Home in a Can: When Trailers Offered a Compact Version of the American Dream
I think about RV&#x2F;trailer parks a lot, as I live in an RV and travel a lot. It&#x27;s a really fascinating part of the American experience, and it is pretty uniquely American, as well. There are, of course RVs and trailers and mobile homes in other places, but America&#x27;s reverance for the &quot;freedom of the road&quot; or whatever gives the whole community around RVs and trailers a different vibe (even compared to Mexico, where a <i>lot</i> of the RV parks are owned by US ex-pats, and Canada).<p>The part I find maybe most interesting, and most troubling, is the way classism plays out even among the set of people that live in RVs. I&#x27;ve noticed a distinct set of phrases rich&#x2F;white people who travel in RVs use in reviews to describe parks that are inhabited by poor people or people of color, which is a subtle bit of red-lining among RVers. And, this reinforces the division; parks that want good reviews from the wealthy travelers take steps to prevent poor people from staying in their parks. Imposing a trailer age restriction is the most common and most effective; poor folks can&#x27;t afford a new RV. It&#x27;s maybe even <i>more</i> pronounced among RVers because the rich ones don&#x27;t want to be associated with &quot;trailer trash&quot;, even though they have a lot in common with them.<p>But, I think the explosion of housing costs have led to an interesting shakeup in the market. RV manufacturers that historically targeted the high end, where retirees would sell their house (or use the equity in their house) to buy a monster luxury motorhome, a few years ago started making lower end trailers again. Winnebago even makes trailers again, which they didn&#x27;t do for a couple of decades.<p>There&#x27;s also a strong bit of nostalgia in the market that&#x27;s somewhat new. Manufacturers are looking backward for design ideas; partly to make low-cost options again, and partly because the industry got lost in the woods for a long time just making the biggest and most expensive thing they could because that&#x27;s where the money was. I&#x27;m pleased to see the change because old RVs were often beautiful or charming in ways that modern fiberglass rectangle boxes distinctly are not.<p>One thing I&#x27;ve also noticed: RV park prices in major cities have gone through the roof, while availability has gone way down, in the ~9 years I&#x27;ve been traveling. I used to be able to arrive in a city and get a spot in a park within a reasonable distance, without a reservation. No longer is that true. Austin is maybe the most pronounced difference. It was always a favorite landing place for me because it&#x27;s a major city with a couple of RV parks in easy biking distance to downtown. Those parks have doubled their rent and have months-long waiting lists now. It&#x27;s not as pleasant to travel in an RV as it once was, even just a few years ago, if you like visiting bigger cities. And, I think that&#x27;s because so many people have been pushed out of houses&#x2F;apartments and into RVs. That&#x27;s an alarming trend, I think.