The I’m HOME Network has identified focus areas within the market for manufactured housing that challenge its effectiveness as a housing solution. By addressing issues within each of these focus areas, we better position manufactured housing as a strong, viable strategy for confronting the affordable housing crisis.
Home Quality
When built well, sited properly, and maintained, manufactured housing offers safe, healthy, and energy-efficient homes. High-quality manufactured housing must be the norm and expectation, which means continually improving the HUD Code and energy-efficiency standards and encouraging design and energy innovations to promote net-zero energy and other high-performance features. For existing homes, retrofits and energy-efficiency measures can increase safety and durability and reduce energy costs.
Land Tenure and Security
While homes placed on resident-owned land and single-unit lots tend to offer security for homeowners, homes located in manufactured housing communities, sometimes called “mobile home parks,” are subject to the motives of the landowner. In communities owned by private for-profit entities—by far the most common scenario—strong tenant protections and lease requirements, as well as pathways to resident ownership of the land, offer residents more security and control.
Home Financing
Personal property—or “chattel”—financing is the most common financial product available for the purchase of manufactured homes, excluding many homeowners from the benefits of traditional mortgages. We seek to improve chattel loan products financed by the Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) and offered through HUD’s Title I program. We also seek to expand opportunities for traditional mortgages, and financing for community ownership by residents, nonprofits, and government entities.
Land Use and Zoning
Many localities and states have zoning and other land use restrictions that limit or prohibit placing manufactured housing in conventional single-family neighborhoods, severely limiting manufactured housing as an option for urban infill redevelopment. To address this exclusionary zoning, manufactured housing must be shown as not substandard and as providing a valuable homeownership opportunity for first-time and lower-income home buyers.