I grew up in West Virginia. A LOT of people lived in a trailer - as in they actually owned the trailer and in many cases the land, too (my parents).

Why does it make sense to count these people as homeless?

And even if you're renting... Why count someone who rents a trailer as homeless but not someone who rents an apartment?

> Why does it make sense to count these people as homeless?

It's a social class thing. It's not about having a reliable, warm, dry, safe place to sleep. It's about whether a middle class university graduate's friends would have considered them to have failed at life. Living in a coffin sized apartment with cockroaches everywhere in New York is something they could see themselves doing at some point in their life for career goals or because of bad luck. A trailer is not the kind of place a university graduate lives in.

Not sure why you're getting so downvoted. You might be stating it a bit dramatically, but I've personally seen this attitude in people when living (by choice) in an RV. Many people seem to abhor the idea that someone doesn't live like them. There's broad discrimination against people living in RV parks and trailers in most municipalities.

Many cities ban you putting an RV on your own plot of land, regardless of the purpose. They often ban trailer parks, severely restrict them, etc to the detriment of many economically vulnerable people. There's often a component of racism too as some trailer parks home lots of immigrants or hispanic folks, marking them doubly undesirables.

So the definition of homeless is that it’s ‘not the kind of place a university graduate lives in’? This is absurd.

I don't think poor plumbing is exactly what we're going for here.

Okay, but when I hear "homeless" I think "unsheltered". That's what it means in colloquial use.

How so? I grew up with kids whose entire childhood was in the same trailer park. They were homeless?

A decent trailer can be a more pleasant living experience than a tiny manhattan studio, I fail to see why that should qualify as homeless. Maybe using an in-between category would be helpful.

There is no in between category. They're classed as homeless because the people doing the classification are of a social class that don't consider trailers acceptable. It's not about material living conditions. It's about social class considerations.

This results in laws making trailer living illegal, converting the residents therein to truely homeless, thereby making the numbers balance again.

Yes, unless you consider a trailer a home but then where do you draw the line? One could go as far as considering a tent as a home but come on, we all know what we mean by home. A trailer is just a trailer.

Consider how people who live in those trailers feel about people like you. If you need an intuition pump consider that most Europeans live in houses that are solid masonry, not plywood and plaster. Your houses are basically tissue paper, trashwood and mud. Hardly a permanent structure.

Your public contempt is reciprocated by the people you do not respect.

I think it's more about the overall situation than just the physical structure. If you have a place you can legally stay indefinitely, and you have access to water/sewer/power, then I think a trailer could absolutely be considered a home.

A trailer is a permanent structure with bedrooms, living room and kitchen, bathroom, which can receive mail. Yes, they’re small. No, they’re probably not anyone’s preferred option. But they’re still homes.

They aren't really that small when compared to apartments in cities. Often much larger actually.