Trailers got their start in the 1930s, and their use proliferated during the housing shortage of World War II, when the Federal government used as many as 30,000 of them to house defense workers, soldiers and sailors throughout the country, but especially around areas with a large military or defense presence, such as Mobile, Alabama and Pascagoula, Mississippi. ![]() By 1968, a survey found that only 13% of those who owned and lived in mobile homes had white collar jobs. Despite many of them having jobs, albeit sometimes itinerant ones, the character flaws that had been perceived in poor white trash in the past were transferred to trailer trash, and trailer camps or parks were seen as being inhabited by retired people, migrant workers, and, generally, the poor. These – sometimes by choice and sometimes through local zoning laws – gathered in trailer parks, and the people who lived in them became known as "trailer trash" with the term dating to at least 1952. ![]() In the mid-20th century, poor whites who could not afford to buy suburban-style tract housing began to purchase mobile homes, which were not only cheaper, but which could be easily relocated if work in one location ran out.
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