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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

I have an answer.

Buy the trailer park. Sell it to the tenants. Their rent payments become mortgage payments, in effect. When they finish buying the property en masse, it becomes controlled by a tenant-run cooperative.

This is, obviously, a money-losing proposition for whoever buys the trailer park in the first place. That's why it should probably be a government entity.

If the trailer park residents can do it by themselves -- and in several locations, they have -- that's great. But it would be preferable to have self-owned communities over slums, even if you have to have the government provide the initial loan and organization.

Is it socialism? Sure. The good kind.

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See also: Community Land Trusts http://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/clts/index.html

There are a lot of ways to hack our legal and financial systems to literally make the world a better place. Problem is: they don't make anyone rich.

If a mortgage was a good plan for them, they probably wouldn't be in a trailer park...

Renting has value that is appropriate for some people. Ownership is not always the answer.

Sure, mortgage on a house isn't good for these people, because they don't have the money for a down payment, or the money to pay for a regular house. Give them the opportunity to purchase a small house on a small plot of land, though, and it could work. Mortgage for a house is about equal to the average rent in many places, and people living in trailer parks usually don't have the problem of not intending to stay very long (like apartment dwelling often do).

Exactly. I was raised poor, as were my parents, and my grandparents on both sides before them. I learned a lot of bad financial habits from them which screwed me up in my 20s, but I've unlearned most of that and I'm on the right track now.

One thing I learned from them that turned out to be beneficial is to think small; don't buy something I can't afford. Six years ago I made my first house purchase at the age of 32, and while it's not a McMansion in an upper-middle-class subdivision, it's a practical and affordable home. My mortgage payment including taxes and insurance fees is less than $400/month for a three-bedroom farmhouse on half an acre of land. I'm not in a subdivision so I'm not subject to my neighbors' whims about curtain colors and such, and in five years I'll have it paid off (and our vehicles are already paid off).

My health isn't the best, and if I end up having to retire early it will be comforting to know that my family will have a paid-for home and cars, and we won't have to choose between making a house payment or buying groceries in a given month.

A house and half an acre for 20k!? Where?

He appears to be from Paulding County, GA (based on his website). It's about 15 miles west of Atlanta.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/147-Mill-Cr... shows a mobile home on 0.49 acres in the area. Zillow shows several recently sold homes in the area for $25k and under.

You can actually find similar deals in a lot of small towns. I picked a couple of small towns I happen to have family connections to -- Hillsboro, KS and El Dorado Springs, MO -- and found houses listed in both places for $20k or less.

Actually the property was $43k, it's a 30 year loan I plan on paying off extremely early. And the other reply is correct, it's in Paulding County, Georgia.

I would point out they can buy their own unit already if that works for them.

Sure, but owning the entire property is a superior option because it means they are not paying anyone for the privilege of living there (minus taxes to the government).

You can buy a little parcel of land to put your mobile home on too. Mobile home parks are not the only place they can be put.

Yeah, but the original idea was a social welfare plan. The target isn't those who will take initiative to find and buy a tiny parcel for their trailer (tiny parcels are a very hard thing to find), but the people stuck in a rut of trailer living. Its not about the opportunity already being there, it needs to be presented as a realistic option.

There's proof that this solution works :

Something similar was done for a large percent of housing in Israel , in the 50-80's. Israel was a newly formed state, with massive immigration coming with pretty large economic challenges. And yet it worked out pretty well - and housing wasn't a big problem - and everybody could get a place to live.

Living in a maabara is considered good housing? Have you been in a rakevet building recently?

Yes i know what a rakevet building(long building with say more than 5 entrances) is.They might not be that beautiful but functionality wise they are pretty decent. And many would prefer to have the option of living in such building than the current mess that is Israel housing today.

Housing for Israelis isn't a big problem; housing for the dislodged Palestinians is a different question.

The US already has FHA loans that allow you to buy property with as little as 3.5% down, with the rest paid back over 30 years. They're backed by the government, so it isn't risky for the banks to give out the loans. My interest rate was 3.2%

I remember hearing that before this program was put in, you had to put 50% down on a house with the rest at 9-12% interest paid back over 5 years.

There's also nothing stopping people from pooling money together, investing in an apartment complex, and converting it to condominiums. You'd have to deal with people who don't pay, but I imagine you could get a lender to help you out if you had an entire community ready to pay them back.

There are lots of barriers actually. These folks are usually poorly educated and pretty clueless about ownership and financing. These are folks using check cashing, payday loans and title loans.

They are caught in a cycle of learned helplessness and poverty. You need to give them support in the form of counseling and other things to get them to be successful owners.

Loans will never fix the housing market.

The only real fix is for some entity to flood the market by building and selling houses at a fixed price.

What housing loans do is simply inflating and re-inflating property bubbles.

> That's why it should probably be a government entity.

Or, you know, a non-profit organization.

Look up the chattel crisis of the early 90s. Most of these people do not have the funds for a mortgage and can't be underwritten.

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