A trailer park is a semi-permanent or permanent area for mobile home

Mobile home

Mobile homes or static caravans are prefabricated homes built in factories, rather than on site, and then taken to the place where they will be occupied...

s or travel trailer

Travel trailer

A travel trailer or caravan is towed behind a road vehicle to provide a place to sleep which is more comfortable and protected than a tent . It provides the means for people to have their own home on a journey or a vacation, without relying on a motel or hotel, and enables them to stay in places...

s. The main reasons for living in such trailer parks are the often lower cost compared to other housing, and the ability to move to a new area more quickly and easily, for example when changing jobs to another part of the country taking the mobile home/trailer with them. Ironically, this type of housing is very profitable for the manufacturers.Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett

Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely regarded as one of the most successful investors in the world. Often introduced as "legendary investor, Warren Buffett", he is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is...

 made a substantial portion of his fortune as the world's richest business man, by manufacturing trailer homes.

Trailer parks, especially in American culture, are stereotypically viewed as lower income housing whose occupants live at or below the poverty line, have low social status and lead a desultory and deleterious lifestyle. Despite the advances in trailer home technology, the trailer park image survives, evidenced with stereotypical ignorance in a statement by Presidential adviser James Carville

James Carville

Chester James Carville, Jr. is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill...

 in the course of one of the Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 political scandals, "Drag $100 bills through trailer parks, there's no telling what you'll find"," regarding Paula Jones

Paula Jones

Paula Corbin Jones is a former Arkansas state employee who sued U.S. President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. The lawsuit was dismissed before trial on the grounds that Jones failed to demonstrate any damages...

. It is also seen in the Canadian mockumentary

Mockumentary

A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...

 Trailer Park Boys

Trailer Park Boys

Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian comedy mockumentary television series created and directed by Mike Clattenburg that focuses on the misadventures of a group of trailer park residents, some of whom are ex-convicts, living in the fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The...

.

Tornado

Tornado

A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...

es and hurricanes often inflict serious damage on trailer parks, usually because the structures are not secured to the ground and their construction is significantly less able to withstand high wind forces than regular houses. However, most modern manufactured homes are built to withstand high winds as well as a mainstream home, using hurricane straps and proper foundations.

By country

In the United States

This perception of trailer parks was not improved by the creation of emergency trailer parks by the Federal Emergency Management Agency

Federal Emergency Management Agency

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders...

 (FEMA) for the displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

, the quality and temporary nature of which was disputed.
Many stereotypes have developed regarding people who live in trailer parks, which are similar to stereotype

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

s of the poor and the term Trailer trash

Trailer trash

Trailer trash is a derogatory North American English term for poor people living in trailers or mobile homes, especially in trailer parks.-Television:...

often used as an adjective in the same vein as the derogatory American terms white trash

White trash

White trash is an American English pejorative term referring to poor white people in the United States, suggesting lower social class and degraded living standards...

or ghetto

Ghetto

A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...

. Though trailer parks appear throughout the United States, they are often associated with the Deep South

Deep South

The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...

 and rural areas.

More recently referred to in the U.S. as mobile home communities or manufactured housing

Manufactured housing

Manufactured housing is a type of prefabricated housing that is largely assembled in factories and then transported to sites of use...

 sites, the stereotypes are often just that. Retirement communities exist in many locales that permit mobile home parks as "over-50 parks". Homeowners must be over the age of 50 and persons under the age of 21 are rarely permitted to live there. These can be gated communities with amenities such as swimming pools, clubhouses and on-site maintenance. Homes are often permanently installed on foundations. However, in certain circumstances residents may not own the land their homes occupy.

Outside North America

In Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, particularly in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, where trailer parks are less common (but exist) as 'normal' accommodation, disputed trailer parks exist that squat

Squatting

Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....

 on land near urban centers (Berlin, Hamburg, Barcelona). Names for such phenomena include Wagenburg, Wagendorf or Bauwagenplatz (all German, meaning: "wagon fort", "trailer village" and "construction trailer place" respectively) and people living there are often associated with certain ethnic groups such as romani, or with the punk movement, New age travelers, Irish travelers and a do-it-yourself punk ethic. On the whole, however, trailer parks are much less common in these countries than they are elsewhere and in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 and are much less emblematic of a distinct lifestyle and membership to a certain social class.

In Germany and other European countries also exist a lot of normal camping places for short time and season camping, and also long-time camping (for years) with hardly movable travel trailers. Sometimes the inhabitants even cultivate a garden. Some cities allow a long-time camping lot to be regular address registered with the authorities.

In the United Kingdom, "trailers", or mobile homes are generally used for one of two purposes. Firstly as holiday homes, designed for short-term living. And secondly as retirement homes for the elderly, designed for long-term occupancy. Both types of trailers usually enjoy good amenities and are surrounded by highly manicured gardens.

In France, living in a trailer or mobile home for more than three months is prohibited by law, even if the resident owns the land.

In Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, there is generally no differentiation between a trailer park and an RV park

RV park

A recreational vehicle park or caravan park is a place where people with recreational vehicles can stay overnight, or longer, in alloted spaces known as "pitches"...

. The term "caravan park" is used to refer to both.