Mobile home residents face increased risks from severe weather
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Mobile home residents face increased risks from severe weather
Like most high desert towns, Madras, Oregon, is no stranger to extreme temperatures.
Located about 2,250 feet above sea level in a dry valley surrounded by central Oregon’s Cascade Range, summers in Madras can reach triple-digits, and winters are below freezing.
Homes outfitted for both hot and cold days are necessary in this rural community — but never guaranteed. That’s because within Madras city limits, there are eight mobile home parks with 276 housing spaces total, according to Oregon’s manufactured dwelling park directory.
Many of these manufactured homes are outdated and lack the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems required to stay cool on Madras’ hottest days.
That was the case for Shawn King, who, up until 2024, lived in a mobile home in Madras built over 50 years ago. “It was miserable,” Shawn said in an interview with The Daily Yonder. “I dreaded the summers.”
Shawn is the sole caregiver for her husband Brian, who is disabled. She cooked their meals outside on a portable stove during the summers because using their kitchen appliances indoors made their house too hot. In the winter, she lined the windows with bubble wrap to prevent ice from forming on them.
Living in these conditions can be deadly. During northwest Oregon’s infamous “heat dome” of 2021 that killed more than 100 people, an Oregonian analysis found that 20% of these deaths were of people living in mobile home parks. Temperatures in Madras during this heat dome reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit.
Manufactured and mobile homes make up an estimated 15% of the total rural housing stock, as opposed to seven percent of the nationwide housing stock, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). That means rural areas have even more to worry about when it’s hot outside.
About one-fifth of all manufactured homes were built before standardized building codes were put into effect in 1976. Many of these older homes are less energy efficient and can have issues like mold and other dangerous health hazards.
One organization in the Pacific Northwest is trying to change this.
Energy Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit, runs a manufactured home replacement program that provides funding to replace homes built prior to 1995 with new builds.
The program provides eligible applicants up to $16,000 to help pay for a new single or double-wide mobile home, and connects them with other agencies that can provide funding to pay for the replacement. Energy Trust also provides a program navigator to help applicants throughout the process.
“Sometimes people will have their own capital that they invest into it or borrow some of it, and then get other grants or other sources of funding,” said Scott Leonard, a senior project manager for Energy Trust’s residential team. “That’s really where this navigator role comes in, because it’s challenging to figure all that out.”
Shawn and Brian King were one of the beneficiaries of this program. They applied to the program in 2023 and moved into their new house in March of 2024. In total, the project cost around $120,000, which included a carport and an ADA ramp, according to Shawn.
“We had to put 10% of our earnings — and I did go over budget a little bit — so it ended up being $6,000 is what we had to put in,” Shawn said.
She applied for a low-interest rate loan through the nonprofit financial institution Craft3. Her loan payments are $45 per month. “It was really affordable,” she said.
Now, Brian is better able to get around the house, and Shawn can cook inside year-round without worrying about it getting unbearably hot. They also installed a heat pump with the help of Energy Trust, which keeps their electricity bill down.
“When you’re low-income, it really means a lot to be able to own your own home,” Shawn said. “I’m in a mobile home because that’s kind of where our budget is at, and to be able to have a brand new home compared to the older home … It’s very uplifting to your mood and how you feel.”
It has also made them safer during Madras’ hot summers, which are predicted to get even warmer with climate change, according to Oregon’s 2024 statewide climate assessment.
But the Kings are one of just a lucky few who are better prepared to face the heat.
There are an estimated 4.3 million manufactured homesites nationwide, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute. Many of these homes are outdated and vulnerable to extreme heat, and the vast majority of those residents aren’t benefitting from programs like Energy Trust’s, which is one of its kind in the United States.
That’s the case in places like Arizona, where extreme heat’s effect on health has been an issue for decades.
The state is trying to modernize manufactured homes through programs like the Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and “Efficiency Arizona,” an energy rebates program — but progress can’t keep pace with demand.
“There are probably 175,000 mobile and manufactured homes that are older in the state that need to have some kind of weatherization done to it,” said Patricia Solís, a research professor at Arizona State University. Solís authored a report on extreme heat’s effect on mobile home residents and found that in Maricopa County, mobile home residents are six to eight times more likely to die from extreme heat.
“But these [weatherization] programs are at best only catching about 10,000 households a year of any kind, given limited funding and the limited workforce that is ready to retrofit buildings,” she said.
Solís published a heat mitigation solutions guide to help mobile home residents prepare for extreme heat with the resources they already have available or can easily access. Some of these resources include using curtains and shade sails during extreme heat, painting mobile rooftops with reflective white coating, and spacing out mobile homes within a park to allow for more ventilation between houses.
But these changes aren’t enough to protect mobile home residents from extreme heat. That’s why mobile home replacement or weatherization programs are essential — and could provide a solution for not just the heat problem, according to Solís.
“If we want to solve the heat problem, why don’t we solve the housing problem at the same time?” she said. “Manufactured housing … could actually be a great solution.” New manufactured homes cost less than single-family homes to build. With the right technology, they can also be more efficient in heating and cooling than a single-family home.
“We need more affordable housing in this country. We need climate adaptation in this country. Why don’t we put problem A with problem B together, and create resilient solutions all around?” Solís said.
But this will likely take both state and federal buy-in, which could be hard to come by under the Trump administration.
Many of the green energy initiatives funded through Biden-era laws like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have been paused or are under evaluation by the Administration. Additionally, the White House’s 2026 budget proposal recommends eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which mobile home residents across the country rely on to pay their heating and cooling bills.
Organizations like Energy Trust, the Oregon non-profit, would likely try to fill the gap that eliminating these programs could create.
Since Energy Trust’s first pilot run of the manufactured home replacement program in 2018, the organization has steadily increased the number of homes it’s able to service. In 2024, they reached a milestone: More than 100 Oregon families have received new, energy-efficient homes with EnergyTrust’s help.
They’ve got a long way to go — manufactured homes make up 10% of Oregon’s housing stock, and 60% of them were built before energy efficiency standards were enforced — but Eddie Sepeda, program navigator for Energy Trust, said they’re committed to this work.
“We still have a lot of work to do … but we’re ready to do it,” said Sepeda.
This story was produced by The Daily Yonder and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
