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Melody Scruggs walks Riley, her mom's beagle, at Rudd's Trailer Park. (Photo by Tina Eshleman)
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Melody Scruggs checks the metal registration plates on her mom's trailer, which she says is about 43 years old. (Photo by Tina Eshleman)
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Metal registration plates on the side of the trailer belonging to Melody Scruggs' mother. (Photo by Tina Eshleman)
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Melody Scruggs divides her time between Rudd's Trailer Park, where her mother lives, and a two-bedroom duplex in Chesterfield that she shares with five other family members. (Photo by Tina Eshleman)
Standing in front of her mother's place at Rudd's Trailer Park in South Richmond, Melody Scruggs looks at the scene around her. Next door is a vacant trailer, and there are two more across the street. One of those is where her 80-year-old aunt lived until early 2015, when she had to move out because city inspectors told her the trailer would be condemned unless she installed a proper heating system — something she couldn't afford.
Scruggs' aunt had been using space heaters to keep warm because the trailer's previous owner had taken out the old heating unit and abandoned a project to put in new central air and heat. Scruggs, 42, splits her time between her mother's trailer and a two-bedroom duplex in North Chesterfield that she shares with her teenage daughter, adult son, and his girlfriend and their two children. Now she's thinking of moving her mother into a duplex near that one, even though it would mean higher rent than the $444 monthly fee they currently pay at Rudd's.
"The trailer needs a lot of work," she says, adding, "It's just the whole situation here."
Dennis Pasqualino, who bought the park at auction in March, told residents that he planned to install surveillance cameras and remove some of the empty trailers, Scruggs says, but that hasn't happened yet. In a recent interview with Richmond magazine, Pasqualino said he was working to address crime by securing the vacant trailers, and that he’s collaborating with the city and nonprofits to bring in new trailers and assist residents with down payments to purchase them.
“I think everybody’s on the same page now — let’s save the park,” he said. “This was a solid community prior to all of this happening, and what we need to do is make it a solid community again.”
Pasqualino said that obtaining financing for capital improvements has proved challenging, however.
"Most of these trailers are so old, it's really hard to get them up to code," says Scruggs. The trailer where her mother lives was built more than four decades ago, and her late father lived there for more than 30 years (her mother moved in after her parents reunited about 12 years ago). With the addition of a smoke detector, it passed inspection, but she says it has mold in the ceiling. Some of the electrical sockets don't work.
"My mom's on a fixed income, and it's hard to find a place in her price range," Scruggs says. On Wednesday when I visited, her mother had just gotten out of the hospital after suffering a stroke Christmas Eve and was staying at another relative's home.
While conditions at the region's mobile home parks vary greatly, the situation at Rudd's — many old trailers in poor condition – led the city to issue notices of code violation and condemnation. That resulted in a federal housing discrimination lawsuit against the City of Richmond, a civil rights complaint and two settlements.
Rudd's also caught the attention of local affordable housing advocates, who formed the Virginia Mobile Home Park Coalition in the spring of 2015 in an effort to assess the conditions of the region's trailer parks and look at ways to improve them. One of the coalition’s first steps was to commission a study, which was completed in November.
"We weren't really aware of the scale of mobile home park living in the region," says Lee Householder, CEO of ProjectHomes, one of the coalition's members. "We wanted to understand better how many units there were, what the condition was, so we could get our arms around the scope of the problems."
The Virginia Nonprofit Housing Coalition, the United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg, and The Community Foundation supported the $20,000 cost of the research, which was conducted by HDAdvisors, a community development advising firm, using U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey data combined with site visits and interviews.
What they found surprised them, Householder says. "One of the big takeaways is that [mobile homes in parks] equaled the amount of public housing in our region." The region's public housing is concentrated in Richmond, which has about 4,100 public housing units, he says.

The assessment of Central Virginia's manufactured housing communities covered a wide variety, including this park in Hanover County. (Photo courtesy HDAdvisors)
In the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area, which comprises 16 counties and four cities, there are 13,200 units of manufactured housing (the preferred term used by government and industry). Most of those are on individual lots or in small clusters, but 36 percent, about 4,735 units, are in parks that have at least five homes. Half of the parks have a high number of units built before 1976, when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began to regulate safety and construction standards.
Mobile home park residents are twice as likely to live in poverty as the rest of the region’s population, 28 percent versus 14 percent, the study shows, and their median household income is half the region’s average at $27,000. In terms of demographics, mobile home households have a higher percentage of Hispanic residents than the general population and a lower percentage of African-American residents.
Based on research and interviews with residents, says Jonathan Knopf of HDAdvisors, "It seems like many first-generation immigrant families prefer this style of home. ... They enjoy having their own yard and having the freedom that comes with that."
Another surprising finding is the number of children living in mobile home parks. According to the report, 1,741 total children under the age of 14 live in 25 mobile home parks in Richmond and the counties of Chesterfield, Henrico and Hanover. In addition, the majority of manufactured home residents in the region, 70 percent, own their homes, the study shows.
“What that says to me is these manufactured home parks are well-positioned to be vibrant, stable communities of homeowners,” says Christie Marra of Virginia Poverty Law Center, another Virginia Mobile Home Park Coalition partner.
For the coalition, the study confirmed that manufactured homes play an important role in the housing spectrum.
“Manufactured homes are the most affordable type of home ownership option that we have,” Marra says.
Owners do face some disadvantages, though. One is that manufactured homes are typically taxed as personal property rather than real estate, which means paying a higher rate. Interest rates on loans are higher than traditional mortgage rates. And despite the frequently used name “mobile,” moving them isn’t usually an option.
“The cost associated with moving one, even one in very good condition, often approaches or exceeds the actual value of the house,” Knopf says. So if a park is sold, it puts the homeowner’s investment in jeopardy.
One idea the coalition would like to explore is resident-owned parks. Some states have passed laws that support the purchase of parks by residents if an owner is looking to sell, Marra says.
With regard to Rudd's, Householder says a few residents there have relocated. Little progress has been made with repairs so far. "That's where we're headed next, to target units and find out which ones are obsolete, what can be repaired" and what resources are available.
The next steps for the coalition, Marra says, are incorporating as a 501(c)(3) that would serve the entire state and finalizing a strategic plan to preserve and improve manufactured home communities, educate residents about their rights and the resources available to them, and pursue policies that would be more favorable toward ownership of manufactured homes. How to fund these efforts will be an important part of the agenda as well.
The changes can't come soon enough for residents. When I visited Rudd's last month with Rodrigo Arriaza, a Richmond magazine intern, we met another longtime resident who gave his name as Adrian, and said he had lived there for 18 years. Speaking in Spanish, he told us he's originally from Texas, of Mexican heritage. Like Scruggs, he worries about the condemned trailers and crime such as drug dealing and prostitution.
"All of us are concerned," Scruggs says. "Will the city allow [the park's owner] to do the changes he wants to do, or will they try to close it down? We're all worried about that. People don't want to put money into fixing the trailer if the park's going to close."
But, she adds, "I've got to give it to [Pasqualino]. He's really trying to fix it … If the people could get some assistance to fix the trailers and bring them up to code, it would be a much nicer place to live." One thing on her wish list: a playground where she could bring her 4-year-old and 10-month-old grandchildren.
Despite the bleakness of the vacant trailers, there are signs of life on this warm January afternoon. Children are playing a few lots down, and a woman carries laundry out to dry. A couple of vehicles pass by, and the drivers wave. Scruggs recalls that when her father moved there in the 1980s, it was a family-oriented community. “Everybody watched out for everybody.” One day, perhaps, it will be that way again.
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