I DON’T QUITE UNDERSTAND THIS ARTICLE in Slate. The author doesn’t seem to distinguish between “mobile homes” and recreational vehicles, but they’re two rather different things, with very different demographics.
Interestingly, low interest rates have meant that you can buy a real house on a 30-year mortgage and have lower payments than a mobile home with a 10-year mortgage. This has hurt Knoxville’s mobile-home-manufacturing collossus, Clayton Homes, and led to a Warren Buffett takeover attempt that has now been blocked for fraud by a local judge. I don’t know if there’s anything to those charges or not.