Social reproduction, manufactured home parks, and the crisis of housing affordability

Abstract

Manufactured home parks serve diverse populations in the United States, with a significant number of these communities enabling low- and fixed-income households to acquire unsubsidized affordable housing. Solutions to affordable housing scarcity tend to concentrate on increasing the housing stock, while few measures are in place to protect the manufactured home parks that have been an important source of long-term affordable housing. The goal is to produce physical structures with little attention to cultivating the social relations that make a functional community. In this article I analyze ethnographic data collected in Syringa, a manufactured home park that housed low-income service workers, people with disabilities, and retirees on fixed incomes. Findings reveal that Syringa was both a space of “disorder” and a place where people felt safe, understood, and supported. I use the analytical lens of social reproduction theory to foreground how manufactured home communities’ care networks can help neighbors with limited resources have access to services, emotional support, and dignity.