Washington, D.C., April 4, 2013 – The Board of Directors of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR), at its March 28, 2013 meeting in Tunica, Mississippi, voted unanimously to retain the Association’s current officers to serve another term in their respective positions. Consequently, MHARR’s national officers – who also comprise the core of the Association’s pivotal Executive Committee – will continue to be:
· John Bostick (President, Sunshine Homes, Inc., Red Bay, Alabama), Chairman
· Mike Cappaert (President, Cappaert Homes, Inc., Vicksburg, Mississippi), Vice Chairman
· James Newman, Sr. (President, MHE, Inc., Bryan, Ohio), Treasurer
· Peter James (President, Franklin Homes, Inc., Russellville, Alabama), Secretary
Each of these re-elected officers will serve a term that will extend until March 2015.
In addition to ensuring the continuity of the Association’s leadership, the Board also tackled major issues in the nation’s capital that continue to impact both manufactured housing — as a comprehensively federally-regulated industry — and millions of American families in need of affordable housing. Key issues considered and addressed by the Board include:
– Sanctioning the cooperative effort between MHARR and MHI on three critical agreed-upon objectives concerning the federal program and consumer financing. Chief among these objectives is expanding the availability of personal property (chattel) consumer financing via private sector sources (in conjunction with the Government Sponsored Enterprises) and public sources through the Federal Housing Administration’s Title I program. The two associations have concluded that the failure of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) and federal government agencies to provide significant securitization support for manufactured home chattel loans, which has excluded millions of potential homebuyers from the manufactured housing market, can best be resolved through a correction of existing laws to substantially increase the availability of this type of financing used in conjunction with the industry’s most affordable homes. In addition to an expansion of chattel-based consumer financing, the other agreed MHARR-MHI objectives concern the resolution of two key reform aspects of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 that program officials have refused to properly implement, i.e., the appointment of a non-career manufactured housing program administrator and the appointment of collective industry representatives as voting members of the congressionally-mandated Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee (MHCC).
In addition to its cooperative joint effort with MHI, the Board also considered and approved various actions by the Association, such as:
– Closely monitoring the Government Accountability Office investigation of the federal manufactured housing program and its implementation of the 2000 law to ensure that it remains sharply focused on the specific issues identified by Congress in its November 29, 2011 referral and is not diverted or transformed into a vehicle for the long-standing wish-list of industry competitors in Washington, D.C.
– Review the maintenance, advancement and possible expansion of the Association’s legal initiative focused on program regulators’ full and proper compliance with the 2000 law.
– Continuing study of a consumer-determined optional class of removable chassis manufactured homes.
– Continuing the Association’s participation in – and monitoring of — activities by the Federal Emergency Management Agency concerning the use of HUD Code manufactured homes for use as temporary emergency housing units (THUs), as well as resisting any effort to convert particular FEMA requirements or specifications into HUD Code standards for the private sector manufactured housing market.
-Expanding a review of — and closely monitoring — existing monopolization and related anti-trust laws regarding proper levels of competition within American industries.
The Board also reviewed and addressed currently-pending regulatory issues within the domain of the MHCC, which have languished or have otherwise been negatively impacted by the ongoing efforts of program regulators to diminish the role, authority, independence functionality and balance of the congressionally-mandated Consensus Committee.
The Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform is a Washington, D.C.-based national trade association representing the views and interests of independent producers of federally-regulated manufactured housing.
