Between Lifestyle and Necessity: Senior Mobile Home Living in Florida

This paper focuses on a community-type that has long been attractive to older people in the Sunbelt states of the US: the mobile home park.  While living in a mobile home is generally more affordable than living in a site-built home, many seniors actively seek, and even move across the country, to participate in the “mobile home lifestyle” in the US southern regions which promises a pleasing climate, homeownership, leisure activities, community, and friendship to White middle and working class seniors. My paper examines to which extent these expectations by seniors are fulfilled in which kinds of communities, and how social differences, economic struggles, as well as health and personal issues can compromise them over time.   

The paper is based on an analysis of 150 qualitative interviews conducted with residents of mobile home communities on the Gulf Coast of Florida between 2005 and 2009, where more mobile home parks are more numerous than anywhere else in the US. Just over half of the interview participants were 55 years or older; roughly one fourth resided in so-called senior parks which restrict residency to persons over the age of 55, while the other half lived in communities that also accommodate middle aged residents and children.

Even though it is not an entirely urban phenomenon, the senior mobile home lifestyle is influenced by urban experiences and cultural imagery, such as fear of crime or racial/ethnic conflict, often creating a longing for simpler, more neighborly and homogeneous communities which can, however, turn out to be less stable, affordable, and personally fulfilling for older people than originally anticipated.