Public attitudes toward mobile homes

General literature concerning mobile homes and specific literature concerning public attitudes toward mobile homes is presented. The literature showed the salient problems and characteristics of mobile homes. The problems were primarily associated with taxation methods, standards of development, financing, legislative and regulatory problems. All of these appear to contribute to stereotyping mobile homes with negative attitudes, which is the crux of the problem analysed in the thesis. The characteristics of mobile homes and its residents are reviewed in light of regional and national studies completed in Canada and the United States. The national studies do draw very similiar [sic]conclusions whereas the regional studies deviate somewhat and show the particular characteristics of the region, which may differ from region to region. The methodology looked at the attitudes of the public adjacent to and also some distance from different quality mobile home parks. This was accomplished through the use of a questionnaire distributed to various clusters of households in the study area of Coquitlam, British Columbia. The thesis attempts to analyse attitudes toward the problems and find the effect they play in stereotyping attitudes toward mobile homes. A series of null hypotheses were used to test the hypothesis, through the use of chi square tests and correlation analysis. A further series of sub-null hypotheses were tested through the use of t tests and correlation analysis in an attempt to delineate causal factors related to negative attitudes. The major findings showed that quality of mobile home parks was important to the public. The null hypotheses showed that the public's attitudes toward mobile homes related to their responses on quality of mobile homes. Furthermore, quality responses were found to relate to responses on the degradation of market values of residential areas adjacent to mobile home parks. It was also noticed that the stronger the stereotype attitudes then more null hypotheses were rejected and the stronger was the acceptance of the hypothesis. The thesis concludes that in view of the literature and questionnaire findings that the overall problems of mobile homes must be emendated. Correction of only some of the problems, such as standards of development, will not lead to the healthiest solution possible for mobile homes. Mobile homes are deemed an important supply of housing for people who prefer this particular life-style. Therefore, a new mobile homes policy has been recommended and a brief outline for such a policy has been proposed. To develop a mobile homes policy much research is needed in the areas of standards of development, taxation and financing methods, socio-economic studies, design implications, and a review of governmental policies.Applied Science, Faculty ofCommunity and Regional Planning (SCARP), School ofGraduat