RVers’ public image is less than great

At a tad more than two square miles, Mansfield is so far west in Arkansas it’s almost in Oklahoma. Its population is virtually unchanged from 1940, when it barely topped out over a thousand. The town’s name, according to one story cited by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, was coined by a line surveyor who, at the end of the day, reported he had gotten as far as some “man’s field.”

Mansfield, in other words, is about as far as you can get from the rah-rah impulses of contemporary American society. But that doesn’t mean its residents don’t know what’s going on in the wider world, and judging by their response to a proposed RV park, what’s going on has no place in Mansfield—or in a man’s field. Not if that field is across the street from the town’s only elementary school. As one local resident put it, “Last thing we need is strangers across from our kids. Everyone in this town watches out for the children, let’s keep it that way.”

So it was, earlier this past week, that the Mansfield City Council unanimously voted to deny a rezoning application that would have opened the door for such a development. That no actual plans for an RV park had yet been submitted was irrelevant. The number of possible sites, the kind of RVing public to be targeted, the amenities and additional facilities that would be incorporated—all unknown. No traffic studies, environmental impact statements or projected economic benefits to the area had been prepared. The rezoning applicant, Don Wheeler, owner of a roofing and construction firm, spurned an invitation to attend the council meeting and wasn’t on hand to answer the inevitable questions.

The Mansfield City Council, in other words, didn’t reject a proposed RV park. It rejected the idea of an RV park, and that should concern anyone with a vested interest in RVing and RV parks and campgrounds.

In that regard, the concerns and anxieties that prompted the city council’s adverse vote are eye-opening. For a very vocal segment of the Mansfield population, RV parks are a threat to public safety and social order, teeming with child molesters, drug addicts and vagrants. “No one wants strangers with unknown backgrounds that close to their little ones,” one local resident protested. Another contended that RV park residents would find it “easy to hand drugs to kids through the fence and no telling what they [students] might witness from their schoolyard.”

Although a couple of voices were raised on behalf of the economic benefits an RV park would bring to town, they were drowned out by the paranoia that prevailed. “I can tell by the looks on your faces, I know how you will vote,” local resident Bobby Musgrove was quoted by the Resident News Network. “But we are losing businesses in this town . . . with this RV park, the city could charge a 2% tourism tax. You have got to think about the city. We have run businesses out of town out of stupidity . . . I can see all your points, you’re afraid that some kids might get kidnapped, raped or molested, but that can happen anywhere, at any time.”

That’s hardly a reassuring point on which to conclude, but Musgrove’s defense of campgrounds also didn’t address the over-riding question: as one local resident asked in a Facebook exchange, why would anyone stay at an RV park in Mansfield in the first place? The answers were blunt. “Property values and rental prices for stick and brick houses is [sic] continuing to rise,” came one response. “Living fulltime in an RV is much more affordable.” Answered another, “homeless people are now living in campers.”

And then there was this satisfied response to the council’s decision: “Good move, really,” wrote Stephen Leonard. “Would have ended up with a bunch of raggedy, rundown eyesores people called campers/RVs parked in there, with a bunch of junk piled up around them. Last thing we need in Mansfield is more eyesores. The town is making headway toward being better, cleaner and more visually appealing, no need in back-tracking now for an RV park that would just end up looking like a slum park in the long run.”

That’s a pretty bleak prediction triggered by nothing more than the words “RV park.” But as this unintended word-association test suggests, some significant portion of rural America looks at RVs and doesn’t see the adventurous, freedom-seeking community of self-sufficient nomads that the RV industry promotes with unrelenting enthusiasm. It sees the scrapings of society, a pestilent horde of parasites preying on communities that are themselves struggling for survival. There’s no economic benefit from inviting the destitute to move in, but there’s no end to the grief attached to such hospitality.

To some extent, alas, the RV industry has brought this PR problem on itself, by resolutely ignoring the increased use of RVs for full-time living. And RV parks and campgrounds have played along by making a growing percentage of site inventory available for long-term stays, seduced by the lower costs and easier money to be made by having less turn-over. But as the Mansfield example illustrates, the industry’s anticipated solution to overcrowding—just build new campgrounds!—is running up against a growing community resistance of the kind that might meet a proposal to build, say, a local whorehouse.

Think about that the next time you’re trying a book a site and can’t find anything available.