10 January 2023
When Moon Valley Residential Community lowered the age restrictions for mobile home residents from 55+ in 2009, Robert Caldwell became one of the first of a younger generation to benefit from the affordable home model.
When the Index-Tribune met Caldwell, he was putting away Christmas decorations from his double-wide manufactured home that he bought for $35,000 in 2010. He was jolly talking about the appreciation of his home after his neighbor sold their unit for upward of $100,000.
“For one, it’s cheaper than buying a home, because that’s gotten just ridiculous,” Caldwell said. “I think in the past, if you lived in a mobile park you were considered ‘trailer trash.’ Now, you’re not. A lot of people are buying them now because they’re affordable.”
As the Bay Area grapples with an affordable housing crisis, Sonoma’s young families and low-income residents are finding housing security in mobile homes — otherwise called manufactured homes — as an affordable housing solution thanks to early government protections.
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