Wartime Trailer Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area

Abstract

TRAILERS and trailer parks, which had appeared with some frequency during the late 1930s principally to satisfy the needs of vacationing motorists, hardly had a chance to become part of the recreational landscape before the functions were altered. With the onset of World War II, trailers lost their primary association with travel and instead became residences and a type of residential land use. In particular, trailers and trailer parks were used in urban areas that experienced acute housing shortages during the war. Those shortages were caused largely because urban areas that experienced a tremendous expansion of defense-related industries usually were not able to deal with the large influx of migrants who followed to take available jobs. While large centers, including Hartford, St. Louis, Seattle, and San Francisco, were affected, so were smaller places, such as Portsmouth, Virginia; Charleston, Indiana; and Willow Run, Michigan. In this article, the wartime usage of trailers and trailer parks in the San Francisco Bay Area is examined. Of particular concern is the extent to which trailer parks, where trailers were usually placed in urban areas, were spatially integrated into the individual communities where they were located during that emergency period. That is significant because prior to the wartime emergency trailers were not generally considered suitable for permanent residency.