Stay Informed!

By Lauren Williams on 05/31/2011 @ 04:30 PM

Tags: Events, Housing and Homeownership

Co-sponsored by NeighborWorks® America and with generous support from the Ford Foundation, this exclusive, invitation-only event brought together a small but distinguished audience of 85 key federal agency officials, industry representatives, legislative staff, leading national affordable housing nonprofits and more. For materials from the event, click here.

Manufactured housing represents the largest source of affordable housing in this country, yet it has historically been left out of many federal—and local—affordable housing discussions and solutions. The loss of this, often unsubsidized, housing stock could lead to increased demand for more publicly subsidized housing. So, assuring the preservation of existing manufactured housing, promoting resident ownership of communities, encouraging the development of new, high-quality manufactured housing, and making sure that families have access to fair financing products to purchase affordable manufactured homes is in the long term best interest of the financially-strapped public sector. Bringing it All Home sought to close the knowledge gap and raise awareness among key policymakers on the importance of fully integrating manufactured housing into federal affordable housing strategies.

At this event, we lifted up several I’M HOME partners as innovators in this field to an audience featuring representatives from an array of federal agencies—HUD, USDA, FHFA, FDIC, EPA, CFPB and DOE—as well as other potential partners interested in this work—national nonprofits, local practitioners, and more. The panelists discussed possible federal regulatory solutions to the challenges faced by I’M HOME partners developing creative ways to serve the housing needs of low- to moderate-income Americans.

Inspired Partnerships

Even today, mentions of manufactured housing often evoke images of travel trailers when in fact, technological innovations and demand for affordable homeownership have moved the factory-built housing industry to produce homes that are permanent, affordable, energy efficient, appreciating and indistinguishable from site-built homes. Next StepTM has paired up with Clayton Homes to design a national nonprofit distribution system delivering affordable, high-quality, energy efficient, factory-built housing to nonprofit affordable housing developers across the country. For Next StepTM and their industry partners, availability of safe and fair manufactured home financing options is critical. During this session, certain federal policy needs rose to the top:

• We must build new partnerships to push forward federal legislation that would fund the replacement of outdated, energy inefficient manufactured homes with new, high-quality Next StepTM homes.
• We must emphasize the importance of advocating for the retention of funding programs like RD 502 Direct that are under threat of elimination.
• We must work with federal agencies to improve and synchronize programs—like FHA Title I and Title II—that already serve owners and buyers of manufactured homes.

Enhancing Economic Security through Resident Ownership

ROC USA® is a technical assistance provider network that helps manufactured home community residents organize and finance the purchase of their communities. ROC USA® sees scaling resident community ownership as the starting point in sustainable community preservation and revitalization, which is a priority for several federal affordable housing programs as well. Support from the following existing federal programs will be critical in making sure the resources are available to take manufactured home community preservation to scale:

• Improved guidance promoting the use of HUD programs like Title I and Title II in resident-owned communities.
• Adjustments to the 207 M Mortgage Insurance for Manufactured Home Parks could be made so that it serves the needs of limited-equity cooperative communities.
• USDA could improve its 504 product and expand RD 502 Direct to be eligible for new homes placed in resident-owned cooperatives, and the Rural Cooperative Development Grant program should be maintained.

The affordable housing team within Policy Development and Research at HUD, led by Assistant Secretary Raphael Bostic, is looking to lead the integration of manufactured housing into policies that guide sustainable systems, home preservation, and the future of factory-built housing. This promising commitment will help lay a piece of the groundwork for a new federal outlook on manufactured housing, one that must be met with innovative approaches to manufactured home financing that provide homebuyers with fair, secure opportunities for building wealth.

Promising Local Approaches to Single-Family Finance

I’M HOME partners including MaineHousing and New Hampshire Community Loan Fund operate innovative high-impact financing programs for home purchase and replacement, refinance, resale, improvement, cooperative community purchase, and weatherization. Both organizations have found ways to access federal funding streams to support their programs and during this discussion, they identified some key ways that federal agencies can make key programs work better, maximize potential for innovation, and maximize capital availability within the constraints of today’s economy.

• Maintaining RD 502 Direct financing is critical for the low-income families they serve.
• The DOE Federal Weatherization Program should allow for replacement of outdated mobile homes as an eligible activity.
• The absence of mortgage insurance for the loans they provide presents a challenge, and federal programs might be able to fill that gap.

Mike Feinberg from FHFA and Mike Price from USDA, recommended ways that practitioners can work with federal programs to advance innovations at scale as well.

With both the challenges and the potential for manufactured housing so high, closing the knowledge gap among policymakers and creating a policy, regulatory, and financing environment that supports market transformation is crucial to realizing the full potential of this important source of affordable housing. Realizing a scalable market-based private sector system for delivering affordable housing that provides asset-building capability to low and moderate income families is truly an impressive (and ambitious) objective. Events like this one move us one step closer to that goal.

For more information, contact the I’M HOME team at imhome@cfed.org.

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