Public Drinking Water System Coverage and Its Discontents: The Prevalence and Severity of Water Access Problems in California's Mobile Home Parks

Introduction

In September 2012, California became the first and only state in the United States to legislatively recognize the human right to water. The legislation states that “every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.” ¹ Mobile homes represent about 4% of California's housing stock. ² In turn about 75% of California's mobile homes are situated in group settlements or mobile home parks (MHPs). ³ Despite the substantial share of the population living in parks, there are few studies broadly assessing environmental service conditions, much less water access, in these communities. In this study, we use the water service dimensions stated in this legislation—quality, reliability, and affordability—to evaluate water access in California's MHPs.

Parks are primarily composed of households that are not only more ethnically diverse but also poorer and have lower levels of formal education than the general population. ⁴ The effect of implicit or overt racial or ethnic discrimination on water provision has been documented in rural and semirural communities across the United States, similar to and sometimes including MHPs. ⁵ We also know that small water systems, which are more likely to serve as MHPs, tend to perform worse than larger systems in terms of quality and reliability. ⁶ The targeted literature assessing drinking water service to residents of mobile homes is very limited, but suggestive. We have previously demonstrated that there is a higher propensity of quality violations made by water systems that exclusively serve MHPs in Los Angeles County ⁷ and that mobile home residents across the United States experience a higher proportion of water access shutoffs, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors and spatial marginality ⁸ . MHPs are also singled out in several policy reports identifying the worst-performing public water systems in California and Texas. ⁹ Otherwise, however, there has been little study of the topic.

While evidence from the gray literature and studies of water access among similar populations suggests that water service in parks is likely to be substandard compared to the general population, much less the standards outlined in the state's legislated Human Right to Water, it is far from conclusive. Accordingly, in this study we use a range of qualitative and quantitative data sources to provide the richest profile of water access in MHPs to date. Contrary to expectations, we find that MHPs in California are as likely to be served by publicly regulated community water systems as other types of housing settlements, suggesting that deficiencies in service must be viewed as a public sector problem. We next show that MHPs are much more likely to be served by small systems than medium or larger sized systems. In fact, MHP systems represent 13% of all state systems, despite parks housing around 3% of the state's population.

We then evaluate drinking water service to MHP systems by the stated dimensions of California's Human Right to Water: quality, reliability, and affordability. Water access disparities identified in a content analysis of 1300 news stories in California newspapers from 2000 to 2015 allow us to qualitatively illustrate the breadth and depth of substandard access in parks. These findings are supported by an analysis of administrative data on system quality and reliability. MHP systems are more likely to incur at least one health-related violation and have a higher average number of violations than other systems. They are also four times more likely to experience a significant service shutoff and 40% more likely to rely on groundwater. The evidence on affordability is less conclusive. Many of these problems are exacerbated, if not directly caused, by poor oversight and management of drinking water systems by private MHP operators. We conclude by outlining the feasibility of planning and policy responses that can be targeted to improve service by MHP systems. The problem of insufficient water access and necessary policy development to redress inequalities are likely to be even larger outside of California, where the proportion of mobile home residents is larger and the Human Right to Water is not legislated much less supported by policy.

Data and Methods

As shown in Table 1, we use a range of qualitative and quantitative data from different sources to characterize water service provision to MHPs in California. We first analyze stories from the Access World News online database, which pools news stories from 237 Californian newspapers, over the period January 1, 2000 to January 1, 2015. This database search (Appendix 1) used key water access and mobile home terms which allowed us to identify 1331 potentially relevant news stories across 23 of the state's 58 counties. Using these stories, we perform a content analysis on those which discuss relevant dimensions of water access. We code news articles along the three dimensions. We use the coded data that describe in granular detail the water access obstacles faced by mobile home communities and potential policy responses. We do not claim that these stories are representative of the water service conditions faced in MHPs. In fact, we assume that the information we can derive from news stories represented just a fraction of the service deficiencies faced by these communities.

Accordingly, we also draw on a range of administrative data sources to support findings derived from the content analysis. We rely on 2010–2014 American Community Survey data to derive our estimate of the percentage of population living in a MHP in California. ¹⁰ We draw on the State Water Resource Control Board's Safe Drinking Water Information System 3.21 (SDWIS) for data on the prevalence of publicly regulated MHP systems, systems' chief water source, and system quality violations. ¹¹ To determine own park systems, we searched among system names for “trailer,” “park,” “mobile,” and “estates” and then manually checked to see that each was a MHP.

We rely on the 2011 American Housing Survey (AHS) for data on water system reliability, as there is no better extant source at the household level for the state or U.S. population. ¹² The AHS data allow us to distinguish between MHP housing units and other housing types and whether housing units rely on water systems serving 15 or more households, which mirror the regulated–unregulated water system classification. We construct the outcome of interest, unreliable water access, from a categorical variable in the AHS. This variable records the number of times water service was completely cutoff in a given housing unit (for a 24-hour + period) during the resident's tenancy. Finally, while we identify very little quantitative evidence on household-level water cost, for MHP residents or otherwise, we draw on legislation from the California Assembly which suggests an outsized affordability problem among some MHP systems.

Findings

We first present results on the average size, prevalence, and governance of MHP systems from administrative data. We then analyze drinking water quality, reliability, and affordability of service provided by MHP systems as opposed to other public water systems in California using both findings from our content analysis, as well as data points available in administrative sources. We conclude by discussing tradeoffs and complementarities in the three dimensions of service.

Conclusion

Residents served by substandard MHP systems are not passive bystanders. Many of the qualitative accounts analyzed in our study highlight the anger, fear, and concern of residents about the inadequate response by park owners and city officials to address substandard access. Several of the accounts also detailed ad hoc efforts by residents to organize and directly overcome access deficiencies, including complaints to the city council and legal action.

There are several potential strategies to improve MHP systems. Most promisingly, at the state level, the State Board has embarked on a serious effort and has new legislative authority, to encourage consolidation of small underperforming water systems, including MHP systems, with larger high-performing public systems. ³¹ While this effort is likely to move slowly, it is still more likely to make an impact than municipal annexation efforts which would connect parks to larger drinking water systems. ³² Moreover, consolidation is likely to yield more improvements than through the Board's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF). While California devotes the majority of its DWSRF to quality improvements for small public systems, MHP systems with access deficiencies must compete with hundreds of other small systems and are only likely to be able to do so with the support of experienced nonprofit organizations, such as Pueblo Unido CDC in the Coachella Valley. ³³ Another opportunity for support comes from the CPUC, which manages to regulate energy usage in MHPs and cross-subsidizes larger private systems and nominally takes responsibility for MHP drinking water systems. ³⁴ The Department of Housing and Community Development also maintains an Office of the Mobilehome Ombudsman, which states that it can help residents with water quality and reliability issues. ³⁵ While this seems like the best means to put third-party pressure on park managers and system operators, it is unclear to what extent this office is known among MHP tenants, as it did not appear in our other research as a tool used by MHP residents or supportive advocates. Other solutions proposed to improve water access involve local nonprofit or community based organization support for self-reliant water systems managed by MHP residents as nonprofits or by supportive third-party nonprofits. ³⁶

In most cases, multiple means of support and pressure, from residents to state agencies, will likely be needed for sustainable access to be ensured for MHP systems. This study focuses on California as the federal government plays little role in ongoing drinking water system governance and support. The ubiquity of MHP systems and the problem of insufficient water access provided by MHP systems are likely to be even more prevalent in states outside of California, where the proportion of mobile home residents is larger and the Human Right to Water is not legislated much less supported by concerted policy and program development. Accordingly, any proactive policy development in California to redress inequalities should serve as a model that can be adapted across the United States.