Park-home living

Previous research has described park homes as set apart from ‘normal’ housing by their construction, tenure and history (Niner and Hedges Reference Niner and Hedges1992: 1). Park homes have a unique status in English property law, a circumstance that derives from their historical affinity with caravans. In law, they do not count as dwellings but are treated as chattels. Among the many consequences, park homes are excluded from the building regulations that apply to ‘permanent dwellings’, but instead park homes intended for residential occupation, as opposed to holiday use, have to conform to British Standard 3632. Because the standards of park home construction are rapidly improving, however, many modern park homes resemble detached bungalows in design and appearance. The term ‘mobile home’ has also taken hold but to a degree is misleading. Park homes are mobile to the extent that they are factory-made units that are transported to the parks where they are sited. Moreover, park homes are legally required to be potentially mobile. Although park homes are generally mounted on a chassis with wheels, usually a brick skirt around the base hides this aspect of their fabrication. Only rarely are they moved once they have been sited.

Most residents own their home, but not the land it occupies. Instead, residents pay a pitch fee to the site owner, which covers the ground rent, the maintenance costs of the common areas of the park, and services provided by the park management. The large majority of sites are privately owned, but local authorities and housing associations own and run a few sites, and a very small number are co-operatively owned and run by the residents themselves. Park homes are covered by specific legislation that has evolved primarily to address planning and licensing issues as well as the residents' security of tenure. The Mobile Homes Act 1983 extended security of tenure for residents by supplementing the provisions of the Caravan Sites Act 1968, and was amended by the Housing Act 2004. The provisions relating to mobile homes in the latter were intended to strengthen the residents' rights.

Contextualising the experiences of park-home residents

The notion of ‘elective belonging’ was advanced by Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst (Reference Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst2005) to describe the orientation to place of affluent residents in North West England. Their research suggested that a sense of belonging to an area in which they live derives from the way in which it fits with their life story: ‘individuals attach their own biography to their “chosen” residential location, so that they tell stories that indicate how their arrival and subsequent settlement is appropriate to their sense of themselves’ (2005: 29). Savage (Reference Savage2008) later argued that a key aspect of elective belonging is that the actual history of a locality is less important than the way in which individuals conceive the place as ‘belonging’ to them through their conscious choice to move in and settle. Elective belonging has been taken up in a recent paper by Phillipson (Reference Phillipson2007) on the choices that older people make about where they live and the lifestyles with which they identify. Allan and Phillipson (Reference Allan and Phillipson2008) noted that much of the work on retirement migration and retirement communities has focused on the influence of lifestyle preferences and personal biographies on people's decisions where to live, particularly with reference to popular rural and coastal retirement areas.

Peace, Holland and Kellaher (Reference Peace, Holland and Kellaher2006) noted that older people who move house tend to choose places that they find congruent with aspects of their self-image and that maintain their sense of identity. Central to elective belonging is that the key site for ‘performing identity’ is where people live (Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst Reference Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst2005), which resonates with the consensus in the literature about the centrality of home in the creation and maintenance of identity in later life (Chaudhury and Rowles Reference Chaudhury, Rowles, Rowles and Chaudhury2005; Clapham Reference Clapham2005). Research has also highlighted the increasing importance of the dwelling in later life, as people spend on average more time at home (Edwards and Harding Reference Edwards and Harding2006). Rubenstein and de Medeiros (Reference Rubenstein, de Medeiros, Rowles and Chaudhury2005) argued further that objects and environments take on new and heightened meanings as people age and as their lives increasingly focus on the home.

People's lifestyle choices may be disrupted for various reasons. To date, elective belonging has generally been cast as a positive process, but a major cleavage in society has been identified between older people who have the means to choose where to live and others who lack the resources to move and who live in areas where they experience alienation and marginalisation (Phillipson Reference Phillipson2007). Cutting across this divide are the individual experiences of people whose lives do not follow anticipated trajectories, and who suffer disruptions to their biographies, not only as a result of negative life events such as ill health, bereavement or divorce, but also as a consequence of housing market and environmental changes. The notion of ‘biographical disruption’ provides a helpful framework for describing the impact of negative events upon people's lives, and the implications of such events upon people's sense of identity and attachment to particular lifestyles. Although biographical disruption has its roots in the sociology of health (Bury Reference Bury1982), it has also been applied to disruptions stemming from other aspects of people's lives (Riessman Reference Riessman2008), including their housing (Smith, Easterlow and Munro Reference Smith, Easterlow and Munro2004; Smith, Searle and Cook Reference Smith, Searle and Cook2007). Echoing Williams's (Reference Williams2000) argument that biographical disruption can be a cause as well as a consequence of illness, Ford, Burrows and Nettleton (Reference Ford, Burrows and Nettleton2001) documented the negative impact of house repossessions upon people's health. The unique tenure of park-home residence creates a potential for conflicts around repossession between park-home residents and the site owners. This paper examines such experiences among a few park-home residents, and uses the concept of biographical disruption to elucidate the wider impact of housing instability and change on older people's lives.

The notion of ‘ontological security’ helps in understanding the experience of biographical disruption. It was defined by Giddens (Reference Giddens1979: 219) as the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of their social and material environments. The relationship between ontological security and housing has been examined in several studies (Hiscock et al. Reference Hiscock, Kearns, Macintyre and Ellaway2001; Saunders Reference Saunders1990), some with particular reference to older people (Dupuis and Thorns Reference Dupuis and Thorns1998) and to the residents of mobile homes in Australia (Newton Reference Newton2008). Giddens's account brought out well the ways in which people's sense of identity can be shaken as a result of biographical disruption, and argued that the ‘shattering of assumptions about daily life’ amounts to a ‘critical life situation’ (1979: 123). Ontological security relies upon actors working within a framework of accepted norms of behaviour. A critical situation is the result of a radical disruption of these routines, which can challenge the core of people's sense of ontological security. This paper argues that disputes with park owners lead not only to the residents' disrupted narratives, but also to a wider rejection of the positive qualities associated with parks, which undermines their senses of identity and of belonging in a home.

The research design

Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 40 park-home residents during 2007 and 2008. A key aim of the recruitment process was to reflect the diverse experiences of residents in relation to the ways that parks are managed by very different owners, from the ‘reputable’ to the ‘rogue’. To this end, two approaches were used to recruit the respondents. First, park-home sites were identified using trade directories. A stratified random sample of the parks that were members of the National Park Homes Council's ‘Quality Award Scheme’ were included because they adhere to a voluntary code of conduct. A second stratified random sample was drawn of parks that do not belong to the ‘Quality Award Scheme’. Five interviews were also conducted with residents who lived on parks run by local authorities or housing associations. The local government's Valuation Lists for Council Tax were then used to identify every tenth address at the included parks, and invitations to participate in the research sent to the occupiers. This approach yielded 35 completed interviews. The second approach was to recruit households that were known to have experienced difficulties with their site owners. A national residents' association was asked to nominate individuals in this situation, and five interviews were undertaken with residents who had been thus identified. One of the five respondents had left their park home and was now living elsewhere, but reflected on their experiences. Table 1 presents the characteristics of the respondents: 35 lived on 22 sites in private ownership, five lived on three sites in local authority or housing association ownership, 35 had owned their previous homes, three had rented from local authorities or housing associations, one had previously been homeless before moving into a park home, and one had been living with her mother. The residents were geographically dispersed, with respondents in South West and South East England, the West Midlands, East Anglia, and the counties of North Yorkshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire.

Table 1. Characteristics of the respondents

The material for this paper was drawn from a wider study that aimed to explore how people perceive their ability to develop and sustain their choice of lifestyle in either park homes or on residential boats. The interviews with the park-home residents covered a number of issues including: housing biographies; the motivations for acquiring the park home; current experiences of the home; aspirations for the future; perceptions of wider attitudes towards park homes amongst the general public and public- and private-sector agencies; and their views on the problems, constraints and opportunities that park-home residents face. Verbatim transcripts were produced for each interview. The interviews were then coded and charted on the basis of the a priori themes identified above. Within these broad themes, distinct groups of respondents distinguished by the motivations and reasons for choosing park homes emerged, as discussed in the next section.

Moving to park homes

The respondents described their arrival stories, which collectively mentioned many different reasons for wanting to live in park homes. Both ‘push’ factors for wanting to leave their previous homes, and ‘pull’ factors that attracted them to park homes were evident. Alongside this variability, however, two distinctive groups of respondents distinguished by their motivations for choosing to live in park homes were readily identified. One group moved primarily for financial reasons, and the other strongly emphasised the attractions of the retirement lifestyle offered by park homes.

Home as sanctuary

A common theme to emerge from the discussions with the respondents was the value placed on park-home estates as safe living environments. Previous research has found that an important motivation for opting to live in age-segregated settings is to achieve a sense of personal safety (Clough et al. Reference Clough, Leamy, Miller and Bright2004; Fry Reference Fry1977). Although the ability of older people in age-segregated settings to use and control the environment around their homes has been described in comparable settings such as sheltered housing (Allan and Phillipson Reference Allan and Phillipson2008; Laws Reference Laws, Jamieson, Harper and Victor1997), there is a trade-off between achieving home as sanctuary and relinquishing a degree of personal autonomy by agreeing to abide by the facility's rules and regulations. Commentators have noted that park-home estates can be very controlled spaces, where the residents' influence over the immediate environment is ceded to the site owner's rules and regulations and less explicit codes about acceptable behaviour, both in the UK (Ravetz and Turkington Reference Ravetz and Turkington1995), and the USA (Hurley Reference Hurley2001). Indeed, US research has highlighted the central role of park owners in shaping the structural conditions underpinning the experience of community on mobile home parks (Fry Reference Fry1979; Streib, Folts and La Greca Reference Streib, Folts and La Greca1985). In the UK, park-home residents have a written agreement, which sets out the rights and responsibilities on both sides, some of which reflect statutes and others called ‘express terms’ are set by the site owner. It was found that the respondents' views about the rules and regulations were mixed. One group took the view that the additional rules helped to foster safety and security and dissuaded anti-social behaviour – a study in Scotland found that some people had moved to park homes specifically to escape crime and anti-social behaviour (Bevan Reference Bevan2007). Others, however, were more circumspect about the rules, which is another indication of the many different reasons for choosing park homes, and of the compromises many made when choosing the lifestyle. These respondents stated explicitly that they had chosen parks with relatively relaxed rules, particularly those that allowed pets and children.

Some respondents also commented on the way in which the physical layout of their park created a sense of security. Many parks have a single entrance and exit, some with a barrier or gate and the site office close by. Some respondents also referred to the ways in which informal social relations among the residents helped to foster a sense of security, and arrangements between neighbours to look after each others' properties while they were away and ‘to keep an eye on’ visitors were described. A couple of respondents noted that when they first moved to a park, they found this informal surveillance disconcerting but had got used to it over time. In one respondent's words:

Parks as cohesive communities

The last quotation refers to another theme that many respondents reflected upon, the strong sense of community amongst park-home estate residents. This facet of park-home living resonates not only with accounts of mobile-home communities in the USA (Johnson Reference Johnson1971), but also across a range of residential settings for older people (Ross Reference Ross1977). Of all the attributes of park-home living described by the respondents, a strong sense of community and living alongside people who had a similar outlook on life generated the most vivid and emotive accounts. Many of the descriptions of relationships between neighbours in park-home communities maintained that they were similar to neighbourhoods in bygone times, and some also alluded to idealisations of rural living. A recurring trope was that the respondents described the parks as being ‘like a little village’.

Writers on belonging and identity emphasise the importance of nostalgia. Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst (Reference Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst2005) noted that nostalgia is not so much rooted in specific place history, but a yearning for a way of ‘doing social relations’ that is imagined from the past. Such yearning can be deployed in both negative and positive contexts. Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst suggested that older people use nostalgia when living in neighbourhoods that are being transformed by newcomers, as a means of distancing themselves from the current environment in which they feel out of place. A number of park-home residents noted the decline of the neighbourhood that they had left, and contrasted their lifestyles in the park home with that before, many emphasising the tranquillity and sense of safety in the new environment. Delanty (Reference Delanty2003) described the theme of loss and recovery in relation to community. The recovery of community appears to be a feature of the way in which older people describe the move into age-segregated settings (Fry Reference Fry1977). Biggs, Bernard and Kingston (Reference Biggs, Bernard and Kingston2000) found that residents in one retirement housing scheme in England described its community using notions of social relations in the past, and concluded that by invoking a rediscovery of ways of treating each other that were rooted in an idealised past, the residents affirmed and justified their lifestyle choice. Similarly, the narratives offered by many residents of park homes suggested that they had arrived in a community where a way of ‘doing social relations’ that was rooted in the past no longer had to be yearned for; it was all around them.

Conflicts and tensions

Nevertheless, research has highlighted some of the tensions that grow up in retirement communities (Gamliel and Hazan Reference Gamliel and Hazan2006; van den Hoonaard Reference van den Hoonaard2002). Whilst the respondents' assessments of park-home living were on balance very positive, there was a minority of dissenters and some had strong views and intense feelings. Not everyone found that the ‘sense of community’ was a strong feature, for two respondents emphasised that although their home was itself important to them, wider social relations in the park were not – to them the park was simply a place to live and no more. Similarly, while for many respondents an important benefit of park-home living was that it provided sanctuary and a place of safety, some respondents recounted negative experiences and described their daily lives in terms of tension, fear and even violence. In some of these cases, the difficulties had arisen from disputes with neighbours, which in one case led to the respondent putting their home up for sale.

Another area of conflict between residents arose from changes in the way that the scheme was marketed, and the type of park homes that were being offered for sale. One park had recently decided to offer upmarket retirement living, when previously it had provided low-cost accommodation for people of all ages. When a long-term female resident was asked what it was like when she first came to the park, she said:

‘Elective belonging’ is a valuable interpretative concept in these cases because references to the social history of a locality can cut across or counteract new and conflicting place identities. Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst (Reference Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst2005) argued that the actual lived history of a particular locality was less important for incoming households than being able to define the place as belonging to them through their conscious choice to move in and settle. In the case study neighbourhoods they researched, this process appeared to be a relatively slow, ‘organic’ development, as households moved in and out of a particular neighbourhood, with adverse consequences for older people on low incomes who had little choice but to age in place. For a few park home sites, however, the ‘place identity’ had changed rapidly as one set of residents, characteristically older people, left the park as a result of pressure from site owners to make way for more profitable new units. On some sites, all the former residents had left, but at two of the studied sites a few of the long-established households for various reasons had remained. As in the last quotation, the narratives of these survivors of the former community were often at odds with the new place identities promoted by the proprietors and accepted by the incoming residents, who may well have had no knowledge of the recent history of the site, or of the stories of the former residents.

The evidence from the park-home residents about the extent to which the identities of the ‘elective belongers’ predominated diverged from that of Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst (Reference Savage, Bagnell and Longhurst2005), who concluded that the long-established residents felt ‘out of place’ in their own homes. There certainly were examples of tensions between residents, but not a sense that residents were alienated. As the woman in the previous quote noted, ‘I love it. I've been here 17 years. I want to live here until I die’. It was not so much that the place-making identities of one group were dislocated or subsumed by another's, but that the tensions revealed on this particular site highlighted the existence of multiple belongings at a single location (Massey Reference Massey2005).

The focus of much of the expressed anxiety and uncertainty amongst the residents who reported negative experiences was the park owner. It has previously been noted that a small number of sites are owned by people who cause considerable difficulties for some of the residents (Marsh et al. Reference Marsh, Forrest, Kennett, Niner and Cowan2000). At their most extreme, such activities include various illegal practices, including the harassment and intimidation of people to force them to leave their homes. Among this study's respondents, ten reported negative experiences with the site owners: they included both ‘elective belongers’ who had specifically chosen park-home living, and people who had moved into park homes because they felt they could not afford anything else. These respondents had not anticipated the potential dangers of the setting, particularly when the owner changes. As one man described the transformation that had taken place:

This quotation illustrates the crucial nature of the relationship between the park owner and home owner, and highlights the negative impact that poor relations can have upon a person's wider sense of identity and belonging, issues that resonate with Gidden's (Reference Giddens1979) notion of a critical situation and the effect of a disruption of accepted norms and routines. If one party, the park owner, wants the home owner to vacate their home and at the extreme resorts to criminal acts to further that end, the behaviour lies completely outside the boundaries of what is considered normal or acceptable. Even standard routines, such as negotiating and resolving disputes using constructive dialogue, are critically undermined, since in these extreme cases the park owner has no intention of upholding the law.

For some respondents, therefore, the assumptions about park-home living that imbued the majority of park-home residents' views were undermined, sometimes almost totally. The sense of disruption was accentuated by the perceptions that the residents had of the park-home lifestyle, and its association with the positive facets of age-segregated settings such as safety and quiet. The shortfall between the respondents' expectations of park-home settings in relation to their stage in life compared with their actual experience framed how some respondents described their situation. One man commented that:

Instead of the utopian descriptions of their homes expressed by the majority of respondents and the positive associations with security and community, in contrast the respondents who reported difficulties with their site owners described the uncertainty that they felt and their fear for the future.

Although the root of the disputes between residents and park owners was the tenure arrangements of park homes, respondents' reflected on how their housing problems affected their lives more broadly. Many talked about links between the insecurities of their housing circumstances and perceptions of their health. For example, one respondent had the misfortune to live on a large pitch that had space for two park homes, and he was trying to avoid being evicted from his home. The site owner had already laid two new concrete bases on either side of this respondents' home, and had put in the utilities connections ready to receive the new units. When asked if he was going to stay put, he said:

While clear cut in such extreme cases, this wider undermining of a sense of being ‘at home’ in the park-home complex was not expressed by all the residents who were in dispute with the park owner. Although a few respondents stated that they regretted moving to a park home, four were more circumspect and said that despite the dispute, they still valued park-home living.