conventional views of homeownership and the methods of attaining it. This paper is part of a larger dissertation project and draws on 12 months of participant observation and 90 semi-structured, in-depth interviews to study the housing experiences, decision-making processes, and residential mobility strategies of first- and second-generation Latino immigrants in the Eastern Coachella Valley of Southern California. This paper explores the manufactured home ownership spectrum, comparing the experiences, challenges, and strategies of Latino immigrants who rent their manufactured home and the land it is set on, residents who own their home but rent the land (as is often the case in mobile home parks), and residents who own both their home and the land. This paper argues that, similar to a hermit crab vacancy chain, rural immigrants strategize to enact a linked form of mobility as a way of upgrading their existing housing or achieving homeowner and landowner status. Additionally, there is a social dimension tied to residents’ location on the ownership spectrum, as land and homeowners often experienced more social isolation than people who lived in mobile home parks. Regardless of whether residents owned their home and the land their home was on, rural residents alike experienced infrastructural challenges. This paper will help us understand how Latino immigrants use residential moves and manufactured housing to achieve homeownership, and the challenges they face and how they differ across the spectrum of ownership.

Author

• Yvonne Carrillo, University of California-Los Angeles