Real Property Supremacy: Manufactured Housing and the Limits of Inclusion through Finance

Abstract

Manufactured housing (MH) communities have emerged as a high-profile and lucrative asset class. Despite this, it is costly or impossible to get loans to buy homes in most mobile home parks. This article explores this ostensible contradiction—that whereas MH parks are desirable and liquid assets, the individual homes that compose them are not. We explore the implications of this contradiction for housing justice as well as financial and environmental vulnerability. We argue that the marginality of MH in U.S. housing markets is rooted in the privileging of real property above personal property. We describe the origins and impacts of this “real property supremacy” in two parts. In the first, we outline the macro-historical context of real property supremacy using a variety of sources, including interviews with federal officials and industry experts as well as document analysis. In the second, we connect this macro context to its micro consequences, drawing on interviews with MH residents, nonprofit and social-service practitioners, and park managers and owners in Tucson, Arizona. We conclude that state-supported property hierarchies create conditions where constrained housing options, semiformal financial practices, and unique tenure forms combine to (re)produce unique and intersecting forms of vulnerability in MH communities.

预制房社区已经成为令人瞩目且利润丰厚的资产类型。但是, 获得大多数移动房营区的购房贷款, 非常昂贵或者根本不可能。本文探讨了这种表面上的矛盾：尽管预制房营区是理想的流动资产, 但构成营区的每个住房却非如此。我们探讨了这种矛盾对住房正义以及金融和环境脆弱性的影响。预制房在美国住房市场中的边缘化, 源自不动产高于个人财产的特权。我们分两部分描述了“不动产至上”的起源和影响。首先, 利用各种数据源(对联邦政府官员和行业专家的采访、文件分析), 我们概述了不动产至上的宏观历史背景。然后, 根据对亚利桑那州图森市的预制房居民、非营利组织、社会服务者、营区管理者和所有者的采访, 我们将这种宏观背景与其微观后果联系起来。本文的结论是, 国家支持的财产等级制度, 结合了限制性住房选择、半正规金融实践和独特的保有权形式, 从而在预制房社区中(重新)产生了独特的、交叉性的脆弱性。

Las comunidades de vivienda prefabricada (MH) han emergido como una clase de activos lucrativa y de alto perfil. No obstante, resulta costoso o imposible conseguir créditos para comprar viviendas en la mayoría de los parques de casas móviles. Este artículo explora la ostensible contradicción –que en tanto la mayoría de esos parques la MH es activa, deseable y líquida, a nivel individual las casas que lo constituyen no lo son–. Examinamos las implicaciones de aquella contradicción para la justicia habitacional, lo mismo que como una vulnerabilidad financiera y ambiental. Sostenemos que la marginalidad de las MH en los mercados inmobiliarios se arraiga en el privilegio de la propiedad real por encima de la propiedad personal. Describimos los orígenes e impactos de esta “supremacía de la propiedad real”, en dos partes. En la primera, bosquejamos el contexto macrohistórico de la supremacía de la propiedad inmobiliaria usando diversas fuentes, incluyendo entrevistas con funcionarios federales y expertos industriales, y también análisis de documentos. En la segunda, conectamos este contexto macro con sus microconsecuencias, apoyándonos en entrevistas sostenidas con residentes de la MH, practicantes de servicios sin ánimo lucrativo, y administradores y propietarios de parques en Tucson, Arizona. Concluimos que las jerarquías de propiedad que cuentan con el apoyo estatal crean condiciones donde las opciones de vivienda limitadas, las prácticas financieras semiformales y formas de tenencias muy singulares, se combinan para (re)producir formas únicas e interseccionales de vulnerabilidad en las comunidades de MH.

Key Words:

• financial geography
• home lending
• housing
• manufactured housing
• property

关键词：:

• 金融地理
• 住房贷款
• 住房
• 预制房
• 财产。

Palabras clave:

• geografía financiera
• vivienda
• vivienda manufacturada
• préstamos para vivienda
• propiedad

Acknowledgments

Thanks first go to the MH residents whose invaluable participation forms the foundation of our research. We also benefited from the knowledge of those who work, regulate, and serve this part of the U.S. housing system. We are grateful to Annals editors, staff, and our anonymous reviewers, whose guidance and insights were of critical importance. Sincere thanks go to the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice for providing the seed funding that enabled our productive and participatory research partnership with Habitat for Humanity Tucson, especially Ann Vargas, and the City of Tucson, especially Sarah Launius. Final thanks go to the graduate research assistants and undergraduate interns—Laura McCann, Andrea Lara Garcia, Myriam Sandoval, Joseph Meisburger, and Michela Wilson—who participated in and translated interviews, attended community meetings, and recruited participants.

Notes

1 We use the shorthand MH to refer to mobile homes (a term regulators reserve for transportable residential structures built before June 1976), and manufactured homes (a term used by regulators to refer to transportable residential structures built after June 1976 and approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).

2 In a land lease community, households rent the land their house rests on, whether or not they own the house itself.

3 Although the term American dream was not coined until the early twentieth century, and although its meaning has always been somewhat indistinct (Cullen 2003), we use it to describe the ideological promise of prosperity through the ownership of real property.

4 21st Mortgage and Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance are subsidiaries of the largest MH retailer in the United States, Clayton Homes, which was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway at the height of the “MH subprime crisis” in 2003. This implies an extremely high four-firm concentration ratio of approximately 75 percent (Schneider et al. 2021).

5 These tenant protections do not directly address rent increases and are often weaker than those already in place in many jurisdictions. Moreover, mechanisms to ensure the enforcement of these protections are unclear. The protections are one-year renewable term for the site lease; thirty-day written notice of rent increases; five-day grace period for late rent payments; rights of the tenant of a site lease to sell the manufactured home without having to move it out of the MH community; sublease the manufactured home or assign the site lease to a buyer, provided the buyer meets the minimum MH community rules and regulations and credit quality for financing; post “for sale” signs on the MH, provided the signage complies with the MH community rules and regulations; sell the MH in place within forty-five days after eviction; and receive at least sixty days’ notice of any planned sale or closure of the MH community.

6 A household is considered to be housing cost burdened if it spends more than 30 percent of income on housing costs.

7 The National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act (1974, enacted June 1976), or the “HUD Code” (in reference to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD], which administers the law), created a uniform minimum standard for MH, effectively dividing the market into two overarching quality and safety classes: pre‐1976 (“mobile homes”) and post‐1976 (“manufactured homes”).

8 Interviews were conducted by Mark Kear, Margaret Wilder, and Dugan Meyer, with assistance from Laura McCann, Myriam Sandoval, Joe Meisburger, Niamh Trinci, Michela Wilson, and Andrea Lara-Garcia. Transcripts were coded in Atlas.ti by Mark Kear, Dugan Meyer, Andrea Lara-Garcia, and Phoenix Eskridge-Aldama.

9 HUD defines a housing unit as severely inadequate if it does not have hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, and a flush toilet, or if it shares plumbing facilities (Leopold et al. 2016).

10 See Fairbanks (2009), who described how operators of addiction recovery houses get their clients “plugged in” with the Philadelphia Department of Public Welfare to sustain their businesses.

11 This paraphrases Satter (2009, 6) writing about contract selling in the redlined neighborhood of North Lawndale in Chicago.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Kear

MARK KEAR is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. E-mail: [email protected]. His research focuses on the development and reform of financial markets to ameliorate inequalities related to climate change, housing access and quality, and urban development.

Dugan Meyer

DUGAN MEYER is a PhD Student in the School of Geography, Development, & Environment and in the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. E-mail: [email protected]. His research centers on critical geographic approaches to (in)security and police power in the United States.

Margaret O. Wilder

MARGARET O. WILDER is a Professor in the School of Geography, Development, & Environment and in the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. E-mail: [email protected]. She is a human–environment geographer and political ecologist whose work focuses on water governance and equity and climate vulnerability and justice in Mexico, the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, and in Latin America.