"Manufactured Homes" as the lady who lives in a trailer often corrects me, are a weird thing.
They have advantages, like you can always crawl under them and fix things. Which you often need to do, which is a disadvantage.
New manufactured homes cost a bundle.
Well, not as much as having someone build you a small house
but since i can do it myself, i can throw together a small house in no time.
What we really need, is in highschool, to have a REAL shop class where all the boys build themselves their first home. Probably like a garage with an apartment above it.
Then these boys would have some real life skills and at least know a bit about how their house was built. (no class will all be professional builders after a year. Some of them will need a lot of help)
The thing about trailers, is, as you say it, they are cheap.
Mostly because resell value is through the floor.
And they come on a tiny, tiny lot... also cheap.
Soooo, when you can't afford much, it is where you end up.
some would say that this is where we are heading...everyone only being able to afford a tiny lot.
Shop class still existed when I was in school but it was only for one year and honestly, they didn't teach you how to build anything useful. I remember we spent weeks on building these racecars for a contest which was fun but served no real practical purpose. It's probably banned to have this in schools for sexism and safety reasons these days. It should, as you hint at, be required.