The mobile home (trailer or recreational vehicle) would seem successfully to synthesize two great American twentieth-century obsessions: freedom/ mobility and automobiles.

Certainly, the emergence of automotive campers and trailers before the Second World War as well as accommodations for these compact homesteads offered this promise. Yet, during wartime shortages and their aftermath, a second vision came to dominate the industry—that of mobile homes as pre-manufactured alternative housing. By the 1980s, 90 percent of mobile homes remained stationary after their initial move; moreover, they represented one out of every three new single-family homes sold. Rather than mobility ironically they are identified with the lack of it, socially as well as literally in retirement complexes, marginal housing or, at best, temporary or secondary dwellings. “Trailer parks,” communities built to accommodate these homes, have gained especially negative imagery reinforced by urban restrictions and limitations on financing.

The American origins of these homes preceded automobiles—in the covered wagons of westward migrations (commemorated in a 1929 commercial trailer), in elite train cars or even gypsies (the “motorized Gypsy van” was another prototype name). Generally early mobile homes were individual modifications on existing transportation.

Commercial production expanded in the 1930s, including the classic Airstream with sleek modern lines. Interiors were cramped, although aerodynamic fittings provided basic house services in ingenious ways. Some were residential but others roamed expanding highways and tourist sites—the 1939 New York World’s Fair offered 1,200 trailer spaces in the Bronx.

The Second World War restricted gas and travel. Yet population displacements for industry and military meant new uses for the trailer home as “temporary housing.” Truly temporary usage continued through the 1990s on construction sites, film locations, dorms and classrooms. Yet permanence also changed production and use. From the 1950s onwards, production moved towards larger units with private rooms and more extensive facilities. These included expandable structures and homes based on multiple sections.

Once moved by trucks to a site they became permanent—sunk into the ground, built onto (carports, additional rooms) and landscaped. By the late 1990s, this manufactured housing cost from 110,000 to more than $100,000; even the latter remains “affordable” compared to new home construction.

In the 1990s, nearly half of all mobile homes resided in 24,000 “parks” scattered from expanding Sunbelt and metropolitan fringes to New York City (Staten Island). Parks have grown from 40–60 lots in the postwar era to an average of 200 sites. These developments often show concern with fostering community through decoration, streetscapes or recreational facilities. Half of mobile homes occupy private lots, including second homes for resorts or retirement.

Settlements have not eliminated movement, although these faced further setbacks with the fuel crisis of the 1970s. Compact recreational vehicles like the Winnebago, campers and modified of pickup trucks have restated the mobile-home ideal in terms of access to the outdoors through automotive freedom.

Yet the social and media connotations of these homes remain clear—although they foster privacy and domesticity they are non-standard, cheaper, impersonal and associated with transience. News coverage emphasizes weather damage and frailty (the American Association of Retired Persons, in 1999, said 75 percent of owners had complaints).

Fictional media use them as settings for immigrants, the poor or outcasts; the epithet “trailer trash” conveys a sneer that might not be voiced politely in ethnic or class terms.