One Thing HUD Can Do To Save Trailer Parks

Trailer park residents across the country are facing eviction because owners are intent on developing the land beneath their not-so-mobile homes to more lucrative ends. This is a big deal: Trailer parks make up the largest portion of non-subsidized affordable housing in the country, says Esther Sullivan, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver who spent two years living in and getting evicted from trailer parks for her research.

But few policymakers take the issue seriously in part because of the lack of data available. We cannot understand the scope of what advocates describe as a crisis, and act to confront it, if we don't have that data. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could do at least one relatively easy thing to help: compel localities to provide data on mobile home parks and their closing as part of the consolidated plans required of jurisdictions receiving funding from programs like the Community Development Block Grant.