Mobile Home

For decades the answer to inexpensive, safe housing for older retired Floridians was found in mobile home communities. Yet with Florida’s growth and an increasing and longer-living senior population, for many, that once sure answer is wrong.

On any given day before Hurricane Ian neighbors parked their golf carts in front of Douglas Loria’s trailer at the Tropicana 55-plus mobile home community. The days were often sunny. The breeze often light.The conversations would go on and on.“It’s a wonderful community if you like talking to people all the time,” Loria said. “They go by and say ‘hi’ and you know, you drop what you’re doing and talk fifteen, twenty minutes, half an hour.

What was once Hurricane Irma is now a tropical storm. But before Irma touched down Sunday in Southwest Florida, WGCU visited a trailer park in Estero when…