“I would like to offer our congratulations to Tony and Soheyla Kovach on the 15th anniversary of MHProNews. MHProNews provides the manufactured housing industry with a resource that is truly indispensable — an independent source of news and commentary on industry and industry-related issues that is not beholden to the views, interests, or influence of any single group, organization, or behind-the-scenes puppet-master.  MHProNews provides a crucial service for the HUD Code industry and deserves its full support.”

— Mark Weiss, J.D., President and CEO of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR).

That isn’t the first time that Mark Weiss, Danny Ghorbani, or others involved with MHARR, the Manufactured Housing Institute, and other organizations have thoughtfully offered praise for our industry-leading publication. It is appreciated, thank you. So, at least once a year, it is fitting to pause and recall where we started from and where we are hopefully heading.

There is much to know about the manufactured housing industry. That is curious, given that we live in a so-called information age. It is perhaps even more curious, given that the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) collects millions of dollars a year in dues and yet, the industry continues to underperform for a lack of enforcement of existing laws and a lack of proper public education/marketing.

There are many possible topics that could be used to illustrate what has gone wrong. The one selected for this occasion is the following from the HUD website.

Part I

Dr. Ben Carson
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Manufactured Housing Conference Remarks
New Orleans, Louisiana, Hyatt Regency Hotel, May 7, 2019

As prepared for delivery. The speaker may add or subtract comments during his presentation.

Thank you, Joe [Stegmayer, MHI Chairman], for those kind words. And thank you to MHI for inviting me to join you this morning. On behalf of HUD, it is a privilege to share my vision for addressing America’s affordable housing challenges – and the role of manufactured housing – with so many leaders and pioneers of the industry here today.

Under President Trump’s leadership, our nation is witnessing historic highs in employment, job creation, and economic growth. The financial optimism of everyday Americans has surged to an 18-year high, and is nearing an all-time record. For those families who have access to affordable housing, they are facing their bright futures with confidence.

And yet a serious challenge still persists: millions of hardworking Americans who seek affordable rents or sustainable homeownership simply cannot get their foot in the door. We have reached the point where many of our nation’s teachers, nurses, police officers, and firefighters struggle to live in or around the communities they serve.

What they face is a critical shortage in our country’s supply of affordable homes.

This is not just a housing crisis – it has a human face. Homes are at the heart of building strong families, strong communities, and ultimately, a strong country.

HUD’s mission is to ensure all Americans have access to safe, quality, and affordable housing. And we believe that manufactured housing has a promising role to play – especially in the area of quality affordable housing.

For that reason, one year ago, I announced that HUD was in position to usher in a “new era of cooperation and collaboration between our Department and the manufactured housing industry.”

Today, I’d like to share HUD’s current vision for how we are diagnosing affordable housing challenges, and how manufactured housing is an active ingredient in the medication we are prescribing for a stronger America.

Affordable Housing

Our nation’s shortage of affordable housing is ultimately an issue of supply and demand. With millions of people in need, high demand is already guaranteed. That’s why HUD has focused our strategy on increasing supply – namely, by promoting initiatives, programs, techniques, and technologies that produce more affordable homes.

Since the key constraint on supply is the cost of new construction and development, the solution to the problem is to change the cost side of the equation.

Manufactured housing has emerged out of the limestone and stepped into the limelight, to address precisely this need.

According to MHI reports, the average cost per square foot of a manufactured home is nearly half that of a site-built home – $49 [dollars] per square foot, as opposed to $107 [dollars]. These dramatic cost savings in construction enable responsible citizens to secure housing that may be considerably less expensive than renting or purchasing a site-built home.

And yet, even at this lower price, manufactured homes appreciate in value at a rate similar to site-built homes, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency Housing Price Index. Sustainable homeownership is the number one builder of financial capital for most American families. For example, the average net worth of a renter is $5,000 [dollars], while the average net worth of a homeowner is $200,000 [dollars]. That’s an extraordinary 40-fold difference. But with comparable home appreciation rates to site-built homes, manufactured homes exhibit their own extraordinary potential to be a wealth creation tool for ordinary, everyday American families.

Beyond the matter of price, there are also flexible ownership models, such as land-lease manufactured home communities, that could have the potential to combine affordability with a sense of neighborhood and lifestyle.

These factors – asset-building and community-building – are important to HUD’s mission to be more than a place that simply houses people, but a place that actually lifts people out of poverty and helps them become self-sufficient.

Manufactured Housing and Low-Income Communities

This industry is already having a tremendous impact on serving those communities who are most in need.

Today, more than 20 million Americans live in manufactured housing, which makes up approximately 10 percent of single-family residences. As a result, manufactured housing has become the largest source of unsubsidized affordable homes in the nation -which saves taxpayer dollars.

By housing families that average between $30,000 to $50,000 [dollars] per year in income, manufactured homes also allow more people and families to pursue an American Dream that may have once felt out of reach.

While lives are helped through new homes, livelihoods are helped through new jobs. More than 40,000 citizens are employed in this sector, from all walks of life. And the Administration is especially impressed by the use of American suppliers in American manufacturing plants.

That is how innovation turns into opportunity.

Opportunity Zones

Which brings me to the topic of Opportunity Zones.

Opportunity Zones were created under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to stimulate economic development and job creation by incentivizing long-term capital investments in low-income neighborhoods. They are also a potent tool to combat the shortage of affordable housing.

HUD expects that Opportunity Zones will be a catalyst for transformational real estate development in communities that are economically distressed. Thirty-five million Americans now live in such designated areas, in all 50 states. There, millions of housing units are needed, in both urban and rural areas.

I would encourage the industry participants here today to consider the role of Opportunity Zones in the context of local development plans, and how manufactured housing stakeholders may be included. As bursts of activity for new buildings and construction are unlocked by this powerful tax incentive, communities within Opportunity Zones are likely to experience significant growth and changing needs. When newly empowered residents pursue their path to self-sufficiency, such areas may generate strong local demand for affordable housing solutions – which manufactured homes are particularly well-positioned to provide.

Healthy Homes

Manufactured housing can also play a role in HUD’s mission to promote healthy homes.

After many decades as a pediatric neurosurgeon – tasked with caring for the welfare of children – safety is a paramount concern for me in any housing solution.

As HUD Secretary, I have instituted a broad array of initiatives designed to promote healthy homes and to eliminate environmental hazards. For example, last December, HUD awarded nearly $140 million [dollars] in grant funding to 48 state and local government agencies to help protect families from lead-based paint and other threats.

For me, this is a personal issue. At an early age, I learned first-hand the hazards of an unsafe home. My mother raised my brother and me by herself from the time I was eight years old. While she struggled with single motherhood, our problems multiplied when we moved to a tenement in Boston. There, we shared a roof with rats, roaches and a host of other risks.

While my brother and I emerged with our health intact, many families do not. That’s why, as HUD Secretary, I advocate for new techniques and new technologies that can ameliorate these menaces. In manufactured housing, innovations in construction techniques have the potential to facilitate building in a less wasteful, and more environmentally sound way. Innovations in construction materials could create components that are higher performing, less prone to mold, wind or water damage, and more resistant to deterioration.

Those are the ingredients of a healthier home.

Natural Disasters

Such advantages are even more visible in the face of natural disasters.

Natural disasters do not just devastate housing capital – they devastate human capital, through lives interrupted, school days missed, and communities fragmented under strain. As a result, last year, HUD allocated more than $35 billion [dollars] in funding to 16 state and local governments, to help America’s hardest hit regions. These grants represented the largest single amount of disaster recovery assistance in HUD’s history.

Manufactured housing can help mitigate this kind of damage through the use of environmentally resilient construction materials, as well as by providing an affordable and permanent housing solution for lower-income survivors.

On a recent visit to Alabama, I was shown a site that was demolished by massive tornadoes – and the only homes in the area that successfully weathered the storm were manufactured houses. It was a silent testament to their resilience. It is also possible that HUD’s work with industry leaders to update wind Standards for manufactured housing in 1994 could have helped to limit damage and potentially save lives.

This city, New Orleans, is all too familiar with the pain natural disasters can cause. If manufactured homes can alleviate some of those harms in the future, the next hurricane may leave much less devastation, and much more hope, in its wake.

Innovative Housing Showcase

I’d now like to cover two of the obstacles to adoption, and how HUD is trying to help.

The first obstacle is that manufactured housing is often overlooked because it is misunderstood. Many times, when people hear the words “manufactured house,” their first image is an old trailer that lacks the modern amenities and features of a site-built home. This image is a false façade.

The fact that manufactured homes can be so beautifully done – and in fact are often indistinguishable from site-built homes – is manufactured housing’s best kept secret. Well, HUD believes that secret should be shared.

That’s why we are proud to help educate both the American public and policymakers by featuring manufactured homes at HUD’s inaugural Innovative Housing Showcase, which will be held this June on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

During the Showcase, MHI will be participating and working with its members to present at least two manufactured homes to be prominently displayed in the heart of our Nation’s capital, viewable to thousands of onlookers during the five-day event.

Deregulation; Removing Regulatory Burdens

The second obstacle is the presence of regulatory roadblocks that still stand in the way.

HUD recognizes the importance of removing undue bureaucratic burdens on the industry while striving to maintain the quality, safety, durability, and affordability of manufactured homes. As a result, we have placed an increased emphasis on clarifying our regulations, including by undertaking a full-scale review of our manufactured housing program to ensure we preserve the proper amount of oversight without stifling the industry.

We are also currently evaluating our Office of Policy Development and Research’s recent recommendation to expedite the manufactured home code-making process within HUD – which could better help HUD Standards keep pace with new industry innovations and techniques.

To advance these efforts, I am grateful for the many insights MHI has provided to HUD in the form of its available reports, educational materials, and constructive dialogue.

Last week, I spoke before the Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee, who makes the initial recommendations for proposed changes to our HUD-code provisions, setting in motion the approval process for updating regulations. The committee has an aggressive agenda and must be efficient to reach consensus and close out many of the more than 300 log and deregulatory items outstanding.

That’s why, to provide more help, I’ve brought on more staff at HUD for the manufactured housing and regulatory affairs offices. These new team members have extensive backgrounds and experience in the field. They are ready to work with committee members not just when visiting plants, State Administrative Agencies, third-party inspection agencies, or addressing consumer complaints, but on a holistic basis – to assist with getting HUD code updated and more hard-working Americans housed.

Conclusion

In closing, manufactured housing is a vital part of HUD’s prescription to make safe, quality, desirable, affordable homes available to millions of hard-working Americans.

The foundations of a better tomorrow are built with the new techniques and new technologies of today. And for manufactured housing, that time is now.

I look forward to continuing our work together in the months ahead, and delivering that brighter future to the hearts and homes of the American people we proudly serve.

Thank you, and God Bless.

###

Part II

At the last check of the MHI website, that speech by then HUD Secretary Dr. Carson was not found on MHI’s own website. Why not? Does it help the industry’s story and potential for growth too much? Does it run counter to their strategy which seems to be focused on consolidation of the industry by their insider members?

Earlier today we published the following on MHLivingNews. As usual, that report offers new, updated, and unique content that is unlikely to be found anywhere else in MHVille publishing. Why? Because, to put it politely, the report uses facts to make the powers that be in MHVille look less the professional and effective at their claimed aims.

On 7.21.2015 the following was published on 83 Degrees.

Tired of renting? Get the scoop on manufactured homes

A man who calls himself LA “Tony” Kovach is nurturing an enterprise he firmly believes could be the next Google or Amazon or Facebook.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” — Henry David Thoreau.

That article by 83 Degrees also said the following.

But it is no secret that what Kovach wants to talk about is manufactured housing. Or that the man many people call “the voice” of the industry pretty much lives and breathes factory-built homes — and has for decades, through good times and bad.

He’s bought them, sold them, marketed them, lived in them and writes about them with the passion and conviction of a true believer.

“We think we’re onto something that’s avant garde,” he says. “The economics of it, the greenness of it, the eye appeal that continues to improve and evolve. It’s just a natural: Manufactured housing is the future, not the past.”

With billionaires like Warren Buffett and Sam Zell investing heavily in the industry, and celebrities like Pamela Anderson, Matthew McConaughey and Minnie Driver moving into upscale Malibu models, Kovach believes he is at the right place at the right time to attend the birth of the next big thing.

“To some extent, we’re influencing it, because some of the research is on our site,” he says. “The government, educators, consumers are on our websites all the time.”

Hungry for MH news

It has been 5-1/2 years since Kovach began pouring his passion into a project that has exceeded even his own lofty expectations, creating two online trade publications that cater to both industry professionals and consumers — the most widely read e-zines of their kind.

“We are the one-stop shop for manufactured housing education, information and inspiration,” he says.

MHProNews, the first of his creations, has been growing in leaps and bounds since it went online in October 2009. The site saw fewer than half a million visitors in its first year.

“Now we routinely have 1.5-to-2-million pageviews per month,” says Kovach.

Again, 83 Degrees said this.

“I think there is a hunger in America for an alternative to high-cost housing, the need for something besides the rentals we see out there,” he says, citing a National Association of Realtors study that found 85 percent of today’s renters want to own their own homes.

April also marked the second anniversary of Kovach’s second brainchild, MHLivingNews, geared to consumers who want to know more about the world of MH.

Then comes a thought provoker.

“No one has ever told the industry stories from the perspective of the people who live in, build and maintain today’s modern manufactured homes.”

Why is it that to this day the manufactured home industry’s residents and independent professionals don’t have another alternative to something like MHLivingNews and MHProNews?\

To be clear, there are websites that gleefully kiss the various MHVille insiders’ ample derrieres. They may appear to be promoting and telling the story of the industry.

But if that were reality, then where is the evidence? Why is it that manufactured housing is smaller today than when Warren Buffett-led Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) bought Clayton Homes and took a big stake in Oakwood Homes Corporation (OKWHQ). Per Gemini: “trading in the company’s common stock was suspended in 2002 and the stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on December 30, 2002.”

The SEC website stated: “Oakwood Homes Corporation, a North Carolina corporation (the “Company”), which was founded in 1946, designs, manufactures, markets and distributes manufactured and modular homes and finances the majority of its retail sales. Prior to November 1, 2002, the Company also provided a variety of insurance products to its customers and assumed a portion of the related underwriting risk through its captive reinsurance business. At September 30, 2002, the Company had a total of 32 manufacturing plants consisting of seven manufacturing plants in Texas, six in North Carolina, four in Indiana, three in each of Georgia and Oregon, two in each of Arizona and Pennsylvania, and one in each of California, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota and Tennessee. The foregoing includes five idled plants, eight closed plants and five plants scheduled to be closed subsequent to September 30, 2002. Seven of the eight closed plants are currently held for sale. At September 30, 2002, the Company’s manufactured homes were sold at retail through 224 Company owned and operated sales centers located primarily in the southeastern and southwestern United States and to approximately 600 independent retailers located throughout the United States.”

What Buffett-led Berkshire has arguably done to manufactured housing, not for it, ought to be front-page financial news. But like many in media, and in the manufactured home industry, this writer and MHProNews operated for some time under similar illusions that other American did about people like Buffett and Zell. Meanwhile, the truth was hiding in plain sight.

 

 

A combination of tips, some documents, videos, and the valued input of industry pros and other sources began our awakening process starting about 7 years in. We are patient and persistent because others were patient and persistent with us. We value our sponsors and the industry’s documented runaway largest audience of its kind, meaning, readers like you. Don’t miss the latest challenges to the leadership of MHI and their insiders. Our series of fact-backed contributions on the Patch is moving in a good direction and recent emailed headline news have absolutely rocked. Thank you.

https://patch.com/users/tony-kovach/articles

As a programming note, now that Milton is in the rearview mirror, but with the election still ahead, a decision has been made here that we will suspend our final segment of the business daily reports. It is a difficult decision. But we are now publishing more content than ever, counting MHProNews, MHLivingNews, periodic mainstream media releases, our x2 weekly free eblasts, and now the popular and routinely daily posts on the Patch. We believe that if even relatively modest numbers in states across the country vote that wouldn’t have otherwise, that’s priceless. It is worth the tradeoff.

What Mark Weiss so graciously said quoted at the top is not so different than what Tim Williams at 21st Mortgage said some years ago. Thanks again, Tim.

Nor is what MHARR’s Weiss said shown above so different than what the late Zell’s now late right-hand man in MHVille, attorney and vice-chairman of Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) Howard Walker.

There is more to come. We as trade media plan to do what we can as we can to shine a light on what’s gone wrong in once far more robust manufactured housing.

A new special report is in hand. This fresh research is unlikely to be found anywhere else in MHVille. It is almost guaranteed not to be mentioned by MHI and/or any MHI linked trade publication. It will document just how robust MHVille once was and will show what is possible, and who are some of those responsible for the dramatic slides in manufactured housing.  Watch for it.

Let’s close as we opened, with the following from Weiss.

“I would like to offer our congratulations to Tony and Soheyla Kovach on the 15th anniversary of MHProNews. MHProNews provides the manufactured housing industry with a resource that is truly indispensable — an independent source of news and commentary on industry and industry-related issues that is not beholden to the views, interests, or influence of any single group, organization, or behind-the-scenes puppet-master.  MHProNews provides a crucial service for the HUD Code industry and deserves its full support.”

— Mark Weiss, J.D., President and CEO of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR). ###

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Again, our thanks to free email subscribers and all readers like you, as well as our tipsters/sources, sponsors and God for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)

By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.

Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.

For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.

This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.

http://latonykovach.com

Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

Related References:

The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.’

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