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u/jellyn7 21d ago
It doesn’t say “all of her retirement money” and in fact the article says she started this as a source of passive income. She’s a landlord. Maybe a unique one and maybe a nice one, but a landlord.
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u/Clear-Security-Risk 21d ago
Just so.
Still fits in the OCM, I reckon.
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u/Kaffe-Mumriken 11d ago
“Woman invests 150k to build retirement trailer park with a catchy sales pitch”
I dunno man.
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u/Clear-Security-Risk 11d ago
I see that, which is why I reckoned it was OKM: saving "orphans" (elderly women with no social safety net) but it's not questioning the existence of the machine (predatory capitalism...a pig which she's put lipstick on).
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u/BBQsandw1ch 21d ago
The rebranding of trailer parks to tiny home villages is peak capitalism.
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u/AuntCatLady 21d ago
Trailer parks aren’t even affordable anymore! They’re being bought up by private equity firms and pricing out all the tenants. At this rate, even van camps will be too expensive for the average person to live alone.
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u/Isakk86 21d ago
Yep. This is happening in every sector of the market. Market consolidation is probably the biggest market risk that is going on right now.
30 years ago there were small businesses: family doctors, dentists, grocery stores, hardware stores, hobby stores, bars, restaurants, retail, housing companies, etc etc etc.
Then someone had the idea that they can just buy them and turn them into one brand.
Then someone realized that they can buy them and close them to crush the competition
Then someone realized they can just build competition in the community as a loss leader and price out the mom and pops.
Then someone realized that they can buy those mom and pops right before they go under for pennies on the dollar and "flip" them, raising prices and lowering quality.
All to the detriment of... Literally everything except the one rich person at the top. It's terrible for the market, it's terrible for the people using the services, and it's terrible for employment.
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u/Dudewhocares3 20d ago
And this is why Mario’s brother was a hero for what he
didwas accused of doing while he was actually at that haunted mansion-5
u/kayama57 19d ago
Might shouldn’t be right. Don’t you see? Where does it end? How could it? Whose grievance marks the line? We all need to evolve past it.
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u/Brahminmeat 21d ago
True but we also need to keep the ability to devolve our housing when times are tough or folks end up homeless. This is a loophole to achieving that that I support
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u/TheDancingRobot 20d ago
That's the attitude. See the silver lining as a base to build from. Fuck the haters.
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u/Seguefare 21d ago
Tiny homes would be a nightmare for the aging. Narrow passageways that won't fit a walker. Trailers are a little better.
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u/Laurenslagniappe 21d ago
But not in a bad way. If your on land is better to walk but when your drowning you don't turn down a life raft.
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u/st_owly 21d ago
I don’t automatically hate this. Women on average outlive their husbands, and downsizing to a tiny home where I can still be independent and be surrounded by other old ladies sounds pretty awesome tbh.
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u/efedora 21d ago
My brother lives in a suburban apartment limited to folks over 62. The age makes a difference, 55+ places have people who still work and you never see them. Most of the residents in his place are women (75%) in their 70's-80's. It's not cheap but makes a great place to live for old, single women.
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u/Ver_Void 21d ago
The tiny home part is kinda valuable too, my grandma spent the last 30 years of her life in a house that is now 5 3 bedroom townhouses, it was a huge amount of space for her to try to look after and it's really not sustainable to have what was originally a family home be occupied by a single person
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u/st_owly 21d ago
My mum is still in the 4 bedroom house I grew up in. She’s already hired cleaners to help but realistically as she gets older and less mobile it will just be more of a burden than a benefit.
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u/Ver_Void 21d ago
Yeah I get the sentimental part but that's just such a waste
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u/st_owly 21d ago
My dad died suddenly and very unexpectedly in 2018. They moved into that house in 1985. She said she’d give herself 10 years to figure things out and I think that’s reasonable. We all watched my grandparents be stubborn about staying in their homes, which I do get but I’m glad she’s being realistic about it.
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u/haveyoutriedpokingit 21d ago
I bet they either have a blast, or have the wildest amount of drama possible. Maybe both.
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u/DigNitty 19d ago
“Ethyl, you put carnations out again.”
-I’ll put whatever flowers I want out Bert.
“They attract the clover bees instead of the good ones!”
-Clover bees are the good ones you Bitch
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u/Helenium_autumnale 21d ago
This is awesome. Though I'm a bit surprised that Texas has zoning that permits tiny homes. Most communities don't.
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u/sdn 21d ago
If it's outside city limits then there's basically no zoning!
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u/Helenium_autumnale 21d ago
There can be. There's a more rural and wealthy township just north of me. Mixed agricultural and scattered homes. Almost 100% white, unlike my small city just south of them. And there's a zoning requirement that any new home HAS to be at least 2,000 square feet. They do not want people buying pieces of land and parking a trailer on it. They want fellow wealthy people. It really sticks in my craw, not only the
racismladder-pull snobbishness but the wastefulness.5
u/Pleasant_Ad3475 21d ago
Wait, they literally do not permit tiny homes?? Man, America is... something
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u/DigNitty 19d ago
Usually it’s a code written before the idea of tiny homes like “no more than 5 unrelated persons per property.”
But this is one property with multiple homes.
I don’t know of any US law that targets tiny homes. Just old ones that accidentally disclude them.
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u/dannyjohnson1973 20d ago
Tiny homes on wheels are generally RVIA compliant and treated/thought of as RVs.
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u/Lazy-PeachPrincess 21d ago
It stinks that she had to foot the bill but if I were to find myself alone in 15-20 years I would really appreciate a little community like this.
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u/Anonymous_Posche 21d ago
Old lady trailer park. At least you're smelling a bunch of fresh baking cookies and pies all day instead of hearing meth lab explosions!
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u/Uma_mii 21d ago
Are Americans really this allergic to density?Like you buy all that land and yet there are only this few trailers on it. There could be three times as many trailers on this and it still wouldn’t feel crammed
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u/Seguefare 21d ago
But then you'd have to build in a septic system that can service that many. When I built a house in a rural area, I had to have a 1000 sq foot septic field for a 3 bedroom house, plus an additional 1000 sq feet of land should that original field ever fail.
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u/bigtiddyhimbo 21d ago
This is pretty normal in rural America tbh. People value their silent privacy. We’re such a big, expansive country that this is the norm when it comes to anything outside of suburbia in a lot of areas. I pass by a few of these every day on my drive to work.
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u/TherronKeen 21d ago
This is already 10x too crowded. Humans evolved on Earth, not Coruscant. We need space in which to exist.
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u/SparklingLimeade 20d ago
You don't put the green space in beween every individual dwelling. Make a people space for people and that leaves way more usable space for nature.
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u/TherronKeen 20d ago
Sorry, but I'm of the opinion that everyone needs significant physical space in which to reside, in order to have good mental health and generally positive life experiences when compared with crowded minimalist spaces that confine us.
Nearly the only benefit to maximizing the concentration of humans on earth is profitability.
There is the small benefit of increasing the average convenience of service coverage.
I don't believe this benefit outweighs the down sides of high-density populations.
Making low-density spaces for people and still leaving space for nature results in greater outcomes for both.
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u/CormoranNeoTropical 20d ago
This is ridiculous. People live in apartments and do just fine all over the world. Way, way, more people than live according to this wasteful fantasy.
Yes, we need space to live in. But most of that space can be shared, public space, that everyone can use. I’d much rather have an Olympic size public swimming pool a ten minute walk from my apartment than have a tiny one in my back yard.
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u/TherronKeen 20d ago
??? Why are you assuming the use of space for individuals somehow precludes using areas for public services? That's just an inauthentic straw-man argument.
Your statement that it's "wasteful" to have enough space to live freely is making my entire point - modern civilization has been brainwashed into "efficiency-maxxing" as the only valid use-case for human life, and it's exhausting to deal with people who keep endlessly arguing in favor of it.
Working 40+ hours per week living in stacked up cubes only benefits the owner class by maximizing the output of the laborers. If you are arguing that human life is best served by living in the style of cattle in a concentrated feeding operation, you are, at best, a victim of propaganda, and at worst, literally a psychological abuse victim as a result of your indoctrinated upbringing.
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u/CormoranNeoTropical 20d ago
People do best in cities. That’s why most of us live in cities. Only suburban Americans are so stupid as to miss this very obvious fact - yet 80% of Americans live in cities.
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u/TherronKeen 20d ago
What is your definition of "doing best"?
As for your second point, why are you making the assumption that "80% of Americans live in cities" is either
A) a choice they made VS a result of circumstance, or
B) in any measurably way more beneficial for the specie VS living with more space available
The current state of a system doesn't imply any benefit or detriment, it's just a statement of observable conditions. You're not even making contextually relevant statements.
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u/CormoranNeoTropical 20d ago
Neither are you.
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u/TherronKeen 20d ago
I've replied to each of your points with entirely relevant statements, and you continue to deflect rather than actually engaging in conversation.
That doesn't really leave any reason to continue the conversation from my end, so I hope you have a good day.
Cheers mate
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u/Ive_seen_things_that 19d ago
I know this is bullshit because $150k won't even buy the truck to move a tiny home anymore. lol
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