Hurricane Helene Washed His Wife Away From Their Mobile Home. Now New Residents Live on the Same Land.

“Mobile homes, the country’s largest source of affordable housing, are often left out” because “trailers, even when they become immovable and lifelong homes, aren’t typically considered real estate but instead personal property, like motorcycles and boats.”

FEMA calls buyouts of flood-prone property the cornerstone of emergency management, then defines the largest source of affordable housing in the country out of the program. A trailer bolted down for thirty years is legally a motorcycle. So the lot never gets bought out, new tenants move onto the same ground, and the next flood kills someone else there.