Last week, we spoke on the current state of the housing shortage in California. This week we’ll look at one option available to municipalities to address this issue: the development of mobile, or manufactured, home parks.
Why choose to develop mobile or manufactured home parks?
With mobile or manufactured home parks, many of the traditional hurdles to property development can be circumvented, such as:
- Costs: The production of a mobile home or manufactured home park is significantly less expensive than building a traditional home. Standardized plans, cheaper materials and smaller footprints are all less expensive traits of a mobile home park.
- Speed: With a more standardized construction and more easily sourced materials comes the ability to build initial structures or expand as needed more efficiently. This means growth can happen at a vastly quicker pace than with other types of housing.
- Conversion: As an added benefit, maintenance and development of a mobile home park can eventually transition to a resident-owned model. This means an investment in the creation and management of a low-income mobile home park is temporary.
When taken together, it is obvious that a manufactured or mobile park is a strong investment for affordable housing. This municipal investment, then, can offer significant stability for individuals. Stable home life tends to make a person more capable of finding and retaining work, thus expanding a tax base and making for a better community overall.
Building partnerships for growth
However, if a municipality were to decide that low-income housing developments were something to pursue, it would then need to find a development partner. That can be a challenge as many housing developers consider luxury homes to be the better investment.
Next week we will explore the advantages of low-income housing from a corporate real estate development perspective.