Mrs. Doohickie's first home was a trailer home, but not in a trailer park. Her dad bought 100 acres but couldn't afford a normal home right off the bat. He also couldn't afford electricity or water, so they had a wood stove and a hand-pumped well. In Upstate New York. Uphill. Both ways.

Her parents still live on the 100 acres on the western end of the Berkshire Mountains just as they flatten out into the Hudson River Valley. They live in a pre-fab home that's been added onto and remodeled, so it's pre-fab roots are hard to see.

They have electricity now. ;)

I have, when I was a child. My mom lives in one now, out in the countryside south of Atlanta, that's kind of a seniors-only deal (you have to be over 50 to live there).

I'm neighbor to a cluster of ten mobile homes, some of which are rentals with the same landlord as mine, and a few are owned by the residents. It's a relatively low-income neighborhood, with quite a mix of people on disability (like myself), students at Cal Poly on 9-month leases, aging hippies who never became yuppies, self-proclaimed rednecks and 'starter families' saving all their pennies to buy a real house (I wish them luck). See this Google satellite view of Wendell Central. I haven't socialized with them much (mostly my fault, but they're fine with leaving me alone), but they're generally good people, no characters from "My Name Is Earl", no scenes out of "Cops" (which I did have at a couple LA apartment addresses). My 'Crazy Ex' grew up in a Mobile Home with one sibling in a place her parents owned (and I can't blame the trailer for her), and her parents retired to a double-wide on a hill outside Temecula, CA (after they considered a Dome Home) - at that size, it's just like a regular house, just more long than deep, and sometimes feeling a little un-substantial. But it's not like a burglar can get in using a can opener - just kind of inbetween an apartment and a 'real house'.

Three of my four brothers lived in (small) trailer parks in their early 20s in Homer, Alaska. Two of those brothers did and sold drugs from their trailer, and it worked alright for them. My oldest brother bought his trailer when he got married, and when they bought 10 acres they moved the trailer onto their land, hooked up electricity and water, until they could afford to build. The youngest of my older brothers who sold drugs from his trailer bought a fifth wheel trailer when he got married. They moved around a lot and liked being able to just go on a whim. The only time they felt not safe was in a trailer park in Anchorage where there had been some shootings. They stopped selling drugs and have since bought a house in Wasilla. Cute little place.

While I lived in Fairbanks I wandered through a few trailer parks with my camera taking shots. I was asked out four times.

My grandparents lived in a trailer park when I was a kiddie. I thought it was super-cool at the time.

There's a Hometown Buffet I used to enjoy eating at that was directly across the road from a trailer park. Not sure if that was a purposeful arrangement or what.

We did for years. My hubby bought a single-wide trailer back in the late 70's and lived in a mobile home park for years while putting himself through college part time. He figured that it was better to put money towards something "permanent" instead of just renting an apartment. It also allowed him to have a tiny shed where he kept lots of tools so he could do side jobs to earn extra money. (you can see why it took about 10 years for him to complete his degree at two courses a semester!)

The park was run by a former military guy who kept close tabs on everyone. If the yard wasn't mowed, tenants were fined. When we married, I moved there too. The "lots" were tiny - just two cars wide (about 24 feet).

It was nice and quiet, with casual neighbors who all worked long hours and pretty much kept to themselves. We had to move when the park was sold to a developer.

So, we bit the bullet and got a loan from a bank and started making payments on a piece of property and moved the trailer there. There was enough land to have horses (!) plus he could have his shop there. It was an idealic 15 years. No air conditioning in the summer which meant that we were able to withstand the outside work without too much problem. We rigged up a water hose on the top of the trailer - the soaker hose had all these little holes in it so it gently sprinkled the roof and removed some of the heat. You could put your hand under the water dripping off and feel the warmth. It made it much more bearable inside. The nights could get sticky at times... and it took a while to get dry after showering.

Since our mothers were both getting older and beginning to need more help we finally decided to move to be closer to them. So, we started hunting for something. Land there was much more expensive, and we ended up having to buy a larger piece of land than we wanted. But it had a shop building already on it, so he could move the business there. So, we packed up both the trailer and the business and headed east.

Here's where it gets comical if you're watching a movie. The bonded, insured, licensed mobile home mover destroyed out trailer on the way to it's new home. We could barely afford the land payments so the trailer was our way of making things work. The insurance adjuster came out and determined that a claim was valid except that the truck the guy had used to move the trailer wasn't on the policy - so, it wasn't covered. After legal wrangling, three years in limbo later, a jury of our peers awarded $900 for the trailer. That wouldn't even pay for the disposal.

The jurisdiction where we previously lived kept sending us tax bills for the trailer since we couldn't prove that it was set up in a different location. No listening to reason. No going and looking where it had been and seeing it empty. We finally paid them off after the trial when we could show "proof" that it was, indeed, somewhere else and sitting there destroyed.

So, there is literally trailer trash in my background....

I live in a trailer for a couple of years at Penn State that a friend of mine bought. The park was kept pretty clean: no cars on the lawn, no loud music, grass mowed, etc.

I lived in trailers till I was thirteen. Then, right after I had our third child we lived in a trailer for a year or so...

I never lived in a trailer park tho. The first trailers were on my grandfather's property and we were surrounded by woods. It was actually pretty idyllic.

As far as the trailer I lived in as an adult, it too was on a wooded lot...we had POSSUMS come up the dryer vent repeatedly. Once I looked up and noticed that the canister Eletrolux was draped with four or five baby possums, all staring at me.

THAT home I don't miss one bit.

I lived in a [caravan] at a friend's place near here for six months or so - it was lovely. The family lived in a converted double-decker bus, with outhouses built for the kitchen, loo and bathroom. The loo and bathroom each only had three walls, and no roof, looking out over the rainforest mountainside.

We had a holiday caravan permanently parked in the bush at our church camp (a former immigration detention centre then army camp, then the church bought it, continuing the theme) near the beach when I was a kid - it was also lovely. I only have good memories of caravan living.

I lived in a single-wide trailer from birth to 9 or 10. We lived in a small to medium trailer park. I still remember the address. We were lot #47. I know a ton of people that have lived in trailers. Florida is trailer park city.

Yes, to both. It was during my previous marriage, and we moved from Illinois to Wilmington, NC where I was enrolled for my M.A. Ex-wife had family in the area, and her uncle was a bigshot mobile home salesman/park slumlord. Since we were moving close to them, he hooked us up with a mobile home in a park just outside Wilmington in Castle Hayne. If I remember, our lot rent was $90 a month.

We had a large back yard, but there's not much else good I can say about the place. The day we arrived, I about had a nervous breakdown - started shaking and weeping uncontrollably - because the place was such a disaster. It was carpeted with a red and black shag that after a few days turned my white cat's paws pink. We eventually got new carpet, and made the place livable. It was heated with a kerosene heater, and so had this huge above ground tank right out the back door. The heater would constantly die, and the entire place always reeked of kerosene.

For a week or so after we moved in the wiring was all wanky. We'd turn on the living room light, and the electric stove would go on. We'd turn on the stove and the bedroom light would go on . . . nutty.

Our neighbors, for the most part, were good folk though. Quiet, helpful, and respectful.

And, when my father died, my mother eventually sold our old house to my brother, and she moved into a double-wide that was much nicer than the one I had lived in, but was still at the end of the day a mobile home. She lived there until she died.

My ex-uncle would defend the integrity of mobile homes to the extreme. His argument was that if tried to take a normal house, put it on a semi and drive it down the highway, it'd fall apart. But not with mobile homes - those things are built to be solid, or so he would say.

I'm living in one now. We are in a double-wide on a fairly large lot in a park. It's an older model--about 1969 or 1967, so the plus is that it looks like it's in place like a house, with mature landscaping, a porch, and all, but the downside is that two sets of elderly people owned it before us and it was very, very dated inside.

We drywalled the ceiling, painted *everything* creamy pinky white (the whole place had dark brown faux wood paneling), and put in new wall-to-wall neutral carpeting and lino, threw away the drapes, put up blinds, painted the kitchen cupboards, and more. Lots more. Home Depot and RONA loved us. It's not bad inside now. We are still going around and replacing the black switchplates for light switches and wall plugs with white ones. But it's much better now.

We live in a city that's notoriously expensive for housing--if I want to buy a crummy little fixer-upper house, we're looking at $350-$450,000 or so. We were renting, but the hot real estate market meant the last two places we rented were sold, and we had to move. I didn't want to rent again, but we couldn't afford to buy, so this was a step back toward home ownership without going all the way.

The park owner is very involved in the maintenance and appearance of the park, and is quick to remind people to maintain their units and lots. Here in greater Victoria (and elsewhere in the province), mobile home parks are at risk of development, so when the two open 'fields' (previously septic fields) were converted to new units, while that meant there wasn't a good place to run and play with the dog, at least it meant we aren't being kicked out soon for condominiums.

Buying a condo (which we did when we first got married. Unfortunately, it was a "leaky condo" and we went bankrupt and lost it) is incredibly expensive--and they're incredibly small now. I just saw a one-bedroom condo at Bear Mountain that was about 564 square feet. We couldn't put our furniture in there. And having lived through the nightmare once, I don't think I want to ever buy another condo.

Here we have two bedrooms, a den, two bathrooms, living room/dining room combo, and a fairly large kitchen. We have a front yard and a back yard--which happens to back onto Mill Hill Park, so I can walk out my back yard and up "into the woods". That's great. Also, lots of critters around: deer, and so on. Not always so great--rats and mice, too.

The park owner has a bylaw/rule about occupants: no more than two. Most of my neighbours are either older singles, or no-kid couples or retired people. There are a lot of little dogs for my little dog to socialise with. No rowdy people, no rowdy parties, no junk in front yards. We have a divorcee on one side and a divorced man on the other. No problems with either neighbour.

The biggest expense we have living here is transportation (my husband I both have to drive to work separately) and pad fee, which is now $506 a month. That covers a lot of things that a municipal bill would--water, sewer, garbage/recycling, etc.

There are annoying things about the unit--everything's a little smaller, a little narrower, and not standard size. It has a cheap feel to a lot of the interior. It doesn't feel "solid" if you knock on a wall.

This is no longer a "mobile" home, either. With the ceiling, the carpet, and so on, it would be very difficult to dismantle it to two pieces and move it somewhere. It's been here for years, and I don't think it would survive a move. That's something to consider for the future. I don't want to stay here so long that we can't sell it and move upward. It's not like these things really appreciate in value (though this year's assessments say it did) but with the improvements we made I think we could sell for more than we paid for it.

Oh, we have a washer/dryer, too.

I don't want to be here forever, but at least we have something that resembles a house, with a yard, we're able to have the dog, and it's affordable.

Wow, I had a lot to say.

My aunt and uncle lived in one until a tornado turned it inside out. They had an underground bunker in their trailer park that they got into when the tornado came. Anybody else have one of those?

My grandparents retired to a double-wide in a lakeside resort village in Texas. My aunt and uncle retired to a double-wide in Pennsylvania before moving to a condo in Florida.

Trailers often have negative associations, but they can be excellent solutions at lots of points in life. My grandparents' was on a one-acre lot where my grandfather had a huge, gorgeous garden, a screenhouse, a large garage/workshop, and a boat. For retirees (especially ones who had lived through the Depression) this was an ideal situation. They were able to buy land and home outright, no mortgage. The neighborhood was full of other similar retirees. The house pretty much never needed work. The appliances were all brand-spanking new. The interior fittings were much, much nicer than any I've had in houses built on real foundations - better quality faucets, bathtubs, door handles. Oodles of closet space and drawer space. Very clever design for storage. Very convenient kitchen/LR open plan.

My aunt's and uncle's place was similarly built out - there was a sunroom and patio and den built onto the mobile home. Theirs was situated on a few acres on a hilltop in rural Penna., overlooking their small Christmas tree farm.

In both cases they owned their parcel of land, and were not really in a trailer park - they could've built a home if they wanted, and some people who lived near both places did build, either prefab or framed.

All in all, I still like house-houses better, but I've known a lot of people for whom a mobile home was a really good idea and very nice and comfortable.

A mobile home in a trailer park was the first happy shared domicile of Lynsey and soon-to-be-Mr Lynsey. Spokane, WA. 1973. He had an Afghan hound named Bilbo, (because of the furry feet, of course) who ate everything, xmas ornaments, furniture and my prize red, white and blue sheets. Ah, good times.

I lived in one for a couple of years in high school, in NH (in a town full of mostly rich people). My mom lost her house and it was literally the only rental property in our community that was neither 3k/month or seasonal (most of the homes there are owned by people who come in for either the summer boating or winter ski seasons, and then rent it out the other half of the year).

At the time I tried to keep it under wraps except to my very close friends, otherwise I would be welcoming copious quoting of Kid Rock lyrics at my expense. Most of the trailer park kids dropped out by 9th grade so I was pretty much the only one in school. The community was mainly retirement age couples without children, they had very strict association rules dictating upkeep of property, etc. One of my less-sensitive frieds dropped me home once and said with wonderment, "Whoa, it's so *nice* here! I can't believe it!"

My younger brother and I had to spend most of a year in the sperm donor's mobile home. It was on an acre lot not far from the Temecula that wendell mentioned upthread. It was an ugly mobile home on an ugly lot and I hated every minute of it.

My mum's mum and her husband had a nice mobile home in a nice park in Goleta, CA.

The mister and I spent most of our first six years living in his RV. It was in four different RV parks during that time. All the parks, except the first one (upkeep was okay but mgt. sucked), were nicely managed and well kept. While I'm grateful we had the RV to live in (major financial difficulties due to the tech bust and me being new in Canada), I'm glad we now have a house. We contemplated buying a mobile home when we were looking for a house. Prices here are crazy, although it's not as bad as Victoria or Vancouver.

My family and I own one now. We have a 2000 Skyline double-wide. It has three bedrooms, two full baths, washer and dryer, eat in kitchen, dishwasher, etc. Here in New Jersey the prices of homes and property taxes are outrageous. Between our mortgage and our lot rent we pay $1100.00 a month for a three bedroom house. We're lucky enough to have a corner lot, and mostly quiet neighbors (only the thoughtless idiots across the street cause any problems). Yeah, there are occasional disagreements between neighbors, but I've encountered that even when I lived in a "real" house. We've got a well kept park here, though I think the park managers can be overbearing at times. There are lots of other kids also, but at night it's extremely quiet. From the outside it looks like a ranch house. Funny thing, new mobile (or manufactured) homes around here are going for up to $175,000.00, so at this rate, they'll be priced above a lot of people. Sometimes the "stigma" can be a bit annoying, but because this is affordable, we can give our kids computers and iPods. Plus side: it's not so big that the kids will stay forever. Bwuhahahahah.

Interesting. Thanks for all the responses. I don't know what I was expecting, and I even thought I'd have something to say, but I really don't.

Well, there is this. I helped one of our tenants move from her mobile home to our building, and her trailer was a horrorshow, with the floor rotting away in places and a carport that had turned into a lean-to due to it getting hit at one corner and never fixed. (Her husband is a long-gone drunk.)

My nephew's girlfriend is a pretty good girl (like him, moderately learning disabled, but working through vet tech school). The family is a bit chaotic but loving, I guess. They only just moved to the park so it's not like it's reflective of their whole life, but they have always rented and they had a disaster a few years back when they couldn't afford the rent on their storage box and everything got thrown out (which to me violates Wisconsin law, so maybe her parents just let it slide). She lost her grandma's photographs, childhood stuffed toys, that sort of thing. Well, it coulda been a tornado, you know.

I just never, in my life, have spent any real amount of time in one. So it feels like I'm a tourist in a foreign country somehow.