What’s Holding Back Manufactured Homes? An opinion

The term “manufactured housing” often comes with negative connotations: poorly maintained homes, sub-par quality, and aesthetically unappealing. This unfavorable stereotyping belies the fact that today’s HUD Code manufactured homes are not unlike the ugly duckling flourishing to refined adulthood. 

Before the Code’s adoption in 1976, what was then called “mobile homes” were built to lower standards for strength, durability, and efficiency. This saddles modern manufactured homes with a poor reputation inherited from their predecessors, when in fact they offer more diverse configurations and higher-quality housing options. If Congress and other policymakers take appropriate steps to level the playing field, more manufactured homes can make their way onto the market, offering more families and individuals appealing, relatively affordable housing options.

Today there are more than 8.4 million manufactured homes across the country providing affordable, comfortable accommodations. Still, manufactured housing is underrepresented in housing policy discourse, in part because it tends to be “out of sight and out of mind” in expensive coastal cities where many policymakers and thought leaders reside. 

HUD Code Manufactured Homes are, as the name implies, regulated nationally by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This central regulation is a benefit and a curse. It is a benefit because implementing uniform design standards across the country enables otherwise impossible economies of scale if these homes were required to abide by the national patchwork of state and local codes that regulate site-built homes.

On the flip side, the HUD Code can be a curse because uniform design elements — like roof slopes and a steel chassis beneath all manufactured homes — enable local zoning codes to single out manufactured homes with regulations that may appear neutral. However, these narrowly tailored rules exist to exclude these homes and their residents from areas with site-built housing.

With this context in mind, exploring how the playing field can be leveled is crucial, as it would enable manufactured homes to compete fairly with their site-built counterparts. There are several measures that Congress, state legislators, and even banking regulators can take within their domains to make the marketplace fairer.

CLICK HERE to read the entire “The Hill” article

Gary Fleisher

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Gary Fleisher

Gary Fleisher, “The Mod Coach”, has been entrenched in the offsite construction industry for most of his life. Having started his career in the lumber industry, Gary spent decades working with manufactured and modular home producers and homebuilders. For the past 15 years his blog and LinkedIn postings have introduced thousands to the benefits of factory-built construction and have served as a forum for industry professionals to share insights and perspectives. Gary lives in Hagerstown, MD with his wife, Peg.

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