CHANGING PUBLIC POLICY
- 17 million people, in the United States, live in manufactured homes
- There are approximately 6.8 million manufactured homes in the U.S and 2.9 million of them (43%) are situated in land lease (privately owned) communities
- In many states manufactured homes are still considered “chattel” and therefore people purchasing manufactured homes do not qualify for the standard financing/loan products or other purchasing safeguards that people purchasing stick built homes have available to them
- While most states have statutes that govern the relationship between community owners and home owners, many of these laws are weak, not enforceable, and not drafted in such a way as to provide security of tenure for manufactured home owners.
- Manufactured housing provides unsubsidized affordable homeownership opportunities for millions of seniors and young families, yet there are very few protections in place to guarantee the long term preservation of manufactured housing communities.
- Some manufactured housing community owners deny their residents the right to form home owners’ associations, the right to inform their neighbors of their rights under state law, and in other ways restrict their constitutional rights.
NMHOA is working on possible solutions to these problems by:
- Supporting the Uniform Law Commission as it approved a uniform law allowing manufactured homes to be titled as real estate;
- Requesting legislation at the federal level that would provide incentives if community owners choose to sell their properties to the home owners, the local housing authority, or another not-for-profit entity that will guarantee long-term security of tenure;
- Working at the state level to ensure stronger legal protections for people who own their homes but not the land beneath them; and
- Encouraging HUD’s support to preserve manufactured housing communities by ensuring that some of the CDBG, HOME, and other affordable housing money going to the states are earmarked for manufactured housing community preservation, and that when this money is used for preservation the community owner guarantees fundamental constitutional freedoms to the home owners.
