trailer park

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Trailer park in West Miami, Florida

A trailer park is a neighborhood consisting of an area of land where travel trailers rest. The term may also be used to refer to mobile home parks or manufactured home communities.

In the United States, tornadoes and hurricanes often inflict their worst damage on trailer parks, usually because the structures are not secured to the ground and their construction is significantly less able to withstand high wind forces than regular houses. However, most modern manufactured homes are built to withstand high winds as well as a mainstream home, using hurricane straps and proper foundations.

In the United States, trailer parks are stereotypically viewed as lower income housing whose occupants live at or below the poverty line, have low social status and lead a desultory and deleterious lifestyle. Despite the advances in manufactured home technology, the trailer park stereotype still survives, evidenced in a statement by Presidential adviser James Carville in the course of one of the Clinton White House political scandals, "Drag $1 bills through trailer parks, there's no telling what you'll find"," regarding Paula Jones.^[1] It is also seen in the Canadian Mockumentary, Trailer Park Boys.

Recent history

New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: Park in unflooded part of town has been turned into FEMA trailer camp for temporary housing for people whose homes were destroyed or are too damaged to live in at present

This perception of trailer parks was not improved by FEMA's creation of emergency trailer parks for the displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina, the quality and temporary nature of which was disputed.^[2] Many stereotypes have developed regarding people who live in trailer parks, which are similar to stereotypes of the poor and the term often used as an adjective in the same vein as the derogatory American terms white trash or ghetto. Though trailer parks appear throughout the country, they are often associated with the Deep South and rural areas.

Outside North America

In Europe, particularly in Germany and Spain, there are several disputed trailer parks mostly forcefully or unlawfully placed on squatted land in the midst of urban centers (Berlin, Hamburg, Barcelona). Names for such phenomena include Wagenburg, Wagendorf or Bauwagenplatz (all German, meaning: "wagon fort", "trailer village" and "construction trailer place" respectively) and people living there are often associated with the punk movement and do-it-yourself punk ethic. A somewhat similar phenomenon exists in Britain, in the form of communities established informally by New age travelers, Irish travelers, and Roma. On the whole, however, trailer parks are much less common in these countries than they are elsewhere and in North America and are much less emblematic of a distinct lifestyle and membership to a certain social class.

In Australia, there is generally no differentiation between a trailer park and an RV park. The term "caravan park" is used to refer to both.

See also

• RV park
• Shanty town
• Trailer Park Boys
• Trailer trash

Notes

External links