For as long as they've existed, mobile homes have been at the butt end of a Rodney Dangerfield one-liner: They don't get no respect. Now, the S.C. General Assembly has put mobile homes on the road toward respectability.

Gov. Mark Sanford last week inked into law a bill that taxes mobile homes on private lots as real property instead of personal property. For the first time, S.C. landowners who live in mobile homes will pay a single property tax bill on dwelling and land, just like folks who live in stick-built houses.

This is a classic case of reason catching up, at long last, with reality. Most mobile homes are trucked to the site in sections and assembled atop concrete foundations similar to those under stick-built homes. They have the same amenities as stick-built houses. Some are similar in size and design to stick-built homes.

Yet because the S.C. tax law on mobile homes was written when most mobile homes could be hitched to a car and towed away, modern mobile homes were taxed as personal property. The financing for mobile homes also is predicated on the illusions of mobility and depreciation, with interest rates being pegged unfairly high. And well-made modern mobile homes tend to go down in value, as comparable stick-built homes tend to go up.

The new law can't fix those problems. But it seems a safe guess that taxing mobile homes affixed to private lots as real property will change the thinking of bankers and buyers over time.

Mobile homes are a vital housing source in Horry County - more than 24,000 are in use here. They deserve the respect the General Assembly has bestowed upon them. The tax reclassification is public-spirited lawmaking at its finest.