TITLE:
Conceptual Design Study on a Multi-Story Building System as the Host Structure for Mobile Home Units
AUTHORS:
Michael Fitch, Ali M. Memari, Shahryar Habibi
KEYWORDS:
Residential Buildings, Mobile Homes, Modular Construction, Manufactured Homes, Housing Affordability, Multi-Story Buildings, Highrise Buildings
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Civil Engineering,
Vol.16 No.3,
September
16,
2026
ABSTRACT: A large percentage of the starting young working force or low-income segment of the US population cannot afford to purchase homes and must spend a considerable portion of their income on renting apartments. While mobile home or as currently referred to as manufactured home ownership could have been a temporary solution, the current housing market is not in favor of conventional mobile homes for various reasons. In order to make the idea of mobile home ownership attracting again, instead of mobile home parks, a new idea for placement of the units is needed. This paper builds on the concepts developed earlier for vertical mobile home placement. The methodology for this study is more conceptual design and comparison of strength and weaknesses of the options suggested for the proposed main concepts. Accordingly, this paper first reviews the path of developments from mobile homes on wheels to multi-story modular buildings and then contributes to a new concept for mobile homes where the unit can be plugged (i.e., placed and secured) in a host multi-story structure, with the capability of being able to be removed at a later time. The contribution of the paper is mainly in developing ideas and requirements for conceptual design of the mobile home units, lifting systems, and the host building structure.