Michael Stephens| Guest columnist
A few years back, I drove a friend around Gainesville in an effort to help him find a place to live. He survived on a disability check so small he had tosearch his mailbox with a magnifying glass, so we limited ourselves to the cheapest prospects. One of the last was a ragged trailer park on the east side.
Unable to find the office, we bumped down washed-out alleys, looking for residents to ask about rent. Atlastwe met an elderly couple outsidetheircrumblingsingle-wide.
The man sat in a wheelchair. They told us the park was closing. It had been sold, and was to be demolished. They did not knowwhere they were going to go.
My friend ended up at a homeless camp before finding a room he could barely afford.
Polk's Gainesville city directory for 1980 lists 23 mobile home parks. There were still20in 1992, and some had expanded.
Windmeadows, perhapsthe largest, is listed as having 332 lots. Today its site is home to an extension of the soul-blighting Butler Plaza shopping complex.
Most of the smaller parks have vanished as well. Indian Summer, Hillcrest, Ideal, Moore Haven: All have gone the way of so many Florida trailer parks.
What became of their residents is seldom recorded.
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The total number oftrailerlots across Florida is in a slow decline. With Florida's population explosion, that makes spaces in trailer parks increasinglyhard to come by, and drives prices up. Furthermore, the small, humble parks that tend to shelter the working poor have suffered the most closures.
In some parks, residents rent trailers directly from the park owners. In others, the newcomer buys a trailer or moves one in, and pays rent only forthe lot on which the trailer stands. Either way, with fewer lots to go around, it's increasingly a game of musical trailers.
As free-market affordable housing, trailer parks would seem to be ideal for Florida. They were at one time. But as Florida has grown richer for some,and crowded for all, they have been pushed aside.
Today, Floridians who live in trailer parks have few political friends. Most have no money to donate to campaigns, and their homes are increasingly inthe way of well-connected developers.
For big-business Republicans, trailer parks' fates are purely economic: land values and rent potential. They don't care where the residents gothe poorare unwisely written off as voters simply because they are poorbut they slobber over the vision of a shopping center or professional sports stadiumrising on the land vacated by a financially inefficient trailer park.
The hostility of many liberal Democrats is more complex. The parks harbor what are to them the most inexplicable people: working-class Republicans,with their MAGA hats and battered pickup trucks. Trailer parks are citadels of individualism that defy liberals' desire to regiment and manage the poor.
With their hard-maintained independence, trailer-dwellers seldom make servile followers of any political creed.
Sowhat changes can help Florida's trailer parks and their residents, assuming anyone in government will work on their behalf? Less restrictivezoning wouldmake establishing new parks easier. With their light infrastructure, trailer parks have far less environmental impact than subdivisions or apartmentbuildings, and the land can be more easily repurposed if demand changes.
Successful cooperative associations (tenant-owned trailer parks) in Florida have lowered residents' costs while giving them security against beingevicted for redevelopment. Providing tax incentives would help new cooperative associations rehabilitate neglected trailer parks. Moderating codes ininland locations would allow owner-occupiers to bring in older trailers that may not quite meet the stringent codes required of commercial trailer parks.
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Traileritesmight also do well to make common cause with the similarly disparaged tiny-house movement. Between them, they could develop enoughlobbying power to win "small" victories. And parks combining hipsters in their tiny houses and blue-collar squares in their trailers would be better able tocircle the wagons (so to speak) against the forces of upper-middle-class respectability.
The age of Florida's freewheeling "tin-can tourist camps" may be long over, but Florida's need for affordable housing has never been greater. Floridiansof the past had the right idea when they set up trailer communities that emphasized both affordability and freedom.
Trailer parks are not perfect, but they can help the most economically vulnerable Floridians avoid homelessness. At their best, they offer people oflimited means a little slice of the Florida dream.
Michael Stephens lives in Gainesville.
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