Are the stigmas true?

How are our communities different than the trailer parks of the past?

 

 

[Kyle's Perspective]

They can be. We're out here to change those stigmas and by having well-run communities, by converting more renters to owners so that there's a pride of ownership, longevity is definitely affected by ownership. So there's different numbers that I've heard, but it can be either a very transient community where you're seeing turnover of residents in two to three years or in the more heavily owner-occupied buildings. We're gonna have manufactured homes that are owned by people who have been there for seven to 12 years.

And that adds a pride of ownership, it adds stability, it adds neighborhood, it adds community. Those are all things that when you know your neighbors, your life is just better. It's one of those things that I've lived in multi-story apartment buildings and I don't know who my neighbors are from month to month and I didn't ever feel as connected in there as I do in a home.

 

[Annie's Perspective]

You know, what do people think of when they hear manufactured housing communities? They think trailer trash. They think slumlords. And here we are coming into the communities and truly looking for a way to elevate the experience that the residents are having.

When you look at our mission statement and we're saying that we're here to not only increase the availability of affordable housing, but also to transform and improve the quality of lives for our residents, we stand by that and we look to be transformational and changing the stigma around the space to increase more opportunities for manufactured housing communities to be established and built. And then also to transform the experience at the communities for residents where they can have a safe place to live. That's clean, that's friendly. Not everyone has that.

 

[Justin L's Perspective]

I think a lot of people still have that stigma of manufactured housing. I think too many people associate it with trailer parks. I did, because I didn't know the quality of the home. I didn't know the type of people that were living in manufactured housing. I didn't know the kind of communities that exist in this industry. And I think there's just a lot of people out there that don't understand that.

Slowly but surely we're getting to a point that more are becoming aware of that. Especially also as just people learn more about the quality. If you look back and you see that HUD standards were established in the mid 70s. Manufactured housing as it exists today is very young. It's very new.So people still look back at trailer parks, but it's not trailer parks. These are very clean, nice, high quality communities that people can move into.

 

[Erin's Perspective]

Here's a very good story.

I, when I was little, my mom worked in this industry for all growing up, my mom was in this industry. And so I would always make fun of her and say that she worked for trailer parks.

And then when I got into this industry and really started understanding this business,(...) these are not trailers by any shred of a chance, right? Because I've climbed under these homes. I've been in and out all around, top to bottom, right? We have a lot of these homes that are physically set into the ground. I mean, you couldn't move these houses if you tried.

So to tell me that these are trailer park communities would be telling me that I don't have blood in my body. They are just, they're not. And to talk to the people that live in these communities, this is their life blood.

I listened today to Justin talk to a couple of the residents that live here at Sunnyvale. And it warms my heart to hear that, you know, we've got kids that are attached to other residents that live in the communities and they're doing Easter egg hunts and Christmas stuff and all that stuff.

They're not the trailer parks that I knew when I was a kid. These are manufactured home communities and communities is the biggest word there.

That's the biggest part about this.