I hate stereotypes about trailers and people who live in trailers. I’ve lived in one, twice.  I have friends who live in trailers.  I once heard a white male talk about “trailer trash” and I just wanted to scream –  was living in a trailer at the time.

I came across an article in USA Today from May 7-9, 202 called “As Demand Sours Many Squeezed Out” about the housing market.  In it, one family has been saving their money to buy a house and are having a hard time with the buying frenzy and over the top offers.

Christine, the prospective homeowner, wants to move out of the trailer park and give her children a yard. They felt trapped in a small space with the pandemic. However in my mind trailer parks are like cohousing – close to your neighbors and you could let your children run around and play.  Of course in both places you want respectful behaviors and at least have the parents try to teach their children to not make too much noise or destroy other people’s properties.  Trailer parks have the reputation of doing that but you’d be surprised what happens in cohousing – and from what I’ve seen in trailer parks and from this article, it happens more in cohousing!

Christine said in the article “When you live in a trailer, your neighbors are so close. We have a yard but it’s not too much. We just wanted them to be able to go out and just be kids like, you know, screaming and yelling and just having fun playing and not bother other people because we’re so close.”

Wow. How considerate of her.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen a lot of kids running around some trailer parks. Cohousing seems to be the opposite – people move there so their kids can run around. Or disregard animal policies and let their dogs run around.  

The question isn’t whether kids run around but the idea of thinking of how it affects the neighbors. If it bothers them, can you set up quiet hours? Or quiet spaces? Or be responsible for whatever a child breaks (on purpose or not).

That’s why I’d take Christine as a neighbor any day!  I hope she finds the home she’s looking for with good neighbors.