Of the Americans living in mobile homes, 3 million of them reside in high flood areas

VPM | By Leila Fadel and Mallika Seshadri

Published June 19, 2023 at 9:14 AM EDT

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Nationwide, some 20 million Americans live in mobile homes, and almost three million of these residences sit on high-flood-risk land. Now, here to tell us more about what kind of options they have is NPR’s Mallika Seshadri. Mallika, the situation in Montana really sounds terrible, but how common is it?

MALLIKA SESHADRI, BYLINE: Yeah, it is really difficult. People facing eviction after a natural disaster appears to be pretty common, though. A 2021 study of four Southern states shows evictions went up by more than 30% in storm-affected areas in comparison to nearby regions that weren’t hit as hard. Oftentimes, mobile home residents are people who are elderly or parents with younger children. People with disabilities and challenges with mobility are also overrepresented in these areas and are more likely to be permanently displaced. It’s also harder for people living in these communities to qualify for relief funding because about 40% own their home but rent the land. So in some cases, they’re considered renters, in other cases, owners – sometimes both and sometimes neither.

MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, and as we heard in Kayla’s story, Montana doesn’t offer a lot of help to mobile home residents. What about other states, though?

SESHADRI: It really varies a lot from state to state, but providing relief funding doesn’t seem to be the norm. There are some exceptions, though. State officials in Vermont allocated almost $20 million in 2021 and 2022 toward projects that would decrease flood risk and enable buyouts for residents in need of relocating. There are also a number of states that have tried to bolster protections for mobile home residents more generally. Colorado is one of them and established a mobile home park oversight program three years ago to listen to grievances and solve disputes. But one of their annual reports revealed that more than 70% of residents don’t know about it, and that effort doesn’t specifically deal with flood risk.

MARTÍNEZ: I’m in California. What about here in California?

SESHADRI: Yeah, out here, the state of mobile homes is overseen by the Department of Housing and Community Development. But the agency can’t do much to directly aid residents, and their main course of action is to make a referral back to a local agency.

MARTÍNEZ: So what about federal agencies such as, say, FEMA? I mean, don’t they usually help in a case like this?

SESHADRI: Yeah, there is some federal aid available through FEMA. But Kristin Smith, a researcher at Headwaters Economics, explained that it really comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. So in order to qualify for federal funding, mobile home communities have to make a case for why it would be in FEMA’s interest to allocate money. But the value of mobile homes is low, and to some, investing large sums of money to help just doesn’t seem worth it. Congress did also pass a couple of bills in 2021, which makes grant money available to nonprofits and agencies that are trying to preserve mobile homes, but it’s not specifically geared toward flood risk.

MARTÍNEZ: That’s NPR’s Mallika Seshadri. Thanks for your reporting.

SESHADRI: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF ERIK WOLLO’S “BLUE SKY”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Leila Fadel

Leila Fadel is a host of Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.

As a national correspondent, Fadel consistently reported on the fault lines of this divided nation. She flew to Minneapolis in the midst of the pandemic as the city erupted in grief and anger over the killing of George Floyd. She's reported on policing and race, on American Muslim communities and on the jarring inequities the coronavirus laid bare in the healthcare system. Her "Muslims in America: A New Generation" series, in collaboration with National Geographic, won the prestigious Goldziher Prize in 2019.

Previously, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought listeners to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.

She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.

Before joining NPR, Fadel covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.

Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

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