Households Living in Manufactured Housing Face Outsized Exposure to Heat and Wildfire Hazards: Evidence from California

Abstract

Past research has shown that households living in manufactured housing have outsized exposure and vulnerability to multiple climate-related hazards, including floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Yet, few studies have specifically analyzed the risk of hot and dry climate change-induced hazards, such as extreme heat and wildfires, on households living in manufactured housing. In this study, we first use national American Housing Survey data to provide background context on the adaptive capacity to these hazards among manufactured home occupants nationally. We then focus our primary analysis on California, where the prevalence of such hazards is growing substantially due to climate change. We compile a unique, census tract-level data set of occupied housing unit characteristics by tenure status, along with extreme heat and wildfire hazard measures. We also incorporate address-level locations of mobile home parks in the state. We use descriptive statistics, t-tests, and bivariate correlations to compare the exposure for households in manufactured housing with renter and owner households residing in other housing structure types. We find that households in manufactured housing face consistently higher exposure to heat and fire hazards across all exposure measures. Census tracts with higher proportions of households in manufactured housing are much more likely to be located in areas with greater historical and projected extreme heat hazards than households living in other lower-cost housing types or households in general. Households in manufactured housing are also the most likely of all housing types to be located in tracts affected by past wildfires and in tracts with high future wildfire risk. We conclude by providing recommendations for future research and policy consideration.