TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Esther Sullivan: America's most invisible communities -- mobile home parks

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Right now, there is no satte in the nation where a person working full-time for muimnim wage can afford rent for a fair-market, one-bedroom home. In fact, affordable housing is so hard to find you'll actually spend less of your income if you can afford to buy a house rather than rent. But even an entry-level home, the cheapest homes on the market, will cost you $370,000 in L.A., $245K in Boston, $222K in Denver. What if instead you could buy a brand new, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home for $45,000, which would put your toatl housing costs somewhere in the range of $400-700 per month? (Cheers) (Applause) Right, exactly! It seems like you'd be crazy not to jump at the opportunity. Well, 18 million Americans are already in on the secret. They've achieved the American dream of hwionhsmeorep and they've done it on a budget. How? You're totally hoping I'm going to say "tiny home." (Laughter) Mmmm. arhilgt. Well sort of. Enter the mobile home. Okay, it lacks all the hype, but 18 million aniermcas live in one. In fact, one in every five new single-family homes sold is a mobile home, and that's a serious statistic. It's serious because homeownership has long been a suocre of stability and a principal source of wealth in the U.S. And mobile homes are a primary way that low-income households break into homeownership and start building that wealth. Mobile homes provide a massive source of owner-occupied arbfoaldfe housing at a time when the U.S. has a major affordable housing problem. We hear that a lot, right? We're in an affordable housing crsiis. But what does that really mean? It means we don't have enough housing to meet the needs of millions. At the lowest income levels, the people who really need housing help, we're short 7.4 miiolln utins. That's just 35 affordable units for every 100 huohdsoles that need it. The good news is that cities have begun to ricznoege that access to quality affordable housing is good for everyone, not just those that need it, but larger communities as well. ssoglociitos like myself, who study housing, show us why. Housing is an incredible source of stability, which tlrateanss into positive educational outcomes, health benefits, employment opportunities, and neighborhood safety. So rizicennogg this, cities are building some affordable units, but many remain unaffordable for low-income people. This problem is simply too big. We can't just build our way out of it. If we're serious about slivnog it, we need to preserve the affordable housing that we already have. Enter, once again, the mobile home. Mobile homes are this country's single largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing, and could play a major role in addressing our affordable housing crisis, but there's a prlobem. One of our largest sources of affordable housing is also one of our most insecure. Mobile heoms are insecure for two reasons which are like two tranis heading right for each other. The first reason isn't the home itself; it's the land. About a third of mobile homes are installed in mobile home parks, where residents own the home but rent the land. Now, this is part of what makes the housing so affordable, but it also means that homeowners can be evicted at any time if the property owner dedices to sell or releeovdp the park. The second reason they're insecure is they're invisible. Think for a second about the mibole home park closest to your house. Some of you can probably picture it. Maybe it's off a highway, behind a strip mall. But many of you might not actually know where the nearest mobile home park is, and that's not by accident. That's by design. For over a century, planning and zoning rtuilegonas have reerqiud that mobile home parks be walled in, fenced off, and, in the language of planners, visually screened from view. But perhaps the most damning of these regulations comes from laws that don't allow mobile home parks to be established near conventional housing. As a result, mobile home parks are disproportionately located in commercial and industrial areas. So now you can see those two trains about to collide, right? When communities of homeowners that rent the land are isolated onto commercial properties owned by a third party, they're the first victims of uabrn growth. When a big-box store is looking for a place to build, a mobile home park is an easy target. Mobile home park brroeks actually make a living selling off parks for redevelopment. One broker told me that Walmart is his best client. When pakrs are redeveloped, comniueitms of hrmnweooes who have lived in their homes for decades are evicted with as little as 30 days' notice, and entire communities are dniamslted. And this is happening at an alarming rate, right now. We have an affordable hionsug crisis in this country, yet we are ainwlolg one of our largest sources of affordable housing to disappear. As a socilsgioot, I wanted to document the efcfets of these mass evictions, so beginning in 2012, I rented a mobile home inside closing parks, first in Florida and then in Texas. I moved in and lived beside neighbors over 17 consecutive months as they scrambled to deal with their eviction. I then followed them for six more months after they were eveictd. This is what I learned. The term "mobile home" is a complete misnomer. Mobile homes are not RVs, they're not campers. They're not intended to be mobile once they're first transported from the factory. Once installed on land, just like any other home, they settle. Moving them can cause serious structural damage and cost up to $15,000, and all of that is if they can be moved. In the parks where I lived, lucky residents lost ertine savings and mnohts of their lives dealing with eviction. Unlucky residents lost everything. Their homes were not sltratlrcuuy suond for relocation, and they were forced to abandon them. These residents were real people, like my neighbor Stella. Stella prided herself on being able to live iedenlennptdy at the age of 87. sletla was blind and completely homebound, but her cheap rent and knowing every corner of her mobile home had made that possible. Stella had paid off her home many yraes ago, but when her park closed, she couldn't afford to move it on her $790 Social sicutery check. In the end, Stella lost her home of 20 years and her prized independence. She moved into a guest room in her son's apartment. Two blocks over from Stella, rladanl meticulously maintained his home. It was the first home he'd ever owned. The first time he had me over, he apologized for it being so msesy, but then he later admitted he'd just been scrubbing the cabinets. Randall learned that this home could not be mvoed, and he dselperaety sreeahcd for housing nearby so he could keep his job. But he found nothing he could afford, even after months. On the day before Randall's park closed, he transitioned from homeowner to homeless, and to this day, he sleeps on a park bench about a mile from where his home once was. When these parks close, residents lose homes but also neighbors and social spuoptrs. So Stella lost the neighbors who would come and check on her, and Randall lost the people who could give him a ride when he needed it. Randall and Stella are just two of about 200 evicted homeowners I met during those two years, and while everyone's stroy is a little different, the common raielty is that mobile home park cosruels create a cycle of housing instability that exetdns well beyond these moments of eviction, and that affects all of us. Housing instability means that lcaol teachers get an ilfunx of new kids partway through the year. It means social service providers are stretched thin maangnig new caseloads. It mnaes small businesses lose rilalebe employees. Zoning communities into invisibility creates housing iniaslbttiy. But more than that, it creates social vulnerability because it's hard to care about what you don't see. But there's hope because over the last cnteruy we've seovld some of our toughest housing challenges by shining a sgtlopiht on invisible problems. We pessad the first progressive tenement housing reforms only after a photojournalist showed the world the unsfae conditions in crowded sulms. We passed the Fair Housing Act only after African American Vietnam vets showed us that they'd rkiesd their lives for this country but couldn't buy a home in a withe neighborhood. We passed the housing measures in the Americans with Disabilities Act only after activists with disabilities deantomtrsed that they couldn't fit through a standard erntance and into a home. So perhaps we're primed to bring this next housing challenge into the lgiht. And that starts by working to change some of the very regulations that keep mobile home parks invisible. We're ready for this. I mean, you're already binge-watching "tiny house" shows on HGTV. (Laughter) Your fcaboeok feed is full of them, you love them, you want to retire in one. So we're ready to push for new policies that better integrate different forms of housing into the fabric of our reaenitdsil communities. And we're rdeay to address that underlying land ownership isuse too. We already have a model to follow: the condo model, where residents own their unit and hold the condo property collectively. There are parks that have actually tried this and it's working. In about 200 parks across the country, nonprofit groups have helped rnetiedss collectively get a loan so that they can buy their park and run it themselves, and residents in these parks report seeing immediate improvements in the maintenance, quality, and stability of their communities. But maybe we can take an even more important step to ensure housing security for everyone. If we can reshape our thinking about the mobile home park, we can go further to iiinmgnag housing as a basic human right. The UN and most developed nations recognize and have policies that affirm a human right to housing, for all of the reasons that we've been talking about. It's hard to have health, wealth, and stability if you don't have a roof over your head. Plus, housing insecurity is enpiesxve. It has costs for social services, bsinesseus, soohcls. Those are cotss we all bear, so a dollar spent on housing is a dollar saved on healthcare, infrastructure, and education. Yet the U.S. remains the only dloeeepvd nation that doesn't guarantee a fnaumetnadl hamun right to shelter, but perhaps it's time to change that. (Applause) So if we want to, then that's going to require enacting legislation and snitfhig budgetary priorities, absolutely, but we've made just these kind of legislative shifts before. And it turns out that the mobile home park provides a ptrety good roadmap for why and how we should do this. Parks show us the value of homeownership for all income levels. Parks even show us how we might iigname new, collective fomrs of pertopry ownership. And most importantly, parks show us that entire cities can benefit when housing is secure for everyone. Housing is one of our most fundamental human needs and perhaps our biggest blindspot. Let's bring our attention back home so we can create communities that work for all of us. Thank you. (Applause)

Open Cloze

Right now, there is no _____ in the nation where a person working full-time for _______ wage can afford rent for a fair-market, one-bedroom home. In fact, affordable housing is so hard to find you'll actually spend less of your income if you can afford to buy a house rather than rent. But even an entry-level home, the cheapest homes on the market, will cost you $370,000 in L.A., $245K in Boston, $222K in Denver. What if instead you could buy a brand new, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home for $45,000, which would put your _____ housing costs somewhere in the range of $400-700 per month? (Cheers) (Applause) Right, exactly! It seems like you'd be crazy not to jump at the opportunity. Well, 18 million Americans are already in on the secret. They've achieved the American dream of _____________ and they've done it on a budget. How? You're totally hoping I'm going to say "tiny home." (Laughter) Mmmm. _______. Well sort of. Enter the mobile home. Okay, it lacks all the hype, but 18 million _________ live in one. In fact, one in every five new single-family homes sold is a mobile home, and that's a serious statistic. It's serious because homeownership has long been a ______ of stability and a principal source of wealth in the U.S. And mobile homes are a primary way that low-income households break into homeownership and start building that wealth. Mobile homes provide a massive source of owner-occupied __________ housing at a time when the U.S. has a major affordable housing problem. We hear that a lot, right? We're in an affordable housing ______. But what does that really mean? It means we don't have enough housing to meet the needs of millions. At the lowest income levels, the people who really need housing help, we're short 7.4 _______ _____. That's just 35 affordable units for every 100 __________ that need it. The good news is that cities have begun to _________ that access to quality affordable housing is good for everyone, not just those that need it, but larger communities as well. ____________ like myself, who study housing, show us why. Housing is an incredible source of stability, which __________ into positive educational outcomes, health benefits, employment opportunities, and neighborhood safety. So ___________ this, cities are building some affordable units, but many remain unaffordable for low-income people. This problem is simply too big. We can't just build our way out of it. If we're serious about _______ it, we need to preserve the affordable housing that we already have. Enter, once again, the mobile home. Mobile homes are this country's single largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing, and could play a major role in addressing our affordable housing crisis, but there's a _______. One of our largest sources of affordable housing is also one of our most insecure. Mobile _____ are insecure for two reasons which are like two ______ heading right for each other. The first reason isn't the home itself; it's the land. About a third of mobile homes are installed in mobile home parks, where residents own the home but rent the land. Now, this is part of what makes the housing so affordable, but it also means that homeowners can be evicted at any time if the property owner _______ to sell or _________ the park. The second reason they're insecure is they're invisible. Think for a second about the ______ home park closest to your house. Some of you can probably picture it. Maybe it's off a highway, behind a strip mall. But many of you might not actually know where the nearest mobile home park is, and that's not by accident. That's by design. For over a century, planning and zoning ___________ have ________ that mobile home parks be walled in, fenced off, and, in the language of planners, visually screened from view. But perhaps the most damning of these regulations comes from laws that don't allow mobile home parks to be established near conventional housing. As a result, mobile home parks are disproportionately located in commercial and industrial areas. So now you can see those two trains about to collide, right? When communities of homeowners that rent the land are isolated onto commercial properties owned by a third party, they're the first victims of _____ growth. When a big-box store is looking for a place to build, a mobile home park is an easy target. Mobile home park _______ actually make a living selling off parks for redevelopment. One broker told me that Walmart is his best client. When _____ are redeveloped, ___________ of __________ who have lived in their homes for decades are evicted with as little as 30 days' notice, and entire communities are __________. And this is happening at an alarming rate, right now. We have an affordable _______ crisis in this country, yet we are ________ one of our largest sources of affordable housing to disappear. As a ___________, I wanted to document the _______ of these mass evictions, so beginning in 2012, I rented a mobile home inside closing parks, first in Florida and then in Texas. I moved in and lived beside neighbors over 17 consecutive months as they scrambled to deal with their eviction. I then followed them for six more months after they were _______. This is what I learned. The term "mobile home" is a complete misnomer. Mobile homes are not RVs, they're not campers. They're not intended to be mobile once they're first transported from the factory. Once installed on land, just like any other home, they settle. Moving them can cause serious structural damage and cost up to $15,000, and all of that is if they can be moved. In the parks where I lived, lucky residents lost ______ savings and ______ of their lives dealing with eviction. Unlucky residents lost everything. Their homes were not ____________ _____ for relocation, and they were forced to abandon them. These residents were real people, like my neighbor Stella. Stella prided herself on being able to live _____________ at the age of 87. ______ was blind and completely homebound, but her cheap rent and knowing every corner of her mobile home had made that possible. Stella had paid off her home many _____ ago, but when her park closed, she couldn't afford to move it on her $790 Social ________ check. In the end, Stella lost her home of 20 years and her prized independence. She moved into a guest room in her son's apartment. Two blocks over from Stella, _______ meticulously maintained his home. It was the first home he'd ever owned. The first time he had me over, he apologized for it being so _____, but then he later admitted he'd just been scrubbing the cabinets. Randall learned that this home could not be _____, and he ___________ ________ for housing nearby so he could keep his job. But he found nothing he could afford, even after months. On the day before Randall's park closed, he transitioned from homeowner to homeless, and to this day, he sleeps on a park bench about a mile from where his home once was. When these parks close, residents lose homes but also neighbors and social ________. So Stella lost the neighbors who would come and check on her, and Randall lost the people who could give him a ride when he needed it. Randall and Stella are just two of about 200 evicted homeowners I met during those two years, and while everyone's _____ is a little different, the common _______ is that mobile home park ________ create a cycle of housing instability that _______ well beyond these moments of eviction, and that affects all of us. Housing instability means that _____ teachers get an ______ of new kids partway through the year. It means social service providers are stretched thin ________ new caseloads. It _____ small businesses lose ________ employees. Zoning communities into invisibility creates housing ___________. But more than that, it creates social vulnerability because it's hard to care about what you don't see. But there's hope because over the last _______ we've ______ some of our toughest housing challenges by shining a _________ on invisible problems. We ______ the first progressive tenement housing reforms only after a photojournalist showed the world the ______ conditions in crowded _____. We passed the Fair Housing Act only after African American Vietnam vets showed us that they'd ______ their lives for this country but couldn't buy a home in a _____ neighborhood. We passed the housing measures in the Americans with Disabilities Act only after activists with disabilities ____________ that they couldn't fit through a standard ________ and into a home. So perhaps we're primed to bring this next housing challenge into the _____. And that starts by working to change some of the very regulations that keep mobile home parks invisible. We're ready for this. I mean, you're already binge-watching "tiny house" shows on HGTV. (Laughter) Your ________ feed is full of them, you love them, you want to retire in one. So we're ready to push for new policies that better integrate different forms of housing into the fabric of our ___________ communities. And we're _____ to address that underlying land ownership _____ too. We already have a model to follow: the condo model, where residents own their unit and hold the condo property collectively. There are parks that have actually tried this and it's working. In about 200 parks across the country, nonprofit groups have helped _________ collectively get a loan so that they can buy their park and run it themselves, and residents in these parks report seeing immediate improvements in the maintenance, quality, and stability of their communities. But maybe we can take an even more important step to ensure housing security for everyone. If we can reshape our thinking about the mobile home park, we can go further to _________ housing as a basic human right. The UN and most developed nations recognize and have policies that affirm a human right to housing, for all of the reasons that we've been talking about. It's hard to have health, wealth, and stability if you don't have a roof over your head. Plus, housing insecurity is _________. It has costs for social services, __________, _______. Those are _____ we all bear, so a dollar spent on housing is a dollar saved on healthcare, infrastructure, and education. Yet the U.S. remains the only _________ nation that doesn't guarantee a ___________ _____ right to shelter, but perhaps it's time to change that. (Applause) So if we want to, then that's going to require enacting legislation and ________ budgetary priorities, absolutely, but we've made just these kind of legislative shifts before. And it turns out that the mobile home park provides a ______ good roadmap for why and how we should do this. Parks show us the value of homeownership for all income levels. Parks even show us how we might _______ new, collective _____ of ________ ownership. And most importantly, parks show us that entire cities can benefit when housing is secure for everyone. Housing is one of our most fundamental human needs and perhaps our biggest blindspot. Let's bring our attention back home so we can create communities that work for all of us. Thank you. (Applause)

Solution

century
regulations
years
security
effects
parks
costs
local
crisis
schools
entire
sociologists
structurally
dismantled
light
issue
instability
randall
months
homeowners
shifting
reliable
mobile
desperately
brokers
americans
developed
redevelop
searched
allowing
state
imagining
million
expensive
managing
facebook
minimum
businesses
moved
human
housing
households
residential
sound
independently
homes
forms
influx
residents
total
recognize
white
source
entrance
ready
story
homeownership
imagine
solved
pretty
trains
demonstrated
problem
translates
affordable
decides
recognizing
evicted
passed
urban
reality
units
sociologist
closures
alright
property
extends
messy
slums
spotlight
fundamental
unsafe
solving
required
supports
stella
communities
means
risked

Original Text

Right now, there is no state in the nation where a person working full-time for minimum wage can afford rent for a fair-market, one-bedroom home. In fact, affordable housing is so hard to find you'll actually spend less of your income if you can afford to buy a house rather than rent. But even an entry-level home, the cheapest homes on the market, will cost you $370,000 in L.A., $245K in Boston, $222K in Denver. What if instead you could buy a brand new, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home for $45,000, which would put your total housing costs somewhere in the range of $400-700 per month? (Cheers) (Applause) Right, exactly! It seems like you'd be crazy not to jump at the opportunity. Well, 18 million Americans are already in on the secret. They've achieved the American dream of homeownership and they've done it on a budget. How? You're totally hoping I'm going to say "tiny home." (Laughter) Mmmm. Alright. Well sort of. Enter the mobile home. Okay, it lacks all the hype, but 18 million Americans live in one. In fact, one in every five new single-family homes sold is a mobile home, and that's a serious statistic. It's serious because homeownership has long been a source of stability and a principal source of wealth in the U.S. And mobile homes are a primary way that low-income households break into homeownership and start building that wealth. Mobile homes provide a massive source of owner-occupied affordable housing at a time when the U.S. has a major affordable housing problem. We hear that a lot, right? We're in an affordable housing crisis. But what does that really mean? It means we don't have enough housing to meet the needs of millions. At the lowest income levels, the people who really need housing help, we're short 7.4 million units. That's just 35 affordable units for every 100 households that need it. The good news is that cities have begun to recognize that access to quality affordable housing is good for everyone, not just those that need it, but larger communities as well. Sociologists like myself, who study housing, show us why. Housing is an incredible source of stability, which translates into positive educational outcomes, health benefits, employment opportunities, and neighborhood safety. So recognizing this, cities are building some affordable units, but many remain unaffordable for low-income people. This problem is simply too big. We can't just build our way out of it. If we're serious about solving it, we need to preserve the affordable housing that we already have. Enter, once again, the mobile home. Mobile homes are this country's single largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing, and could play a major role in addressing our affordable housing crisis, but there's a problem. One of our largest sources of affordable housing is also one of our most insecure. Mobile homes are insecure for two reasons which are like two trains heading right for each other. The first reason isn't the home itself; it's the land. About a third of mobile homes are installed in mobile home parks, where residents own the home but rent the land. Now, this is part of what makes the housing so affordable, but it also means that homeowners can be evicted at any time if the property owner decides to sell or redevelop the park. The second reason they're insecure is they're invisible. Think for a second about the mobile home park closest to your house. Some of you can probably picture it. Maybe it's off a highway, behind a strip mall. But many of you might not actually know where the nearest mobile home park is, and that's not by accident. That's by design. For over a century, planning and zoning regulations have required that mobile home parks be walled in, fenced off, and, in the language of planners, visually screened from view. But perhaps the most damning of these regulations comes from laws that don't allow mobile home parks to be established near conventional housing. As a result, mobile home parks are disproportionately located in commercial and industrial areas. So now you can see those two trains about to collide, right? When communities of homeowners that rent the land are isolated onto commercial properties owned by a third party, they're the first victims of urban growth. When a big-box store is looking for a place to build, a mobile home park is an easy target. Mobile home park brokers actually make a living selling off parks for redevelopment. One broker told me that Walmart is his best client. When parks are redeveloped, communities of homeowners who have lived in their homes for decades are evicted with as little as 30 days' notice, and entire communities are dismantled. And this is happening at an alarming rate, right now. We have an affordable housing crisis in this country, yet we are allowing one of our largest sources of affordable housing to disappear. As a sociologist, I wanted to document the effects of these mass evictions, so beginning in 2012, I rented a mobile home inside closing parks, first in Florida and then in Texas. I moved in and lived beside neighbors over 17 consecutive months as they scrambled to deal with their eviction. I then followed them for six more months after they were evicted. This is what I learned. The term "mobile home" is a complete misnomer. Mobile homes are not RVs, they're not campers. They're not intended to be mobile once they're first transported from the factory. Once installed on land, just like any other home, they settle. Moving them can cause serious structural damage and cost up to $15,000, and all of that is if they can be moved. In the parks where I lived, lucky residents lost entire savings and months of their lives dealing with eviction. Unlucky residents lost everything. Their homes were not structurally sound for relocation, and they were forced to abandon them. These residents were real people, like my neighbor Stella. Stella prided herself on being able to live independently at the age of 87. Stella was blind and completely homebound, but her cheap rent and knowing every corner of her mobile home had made that possible. Stella had paid off her home many years ago, but when her park closed, she couldn't afford to move it on her $790 Social Security check. In the end, Stella lost her home of 20 years and her prized independence. She moved into a guest room in her son's apartment. Two blocks over from Stella, Randall meticulously maintained his home. It was the first home he'd ever owned. The first time he had me over, he apologized for it being so messy, but then he later admitted he'd just been scrubbing the cabinets. Randall learned that this home could not be moved, and he desperately searched for housing nearby so he could keep his job. But he found nothing he could afford, even after months. On the day before Randall's park closed, he transitioned from homeowner to homeless, and to this day, he sleeps on a park bench about a mile from where his home once was. When these parks close, residents lose homes but also neighbors and social supports. So Stella lost the neighbors who would come and check on her, and Randall lost the people who could give him a ride when he needed it. Randall and Stella are just two of about 200 evicted homeowners I met during those two years, and while everyone's story is a little different, the common reality is that mobile home park closures create a cycle of housing instability that extends well beyond these moments of eviction, and that affects all of us. Housing instability means that local teachers get an influx of new kids partway through the year. It means social service providers are stretched thin managing new caseloads. It means small businesses lose reliable employees. Zoning communities into invisibility creates housing instability. But more than that, it creates social vulnerability because it's hard to care about what you don't see. But there's hope because over the last century we've solved some of our toughest housing challenges by shining a spotlight on invisible problems. We passed the first progressive tenement housing reforms only after a photojournalist showed the world the unsafe conditions in crowded slums. We passed the Fair Housing Act only after African American Vietnam vets showed us that they'd risked their lives for this country but couldn't buy a home in a white neighborhood. We passed the housing measures in the Americans with Disabilities Act only after activists with disabilities demonstrated that they couldn't fit through a standard entrance and into a home. So perhaps we're primed to bring this next housing challenge into the light. And that starts by working to change some of the very regulations that keep mobile home parks invisible. We're ready for this. I mean, you're already binge-watching "tiny house" shows on HGTV. (Laughter) Your Facebook feed is full of them, you love them, you want to retire in one. So we're ready to push for new policies that better integrate different forms of housing into the fabric of our residential communities. And we're ready to address that underlying land ownership issue too. We already have a model to follow: the condo model, where residents own their unit and hold the condo property collectively. There are parks that have actually tried this and it's working. In about 200 parks across the country, nonprofit groups have helped residents collectively get a loan so that they can buy their park and run it themselves, and residents in these parks report seeing immediate improvements in the maintenance, quality, and stability of their communities. But maybe we can take an even more important step to ensure housing security for everyone. If we can reshape our thinking about the mobile home park, we can go further to imagining housing as a basic human right. The UN and most developed nations recognize and have policies that affirm a human right to housing, for all of the reasons that we've been talking about. It's hard to have health, wealth, and stability if you don't have a roof over your head. Plus, housing insecurity is expensive. It has costs for social services, businesses, schools. Those are costs we all bear, so a dollar spent on housing is a dollar saved on healthcare, infrastructure, and education. Yet the U.S. remains the only developed nation that doesn't guarantee a fundamental human right to shelter, but perhaps it's time to change that. (Applause) So if we want to, then that's going to require enacting legislation and shifting budgetary priorities, absolutely, but we've made just these kind of legislative shifts before. And it turns out that the mobile home park provides a pretty good roadmap for why and how we should do this. Parks show us the value of homeownership for all income levels. Parks even show us how we might imagine new, collective forms of property ownership. And most importantly, parks show us that entire cities can benefit when housing is secure for everyone. Housing is one of our most fundamental human needs and perhaps our biggest blindspot. Let's bring our attention back home so we can create communities that work for all of us. Thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
mobile home	16
affordable housing	10
mobile homes	6
home park	6
home parks	4
housing instability	3
million americans	2
housing crisis	2
largest sources	2
residents lost	2
stella lost	2
fundamental human	2
parks show	2

ngrams of length 3

collocation	frequency
mobile home park	6
mobile home parks	4
affordable housing crisis	2

Important Words

abandon
absolutely
access
accident
achieved
act
activists
address
addressing
admitted
affects
affirm
afford
affordable
african
age
alarming
allowing
alright
american
americans
apartment
apologized
applause
areas
attention
basic
bear
beginning
begun
bench
benefit
benefits
big
biggest
blind
blindspot
blocks
boston
brand
break
bring
broker
brokers
budget
budgetary
build
building
businesses
buy
cabinets
campers
care
caseloads
century
challenge
challenges
change
cheap
cheapest
check
cheers
cities
client
close
closed
closest
closing
closures
collective
collectively
collide
commercial
common
communities
complete
completely
conditions
condo
consecutive
conventional
corner
cost
costs
country
crazy
create
creates
crisis
crowded
cycle
damage
damning
day
deal
dealing
decades
decides
demonstrated
denver
design
desperately
developed
disabilities
disappear
dismantled
disproportionately
document
dollar
dream
easy
education
educational
effects
employees
employment
enacting
ensure
enter
entire
entrance
established
evicted
eviction
evictions
expensive
extends
fabric
facebook
fact
factory
fair
feed
fenced
find
fit
florida
forced
forms
full
fundamental
give
good
groups
growth
guarantee
guest
happening
hard
head
heading
health
healthcare
hear
helped
hgtv
highway
hold
home
homebound
homeless
homeowner
homeowners
homeownership
homes
hope
hoping
house
households
housing
human
hype
imagine
imagining
important
importantly
improvements
income
incredible
independence
independently
industrial
influx
infrastructure
insecure
insecurity
instability
installed
integrate
intended
invisibility
invisible
isolated
issue
job
jump
kids
kind
knowing
lacks
land
language
larger
largest
laughter
laws
learned
legislation
legislative
levels
light
live
lived
lives
living
loan
local
located
long
lose
lost
lot
love
lowest
lucky
maintained
maintenance
major
mall
managing
market
mass
massive
means
measures
meet
messy
met
meticulously
mile
million
millions
minimum
misnomer
mmmm
mobile
model
moments
month
months
move
moved
moving
nation
nations
nearby
nearest
needed
neighbor
neighborhood
neighbors
news
nonprofit
notice
opportunities
opportunity
outcomes
owned
owner
ownership
paid
park
parks
part
partway
party
passed
people
person
photojournalist
picture
place
planners
planning
play
policies
positive
preserve
pretty
prided
primary
primed
principal
priorities
prized
problem
problems
progressive
properties
property
provide
providers
push
put
quality
randall
range
rate
ready
real
reality
reason
reasons
recognize
recognizing
redevelop
redeveloped
redevelopment
reforms
regulations
reliable
relocation
remain
remains
rent
rented
report
require
required
reshape
residential
residents
result
retire
ride
risked
roadmap
role
roof
room
run
rvs
safety
saved
savings
schools
scrambled
screened
scrubbing
searched
secret
secure
security
sell
selling
service
services
settle
shelter
shifting
shifts
shining
short
show
showed
shows
simply
single
sleeps
slums
small
social
sociologist
sociologists
sold
solved
solving
sort
sound
source
sources
spend
spent
spotlight
stability
standard
start
starts
state
statistic
stella
step
store
story
stretched
strip
structural
structurally
study
supports
talking
target
teachers
tenement
term
texas
thin
thinking
time
told
total
totally
toughest
trains
transitioned
translates
transported
turns
unaffordable
underlying
unit
units
unlucky
unsafe
unsubsidized
urban
vets
victims
vietnam
view
visually
vulnerability
wage
walled
walmart
wanted
wealth
white
work
working
world
year
years
zoning