Esther Sullivan

Esther Sullivan’s research focuses on poverty, spatial inequality, legal regulation, housing, and the built environment, with a special interest in both forced and voluntary residential mobility. Esther is the author of the 2018 book, Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile Home Parks and Americans’ Tenuous Right to Place, a mixed-method geospatial and ethnographic study of the social, legal, and market forces that intersect to create housing insecurity for low-income residents in U.S. mobile home parks. Drawing on ethnographic data collected before, during, and after mobile home park closures and community-wide evictions, the book examines the current state of housing insecurity for mobile home park residents and for all those attempting to hold on to housing they can afford in contemporary urban areas. Esther is currently conducting a National Science Foundation study of manufactured housing recovery following Hurricanes Michael and Harvey in Florida and the Gulf Coast. Her other research project traces the relocation and resettlement of individuals moving to states where cannabis has been legalized.