Caption: Doris Fravel, Credit: Emily Reddy
Image by: Emily Reddy 
Doris Fravel 

Mobile Homes As Affordable Housing

From: WPSU-FM
Length: 00:05:19

A new study finds that people who live in mobile homes are overwhelmingly satisfied with their housing despite problems. The researcher says that could make mobile homes a good affordable housing resource. Read the full description.
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Piece Description

Mobile homes are a common housing choice in rural Pennsylvania.   And no surprise. They’re affordable for young couples, retirees on a budget, and low-income workers.  A new study from Penn State finds something else.  Mobile home dwellers are overwhelmingly satisfied with their choice of housing.

Transcript

[clock chiming]
Doris Fravel sits on the couch in her living room, done up in pinks and browns. A wall clock ticks behind her and a police scanner murmurs in the corner. [police scanner] Fravel is 80. She lives alone in an avocado green trailer nestled in a small mobile home park on the outskirts of the town of Jersey Shore.
It’s a Marlette trailer. And they’re very well built and this is a ’74.
Fravel says she really likes her mobile home.
I must like it, or I wouldn’t be here 33 years.
Fravel says her mobile home is well-built, close to town, and much roomier than the place she and her husband rented before they moved here.
We lived in an apartment and it was small. Not a whole lot of room. Nothing like…this is almost like a home.
Fravel gets annoyed when people look down on mobile homes. She says if more people had bought homes they could afford, the United States might have...
Read the full transcript