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By the time the murky brown water in the house reached his chest, Joe Rogers realized it was too late to leave safely. Then, in an instant, his mobile home shifted violently, creating a wave that swept up furniture and trapped his wife, Sandra, in their bedroom.
Mr. Rogers pleaded with his wife to leave, but she was stuck. He said he would break the bedroom window from the outside. He went to his front door, grabbed a rope thrown by a neighbor, and pulled himself to the nearest perch, pausing to catch his breath.
Before he could return to the trailer, it broke loose from its foundation and was pulled into the adjacent Pigeon River, churning with rain from the remnants of Hurricane Helene. He watched his home smash into a bridge, his wife still inside.
Her body was recovered days later, 16 miles from where they had lived in Clyde, N.C.
Back-to-back catastrophic hurricanes this fall, first Helene and then Milton, have exposed the risks climate change poses to the 16 million Americans who live in mobile or manufactured homes. Built in factories and lighter than conventional houses, manufactured homes are transported to a property and secured to the ground.
They are among the least expensive forms of housing; those who live in mobile home parks are three times as likely to live in poverty as those who live in traditional housing and are more likely to be older or disabled. Manufactured homes are also more likely to be located in flood zones, according to data compiled by CoreLogic, a property information and analytics company.
Manufactured homes make up 6 percent of the nation’s housing stock. But the proportions were much higher in several areas hard-hit by Milton and Helene. In western North Carolina, 14 percent of homes were mobile or manufactured. Around Tampa Bay, Fla., the share was 11 percent. South of Tampa, in Manatee County, 14 percent of homes were mobile or manufactured.
The challenges don’t stop there. Americans in standard housing often have insurance, which, together with FEMA payments, can help cover the cost of repairs. But people in mobile homes are less likely to have insurance, according to Dr. Rumbach.
In the Plant City mobile home community near Tampa, residents were trying to make repairs. Olga Summers, 61, whose uninsured home was damaged when a tree fell on it, expects that her husband will try to fix it himself.
“Most of these people don’t have insurance,” said Lauren Cook Wike, 68, who lives in the same community. “We will all work together.”
FEMA provides disaster survivors up to $42,500 for emergency repairs, which can be put toward a new home. (That maximum payment increased by $1,100 for disasters declared after Sept. 30.) But new manufactured housing typically costs more than twice that amount.
And even if a survivor can afford to replace a mobile home, other hurdles exist. After a disaster, mobile home parks must be repaired to comply with current local building codes, which require things like elevating foundations above the expected height of future floods.
Those changes are expensive, said Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who studies climate adaptation. The cost often gets passed on to residents in the form of higher rent. Or park owners decide to sell to developers, who build permanent housing because it’s more profitable.
“Many of these mobile home parks are being converted over because they’re in prime locations,” Dr. Keenan said.
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