Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Ryan Ludwig
Approximately 11 million extremely low-income Americans are impacted by a crisis of unaffordable and unsustainable housing. Many members of this population are caught in a cycle of housing instability fueled by systemic injustices engrained in the built environment. Concurrently, many of these enclaves of concentrated poverty are disproportion¬ately susceptible to the negative impacts of extreme weather caused by climate change. Communities of manufactured housing (formerly known as mobile homes) provide both a clear example of this intersection, and a potential mitigation strategy involving an alternative model of land tenure called Resident Owned Communities (ROCs). Today, manufactured housing is the largest segment of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country. Affordability is achieved through a factory-built process of production, by uncoupling homeownership from landownership, and by adopting a federal building code. Yet, manufactured housing residents experience unique disadvantages rooted in a history of mobile home stigmatization. For example, they are often subjected to exclusionary zoning codes relegating them to more climate-vulnerable areas, they typically don’t have access to traditional mortgages, and approximately half of these homes are situated on rented land, making them susceptible to arbitrary rent increases or evictions. Moreover, for-profit landowners have little incentive to invest in infrastructure maintenance or climate resiliency planning. Architects have also overlooked manufactured housing as a potential design solution in addressing the housing and climate crises because it exists outside conventional models of development and design. ROCs provide an opportunity to ensure long-term affordability and greater community autonomy through collective ownership of the land. In the face of increasing climate precarity, this means that residents–rather than private capital interests–are empowered to make decisions about community resiliency planning and responses. The greater involvement of architects could help foster regenerative design strategies to increase social capital and the quality of dwelling spaces for vulnerable populations.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.70
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
