Voters clad in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag gathered along Copacabana Beach in the thousands last Sunday, in the lead-up to the nation’s Oct. 28 presidential runoff.

“The country needs someone who values family, who values measures against corruption, and who has a clean record,” says Vania de Alencar, a middle-aged lawyer wearing a Brazilian soccer jersey. She talks over blasting samba tunes, reworked to admonish the long-in-power Workers’ Party (PT).

In the past, Ms. Alencar supported former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the PT, which ran Brazil from 2003 to 2016. Earlier this year, Lula, as he is known, led the polls. But he was barred from running as he serves time in prison on corruption charges. Now, Alencar and nearly 60 percent of the Brazilian electorate say they plan to throw their support behind the controversial Social Liberal Party candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who stands at the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army captain, is best known for his right-wing statements, including disparaging women, the LGBT community, and indigenous people, as well as praising the nation’s 21-year-long dictatorship, which ended in 1985. But he’s the one who can put Brazil back on track, Alencar says.

She likes to use Mr. Bolsonaro’s middle name: Messias, which translates to “Messiah.”

She’s not alone.

In a race for Brazil’s highest seat, supporters paint Bolsonaro as a champion who can swoop in to save an economically and politically struggling nation – much like Lula’s fans did in 2002.

“He’s not a savior, because only Jesus Christ saves,” says Waldo Santos, a real-estate broker. His forehead is wrapped in a yellow headband reading “Ele Sim” (Yes, Him) in glittering green letters. But “today it’s Bolsonaro who is our hero.”

The focus on finding a leader who can “save” Brazil, whether from violence or corruption, highlights Brazil’s relationship with politics and democracy, analysts say. Seeking a president who signals confidence, leadership, and a clear path ahead, despite worrying language or proposals, isn’t unique to South America’s largest country. But amid concerns over the strength of Brazil’s young democracy, the popularity of someone who lauds anti-democratic notions, like the use of torture during the dictatorship, has many concerned about long-term consequences.

“When you have a political class that is so discredited, when there’s such a lack of confidence in government and Congress, this adds up to a feeling of ‘We need to be saved,’” says Lucas de Aragão, director of Brazilian political consultancy Arko Advice. He says the phenomenon isn’t new here, and ties it back to Portuguese lore about King Sebastian, who people believed would one day return to save the nation after he disappeared in battle in the 1500s.

Amid wave upon wave of corruption inquiries, Brazilians are losing faith in politics. And for many, Mr. Aragão says, “democracy is synonymous with politics.”  

Reverse course

During the first decade of this century, Brazil crawled out from a struggling economy and started to look unstoppable. Under Lula, it enjoyed a vast commodities boom that bolstered social programming and helped draw more than 20 million Brazilians out of poverty, and many into a new middle class. Brazil seemed on a roll, winning bids to host the World Cup and the Olympics, placing it squarely in the global spotlight.

But, in recent years, Brazil’s rising star has taken a nose dive. Its economy fell into recession; violence skyrocketed, with nearly 175 people killed per day last year; and a democratically-elected president, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached on what many felt were trumped-up charges. Nearly every major political party has been touched by the far-reaching “Car Wash” kickback scandal. In recent years, frequent protests have demanded lower taxes and better public services.

“You cannot underestimate the impact of the worst recession in 100 years, one of the biggest corruption scandals ever detected anywhere in the world, and [63,880] homicides last year and rising. You can’t underestimate that impact on the public psyche and people’s hunger for a savior,” says Brian Winter, a Brazil expert and vice president of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas.

In situations like today’s, “Brazilians want to be led,” he says. “What they listen to is self-assurance and tone.”

That’s not to say Bolsonaro doesn’t project a clear vision for how he’ll fulfill voter’s expectations – even if it isn’t chock full of proposals. Long referred to as “fringe” for his incendiary statements and praise for military intervention, he has recast himself as a rare honest politician: After 27 years in Congress, he’s never been implicated in corruption. Over the past four years alone, scores of politicians and at least 60 federal deputies have been touched by the Car Wash scandal – many of whom ran for reelection this year.

Despite hopes that 2018 would be the year of economic recovery, some 12 million are unemployed. Bolsonaro has tapped a free-market economist who graduated from the University of Chicago, Paulo Guedes, to help get the economy back on track, pledged to overhaul the nation’s costly pension system, and has talked about privatizing some state-owned industries, inspiring cautious confidence.

'A good criminal is a dead criminal'

But perhaps top on the list of voters’ concerns is the nation’s towering homicide rate and rising violence. A 2016 survey found that 57 percent Brazilians agree with the statement “A good criminal is a dead criminal.”

“Brazilians in their heart of hearts [may not be] on board with what Bolsonaro is proposing,” says Mr. Winter. “But when it comes to his core agenda, which is law and order, and specifically the fight against corruption and street crime, polls indicate that a majority of Brazilians are on board with much of what he’s proposing.”

Bolsonaro has promoted giving police more freedom to shoot down suspected criminals, and advocated for the military to help clean up drug trafficking and take control of Brazilian slums.

"The way that things are today, the violence not just in Rio but all across Brazil, this is something that must be changed,” says Mr. Santos, at the rally. Bolsonaro “represents our armed forces… This is what we want, security for all of Brazil."

Public security issues are even generating a thirst for change in the PT’s heartlands, in the country’s impoverished Northeast. Although states there voted for the PT in elections Oct. 7, the capital cities in the states of Pernambuco, Sergipe, Alagoas, Paraíba, and Rio Grande do Norte – all of which featured within 2017’s top 30 most dangerous cities in the world, according to Mexican nongovernmental organization Consejo Ciudadano – came out in favor of Bolsonaro during the first round of the election. In Natal, ranked as Brazil’s most violent city and the world’s fourth most dangerous, violent, targeted crime increased by 28.2 percent from 2015 to 2018, according to the Violence Observatory Rio Grande do Norte (OBVIO RN), a nonprofit that analyzes government data on public security.

A lack of safety “exists alongside this tendency to vote for Bolsonaro,” says Ivénio Hermes, research coordinator and president of OBVIO RN. But he feels public security is often used to justify choosing a divisive candidate. “In truth, Brazil remains much the same as it was 30 years ago: Voters seeing themselves in icons rather than in proposals, and voting based on emotions,” he says.

Safe for democracy?

Finding hope in an outsider, populist, and far-from-politically-correct candidate has echoes of voting trends around the world in recent years – including the United States. But many Brazil watchers fear the democratic system may not be strong enough to withstand Bolsonaro’s enthusiasm for dictatorship-era leaders and practices. His close ties with current military leadership, and appointment of a recently retired four-star general as his running mate, have some people concerned about clear demarcations of power between civilian rule and the military under his possible administration.

“The crisis of the last five years has been so severe that many Brazilians have concluded that the fault belongs not to one party or group of parties but democracy itself,” says Winter.

Overall, there is evidence that citizens still deeply value a democratic state. According to an October Datafolha poll, 69 percent of Brazilians believe democracy is the best way to govern.

Maria do Soccoro Braga, a political scientist at the Federal University of São Carlos, says voters’ backing for Bolsonaro may be misinterpreted as disregarding democracy. For some, he’s the very hope of preserving it amid a debilitatingly corrupt system.

“Political corruption is not a recent phenomenon in Brazil, but we have a much greater level of knowledge of these systems of corruption now,” Dr. Braga says. “People are beginning to look at this political elite and are wondering whether they are capable of maintaining a democracy.”

Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard/AP

Lawyers and youth plaintiffs line up behind a banner after a federal court hearing in Eugene, Ore., July 18. The 21 young people known as the "climate kids" are suing the US government for failing to address climate change.

Last Friday, the US government took an extraordinary step to hinder a group of young plaintiffs from suing it over climate change, in a case that could prompt Americans to rethink the role that government plays in safeguarding the atmosphere for future generations.

In an order issued on Oct. 19, the US Supreme Court froze the discovery and trial processes for Juliana v. United States, a federal lawsuit by 21 US citizens between the ages of 11 to 22 who allege that the government has violated their constitutional rights by knowingly destabilizing the Earth’s climate. The Justice Department had requested that the high court pause the trial, which had been slated to begin Monday in the Federal District Court in Eugene, Ore., arguing that the litigation costs would represent an undue burden on the government.

It’s nearly unheard of for the Supreme Court to halt a proceeding in a lower court before it has even started. But this is not the first time the White House, under both Presidents Trump and Barack Obama, have attempted unusual legal maneuvers, variously described by the federal judges reviewing them as “drastic and extraordinary“ and “hen’s-teeth rare,” to prevent this case from moving forward since the plaintiffs first filed it in 2015.

“It sounds like they’re afraid,” says University of Oregon legal scholar Mary Wood, about the Justice Department. “Everybody is saying that this is just a litany of desperate measures.”

Professor Wood developed some of the legal theories that guide the lawsuit, which unlike most environmental suits, does not rely on a statute, regulation, or ordinance. Instead, the plaintiffs, represented by an Oregon environmental nonprofit called Our Children’s Trust, are making a constitutional claim. The US government, they argue, knew about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions decades ago. Yet they continued to pursue policies, such as issuing permits for fossil fuel extraction and export, that the lawsuit claims deprive the plaintiffs of their rights to life, liberty, and property that are guaranteed by the Constitution’s due process and equal protection clauses.

More broadly, implicit in the case is an assumption of government obligation that could ripple far beyond the realm of climate change. If citizens have standing to sue the government for failing to safeguard natural resources for future generations, then that opens up a flood of other kinds of potential lawsuits.

A different kind of lawsuit

Unlike most lawsuits, the plaintiffs are not seeking money. Instead, they want the courts to require the federal government to formulate a climate recovery plan that would phase out excess greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

In the eyes of the plaintiffs, constitutional rights extend to the freedom to enjoy a healthy natural environment.

“The constitution guarantees all Americans the right to life, liberty, and property,” plaintiff Kelsey Juliana, now 22, wrote in a post explaining her decision to sue the government. “But how is anyone supposed to live a life of freedom amid a climate crisis?”

Linking the stability of the global climate to fundamental constitutional rights is a relatively new litigation strategy, but so far it has held up in court. In 2016, Judge Ann Aiken, the federal judge who had been scheduled to preside over Monday’s trial, allowed the case to go forward, writing, “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.”

“If you’re losing your house, your farmlands are failing, and your livelihood is at perpetual risk or at best uncertain, these are the kinds of circumstances that that foreclose the ability to exercise or enjoy those rights,” says Maxine Burkett a law professor at the University of Hawaii who specializes in climate justice.

Observers say that the government is resisting the case for two big reasons. First, the discovery process – the pretrial procedure during which evidence is entered into the public record – could establish as fact the government’s role not just in failing to address climate change, but in knowingly promoting policies that would exacerbate it.

“The discovery is going to reveal that the government actually knows that climate change is real and actually has known it for a very long time, and actually isn’t taking the actions that we would need to take to make our contribution to ensuring that the increase in temperature on the planet stays below 2 degrees centigrade,” says David Takacs, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. “That can be both time consuming and embarrassing.”

Second, acknowledgement of the underlying premise of the case – that the Constitution obliges the government to safeguard natural resources for future generations – could drastically shift the balance of power between citizen and state.

“If you were to establish one of the constitutional claims that Our Children’s Trust is looking for, that would have tremendous implications not just for reducing greenhouse gases but for taking all kinds of actions” says Professor Takacs. “If young people, the youth, are seen as a protected class, then anything that the government does that fails to steward a sustainable future for youth would all of a sudden be challengeable in court under constitutional grounds, and the government doesn’t want that.”

Beyond the courthouse

For climate activists, the judiciary is far from an ideal mechanism for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. But given that more than half of Congress disputes the science underpinning climate change, and that the executive branch is disinclined toward climate action, the courts may be their only remaining recourse.

“This is what is so striking about the plaintiffs’ case,” says Wood. “Their whole point is that the other branches of government should have ceased this perilous policy decades ago.”

Even if the plaintiffs don’t prevail, the attention that the case is receiving constitutes a victory of sorts, as it might prompt the general public to rethink the government’s responsibility toward the planet’s atmosphere. Already, the procedural developments in the case have drawn national attention. On Sunday and Monday, activists plan to rally in cities across the US.

“Part of the genius of this lawsuit,” says Takacs, “is that it is helping to promote that cultural shift. The fact that you’ve got this incredibly mediagenic lawsuit, the fact that you have these incredibly smart, articulate young people under the age of 18 who are saying the things that they’re saying in the most intelligent way.... that’s part of the goal.”

This shift could shape how the next generation of environmental lawyers take on climate change. “This a is truly an extraordinary time to be in law school,” says Olivia Molodanof, a JD candidate at the UC Hastings College who has followed the case closely. “Cases like the Juliana case have really sparked a fire in people.”

Loren Elliott/Reuters

Rep. Beto O'Rourke speaks with members of the media following a campaign rally at Texas Southern University in Houston Oct. 9, 2018. After a mostly positive campaign – a rarity in 2018 – he apologized for attacking his opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R), during a debate.

It took less than 48 hours last week for Beto O’Rourke to express regret over attacking Ted Cruz, the United States senator he hopes to unseat this year.

Grassroots energy, record fundraising hauls, and a Democrat actually being competitive statewide in ruby-red Texas have combined to make this one of the most closely-watched contests in the country. But Representative O’Rourke, a three-term congressman from El Paso, has also attracted supporters – and Internet celebrity – by running a largely positive campaign. In the months he has campaigned across the state he has rarely criticized Senator Cruz, saying he instead wants to focus on issues, inclusion, and optimism.

Perhaps in a sign of the tenor of the times, he has departed from that approach in recent weeks, criticizing Cruz at events, in campaign ads, and during a statewide televised debate.

With O’Rourke trailing in the polls less than two weeks from election day, experts say the recent burst of negativity is a sign that a hitherto unconventional campaign is reverting to tried-and-tested methods. For his part, O’Rourke has vowed not to personally attack his opponent again. While a national ramp-up in negative political rhetoric is to be expected at this late point in a campaign cycle that has been nationalized in many corners as a referendum on President Trump, around the country it is reaching new levels of demonization and vitriol.

Two years after Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Convention “when they go low, we go high,” some prominent Democrats have said the party needs to, essentially, do and say whatever it takes to defeat Republicans this year. Republicans, meanwhile, have accused Democrats of treason and inciting “mobs.” This week, prominent Democratic leaders and critics of the president became the targets of pipe bombs. On Friday, law enforcement announced they had arrested a suspect in connection with the bombs.

O’Rourke’s rise has been fueled by positivity, however, and while he has begun to criticize Cruz more, the attacks have rarely been personal. He has said they are necessary to push back against misleading criticisms of his record, but he has so far avoided going to extremes. For this moment in time it is an unorthodox approach.

“In this midterm, we’ll see if that strategy of not going low works,” says Mark Rodriguez, an O’Rourke supporter. “I hope we don’t get to that point, that reasonable people can’t win. But you never really know.”

Whether the balance O’Rourke is trying to strike will be enough for a Democrat to be elected to statewide office in Texas for the first time since 1994 is another question, but for a positive campaign to bring a Democrat even this close, the statement may have already been made.

Out of character

It also stands in contrast with races elsewhere in the country. In a Florida gubernatorial debate, Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum said that, while he wouldn’t call his Republican opponent Ron DeSantis a racist, “I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” In a heated Arizona Senate debate, Republican candidate Martha McSally accused her Democratic opponent Kyrsten Sinema of saying “it’s OK to commit to treason.” In New Jersey, Republican challenger Bob Hugin revived an unproven allegation that Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez had hired underage prostitutes, an attack ad The New York Times described as “misleading.”

Civility and an emphasis on the personal have been features of O’Rourke’s political brand. He has refused to take money from political action committees, but raised more than $61 million – double his opponent – through regular appeals for small donations. (Outside groups have funded ads supporting both candidates.) He held town halls in all 254 counties in Texas, crisscrossing the vast state in a fashion reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson’s helicopter-powered Senate campaign in 1948, only with more selfies and Facebook livestreams.

One of O’Rourke’s earliest forays into national news came in a road trip with GOP Rep. Will Hurd last year showing that politicians “can disagree without being disagreeable.” In a tweet, he criticized protesters who shouted Cruz and his wife out of a Washington restaurant. His Senate campaign gained national attention after a video of his defense of kneeling NFL players, in response to a question at a town hall in Houston, went viral.

“Reasonable people can disagree on this issue … and it makes them no less American,” he said. “I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up or take a knee for your rights.”

Both reflect that while O’Rourke is undeniably liberal – his policy positions include universal health care and abortion rights – civil disagreement is at the core of his political brand.

His supporters say they gravitate to that sense of fair play.

“He’s running on just good values. It’s so different,” said Denise Avila, a grandmother and high school English teacher, who attended a rally last week. “I haven’t seen that in Texas in a long time.”

O’Rourke edged away from that brand in recent weeks, culminating in attacks in a televised debate last week, including one rare reference to Trump.

“He’s dishonest. That’s why the president called him ‘Lyin’ Ted,’ ” O’Rourke said, referencing Trump’s nickname for Cruz during the GOP primary in 2016.

The line got a big cheer from a packed room of Democratic voters watching in a San Antonio bar, but O’Rourke didn’t look especially comfortable delivering it. Two days later, at a town hall hosted by CNN, he said, “Perhaps, in the heat of the moment, I took a step too far.”

“I don’t know that that’s the way I want to be taking this campaign,” he added.

Sergio Flores/Reuters

Sen. Ted Cruz speaks to supporters inside Schobels' Restaurant in Columbus, Texas, Sept. 15, 2018. The Republican incumbent is up six points in polls with less than two weeks before Election Day.

He has begun to release ads attacking Cruz’s positions, however, on issues like immigration and education. They are not your traditional attack ads – no black-and-white images or ominous music, just O’Rourke speaking into a camera. (Outside groups have been financing anti-Cruz ads, including some directed by “Boyhood” director Richard Linklater.)

Cruz has been attacking him for longer. In a battle of the nicknames, Rafael “Ted” Cruz’s first ad, released in March, mocked O’Rourke’s “Beto” nickname (a Latino truncation of Roberto). Cruz has consistently characterized his opponent as being too liberal for Texas. Earlier this week, at an event in Georgetown, Texas, he joked that O’Rourke should share a jail cell with Hillary Clinton.

Experts say these are all indications that, as the race enters its home stretch – and with the latest polls showing Cruz ahead by single digits – it is becoming more conventional.

It has helped O’Rourke “that he has not limited himself to just complaining about Republicans in general, or running against Cruz, or running against Trump,” says Harold Cook, a Democratic strategist and former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party.

“But that alone doesn’t put you in the lead,” he adds. “You cannot win without presenting a compelling reason for the incumbent to be fired.”

At Cowboys Dancehall

Both Republicans and Democrats in Texas have been buoyed by record numbers of midterm ballots being cast in counties around the state for early voting, which began on Monday. After polls closed on Tuesday in San Antonio, hundreds of O’Rourke supporters flocked to the Cowboys Dancehall here for a rally. As the nine-piece band Shinyribs played on the stage, they milled around the venue, lining up to buy O’Rourke T-shirts and stickers, take selfies with a neon “Beto for Texas” sign, and chatting near a vacant mechanical bull.

Charging her phone near the mechanical bull, Norma Leza says she’s never been as invested in a candidate as she is in O’Rourke.

“That’s why I’ve kept following him,” she says, referring to his positive campaigning.

And the attacks of recent weeks?

“For the most part it was necessary,” Ms. Leza says. She doesn’t agree with the broader notion that Democrats should do whatever it takes to win, but “if you’re trying to prove a point, or disprove another point [about your policies], I like it.”

Mr. Rodriguez, who has been following the campaign for nearly a year, says it has been exciting to see the crowds grow from a few dozen last year to the hundreds in the Cowboys Dancehall. He echoed many other supporters in saying “it was refreshing to see him so positive.”

“I just hope it’s not down to one candidate,” he adds. “I hope this could be a playbook for other candidates, to generate excitement and good will.”

As he finished speaking, someone on the stage called out to the crowd on the dance floor. “If they go low,” he called, “we go?”

The crowd answered in unison: “High!”

Diane Buchanan was headed out her door to an evening church service when she heard the news. “The park is sold,” a worried resident told her.

The park is Meadowbrook, an over-55s community of mobile homes where Ms. Buchanan, a retired bookkeeper, has lived for 18 years. Like other homeowners, she paid a monthly rent to the family-owned company that built the park in the 1970s. Now the family had written to the residents to inform them of a pending $8.25 million sale to an outside investor.

By the time Buchanan got the letter dated May 17 there was rising panic among neighbors over the news. Trailer parks have become popular investments, and a new owner would likely seek to make a higher return. That could mean higher rents, which would squeeze out low-income residents, or even the demolition of the park to make way for more profitable properties.  

“I read it and I said, the park isn’t sold yet,” says Buchanan. “It was a proposal.”

Under Massachusetts law, the residents of Meadowbrook had first right to buy the land on which their 193 modest factory-made houses sat. If they could come up with $8.25 million, it was theirs. Which is how Buchanan, as treasurer of the residents association, found herself on a crash course in how to convert a trailer park into a resident-owned cooperative. “The whole purpose is to own the land. That way we have some control over it,” she says.

At a time of rising concern over affordable housing and income inequality, mobile home parks have emerged as a potential opportunity – and a potential pitfall. As many as 20 million Americans live in mobile homes, the largest number in rural tracts in the South and Southwest. A selling point is cost: New manufactured homes cost less than half as much to build as traditional homes.

While some buyers own their land, others live in designated parks like Meadowbrook. The risk is that rents go up and park owners can change. And far from being mobile – as the name for their homes suggests – residents who own their homes can find themselves with nowhere to go.

“They walk around with a pit in their stomach about what will happen if the wrong person buys this community,” says Paul Bradley, president of ROC USA, a nonprofit in New Hampshire that provides technical support and mortgage financing for mobile home cooperatives.

Five months later, Meadowbrook was on the verge of a successful buyout. Nearly everyone living in the park had agreed to pay $25 for a share in the new cooperative; Buchanan had been chosen to serve as treasurer. The next step was to hold an all-residents meeting at a local church to vote on an initial budget and choose a management company for the park. After that, the cooperative could unlock the financing they need to close the deal.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Well-maintained homes populate Meadowbrook, a mobile home park in Hudson, Mass.

But first they needed those votes. And the board’s proposed buyout was facing a mini-revolt by disgruntled residents, a revolt allegedly backed by the putative park investor. Tensions in the park ran so high that the board had to ask for a local policeman to mind the church door.

Rise of cooperatives

Since 2008, ROC USA and its affiliates have helped over 130 parks to go coop, building on more than two decades of similar conversions in New Hampshire, a pioneer in cooperative mobile housing. Taken together, the total number of mobile homes put under coop ownership is 14,559. None of the coops has defaulted on its loans or reverted to outside ownership.

Even as most housing markets have recovered from the last precipitous crash, the pace of new single-family construction continues to lag behind previous economic expansions. The shortage has pushed up prices in many markets. In Massachusetts, the average single-family home costs $365,000, and nearly all towns and cities have a dearth of affordable units for sale or rent.

In the case of Meadowbrook, which is virtually all owner-occupied and has a waiting list of potential buyers, a two-bedroom house goes for around $100,000. A similar house elsewhere in Hudson, a town of 20,000 an hour’s drive from Boston, costs two or three times as much.

Absent a surge in new low-cost housing, mobile home parks offer an affordable alternative, which is why Mr. Bradley wants to make sure that coop ownership is on the table. “We’re preserving properties that are otherwise at risk of closure or displacement,” he says.

Not all parks are suited for coop conversions, says Kate MacTavish, a professor of human development and family sciences at Oregon State University. Oregon is one of several states that give residents the right to buy their communities, which creates an opening for ROC USA and its affiliates to work.

Some parks serve low-income families, including renters, and may be more transient and less cohesive, complicating any buyout. “The park has to have the human capital within their resident population and the desire to take on the management side,” says Ms. MacTavish, author of “Singlewide, Chasing the American Dream in a Rural Trailer Park.”

Even before she moved into her house with her now-deceased husband, Buchanan had her eye on it. It’s a two-bed, two-bath home, and when she sits outside on her swing chair she can watch the chickadees and goldfinches cross the wooded brook that hems the park’s southern border. Her street, Teresa Drive, like the others, is named for a child of the family that opened Meadowbrook in 1970.

Every year, the family held a Christmas Party for residents. Rents did go up, but not every year and then only by $25, which seemed manageable for retirees living on social security. Trash was collected, snow was plowed. “You felt safe and secure here with that family being in charge,” says Buchanan.

As a mobile home community for over-55s, Meadowbrook serves a growing need for affordable senior housing in New England, which skews older than other regions. More than half of all households are headed by someone aged 50 or older, according to a new report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

By now, the original owners of Meadowbrook are themselves retirees living on Cape Cod. The May 17 letter was the first that residents knew of the planned sale. It informed residents that rents would rise to $550 a month, then be frozen under new ownership for two years.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Wayne Grant, president of the Meadowbrook residents board, chats on his mobile phone about a ballot for an $8.2 million coop conversion of the mobile home park he lives in.

Wayne Grant, who had bought his house in 2010 and had just taken over as president of the residents association, was suspicious. “The guy’s an investor. The rent is going up,” he says.

The investor rush

That mobile home parks have become hot investments is in part an outgrowth of the 2007-08 housing crash. Millions lost their homes in the subsequent recession, and investors piled into apartments to take advantage of demand for rentals. After apartment yields leveled off, the same investors turned to mobile home parks, says Stu Silver, a Florida-based real-estate investor and author who runs trainings for aspiring buyers.

This rush of new money marks a break from the old model of ownership when local families converted part of their land into trailer parks and had a stake in them. “You were more likely to balance the need for them to make a profit with the idea of the community,” says MacTavish.

Mr. Silver recommends investing in parks occupied by homeowners, as opposed to renters, because they incur fewer obligations. “They own the mobile home. I own the land. If their oven’s not working on Thanksgiving morning it’s not my problem,” he says. Another bonus: a mobile home is akin to a giant security deposit. “That home is stuck there.”

In theory, a disgruntled homeowner could move out. As the name suggests, trailers were once designed to be towed by cars, but the cost of moving modern houses is prohibitive, and a mover needs to find a new site at a time when the overall number of parks is shrinking, not expanding. “Most people don’t look too kindly on mobile home parks,” says Silver.  

One answer to the affordability puzzle

In 2017, 93,000 new manufactured houses were built, of which about one-third were installed in mobile home communities, either as replacement units or on new lots. The average price of these homes was $70,600, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute, an industry group. At its peak in the 1990s, manufactured homes made up 1 in 4 new single-family starts. Today the ratio is 1 in 10.

Bradley reckons manufactured homes can be part of the solution to housing affordability, and not just in preserving existing parks like Meadowbrook. That means overhauling mortgage financing so it’s easier to develop a mobile home community, but also changing how Americans see this type of housing, which is often perceived as synonymous with poverty and disorder.

Grant, who used to work as a custodian at Raytheon, says the social stigma never bothered him. “I saw this place and said this is a nice place to retire,” he says. (He still works as a school crossing guard in Hudson.) His single-fronted house was built in 1974, and like others has side extensions that make it feel roomier inside. He’s also added a wooden deck and garden shed.

The stereotypical trashy trailer parks that Grant still sees on TV seem a world away from the well-maintained streets and small lots of Meadowbrook. “It’s hard to explain to people what this place is. They have to come down and see it,” he says.

As president of the cooperative, Grant has worked for months with Massachusetts-based Cooperative Development Institute, an ROC affiliate, to prepare the legal groundwork for the buyout. If all goes to plan, “we will be in control of what goes on here. We’re not looking for profits. We’re looking to be a nice, safe, happy place.”

On Tuesday night, residents filed into the church to hear the board present their budget and to vote on its adoption. Representatives from three other resident-owned parks in Massachusetts spoke of their successful conversions. The eleventh-hour revolt fizzled; only one person spoke in opposition. Then the residents filled out their ballots and left, some no doubt anxious to be home in time for the first pitch in the World Series being played at Boston’s Fenway Park.

Buchanan and her colleagues tallied the votes. The budget passed, 145 to 12. Her dream of going coop is one big step closer to reality.

AP

Demonstrators gather in support of the fight against corruption in Guatemala City, Sept. 20.

 Victims? Or predators?

Those seem to be the only types of terms that the media and President Trump can use to depict the thousands of Central American migrants trekking in caravans toward the United States.

Viewing them as predators, Mr. Trump seeks stronger border security and aggressive immigration restrictions, perhaps with an eye on the November elections for Congress.

Those who see them as victims point to a harsh life in the Northern Triangle of Central America, composed of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. They cite a need for the US to hear out any claims for asylum.

Yet there is a third way to see many of the migrants as well as those who remain in Central America. Based on recent evidence, more people in those countries may be viewing themselves as capable agents of progress.

Of all the “push factors” driving the exodus, such as poverty and violence, one root cause is corruption. It enables poor governance and lawless gangs. But in Guatemala, the people have shown since 2006 – through protests, elections, and other activism – that curbing corruption can improve daily living conditions and perhaps deter emigration.

New data from the International Crisis Group (ICG) finds that justice reforms in that country have contributed to a 5 percent average annual decrease in murder rates from 2007 to 2017. The number of “avoided homicides” was more than 4,500 in that period, attributed to reforms aimed largely at corruption.

Among similar countries in Latin America, Guatemala has “bucked the trend toward worsening violence and rising homicide,” concludes an Oct. 25 report by ICG.

Much of the credit goes to Guatemalans demanding the creation of a special United Nations body, the Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, in 2006. The unusual body has helped bring about legal and institutional reforms as well as assist prosecutors in investigating corrupt officials.

An estimated 80 criminal groups have been disbanded. A president was forced to resign in 2015. And thousands of police have been fired or arrested. The agency’s anti-corruption efforts have damaged the ruling elite’s grip on power and, notably, allowed a new political freedom “for burgeoning social movements among indigenous and campesino communities,” the ICG states.

In Honduras, too, a similar body was set up in 2015. Known as the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras, it began work in 2017 in helping the investigation and adjudication of corruption. In July, a judge jailed three members of Congress, a deputy government minister, and more than a dozen others while they await trial on charges of corruption.

A number of reforms in the country have led to a sharp decline in murder rates since 2011. “Honduras is addressing the underlying conditions driving migration,” says Francisco Palmieri, a career US diplomat nominated to be ambassador to the country.

The US contributes millions of dollars a year for such reforms. At the least, when others judge these countries and their migrants, the people have earned a better description than victim or predator.