A lot of people want to know how many people live in manufactured homes. I think it is because there is a sense that the figure is large, but also not known. In many communities, parks are located in out-of-the-way places. In North Carolina, about one-in-six families lives in manufactured housing. Yet here in Durham, it is unusual to see even one mobile home during the course of daily life. The parks are there, just on the outskirts of town. I have a friend who lives in some remote land north of Chapel Hill. There are two parks, straddling a highway overpass, near his home.

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This editorial from the Virginia Gazette, in Williamsburg, expresses the strange contradiction in public opinion.  The public wants more affordable housing.  They don’t want more manufactured housing, at least not in their neighborhood.

It is not a tsunami of public opinion, but it is nice to see the idea emerging.

In many cases, I wonder how many land use planners make the linkage when they designate the appropriate uses for residential land in their communities.