Mark Weiss, J.D., President and CEO of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) provided the following to MHProNews with regard to their response to the controversy sparked by SECO-linked land-lease manufactured home community owner David Roden. Roden recently asked Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) staff leaders Lesli Gooch, Ph.D. (CEO), and Mark Bowersox (president) to act or explain why the manufactured housing industry hasn’t launched a campaign comparable to the GoRVing initiative successfully used by the recreational vehicle (RV) industry for decades, or the Got Milk? campaign used by the dairy industry. Neither MHI nor MHI-linked bloggers/publishers, per Copilot, responded to or reported the exchange, even though Roden copied – and thus directly advised some industry publishers about his concerns. It is worth noting that MHProNews contacted them too. 

Given their lack of response, MHProNews double checked the MHI website and hereby provides below MHI’s events and ‘code of ethical conduct’ policies.

• Roden, and others who attend SECO, may be surprised to learn that apparently MHI considers their SECO meeting to be ‘an MHI event.’ More on the significance of that in Part II.
• In Part III of this article is MHI’s so-called Code of Ethical Conduct, with both of those items per MHI’s website on 6.4.2024.
• Part IV is our Sunday Weekly MHVille Headlines in Review (or recap, etc. We switch that up for the freshness of it).
• Part V is our Postscript with additional information with more MHProNews analysis and commentary.

Part I – Per MHARR, their response to the David Roden email (see Roden’s brief but interesting email on the Masthead, linked in Part IV below).

David:

Thank you for sharing the below information, as well as your thoughts on the need to expand the production and use of affordable, mainstream manufactured homes – the most important issue that the industry, its members and its representatives face today. The points that you raise are crucial and warrant thoughtful consideration. Given the fact that MHARR has been raising the very same points for some time now, we feel compelled to share with you our views and suggestions regarding these matters.

While we agree that a positive public presence (via paid marketing, advertising or otherwise) is important to the well-being and future growth of the industry, there are, unfortunately, significant other factors that have – and continue — to suppress the industry and must be addressed. Those factors, which have a nation-wide impact, not only suppress the industry organically in the private housing market, but also prevent federal, state and local affordable housing spending and other related programs from “reaching the ground” with respect to manufactured housing. Thus, while such aggregated spending on – and promotion of – affordable housing stands at historically high levels, those dollars do not ultimately benefit either manufactured housing consumers or industry members.

As MHARR has documented and analyzed (please see attachment), the principal bottlenecks that have suppressed the industry over the past two-plus decades, are organic to the acquisition and utilization of HUD Code manufactured housing and do not relate to either the quality or aesthetics of today’s modern manufactured homes, both of which – since the enactment of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 (2000 Reform Law) — are the best they have ever been.

Rather, the bottlenecks that the industry and its consumers face today are discriminatory and exclusionary zoning mandates, which prevent or severely restrict the placement of HUD Code manufactured homes in many areas (and also prevent or severely restrict the development and/or expansion of manufactured housing land-lease communities), as well as financing inequity resulting from the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to implement the Duty to Serve (DTS) mandate of the Housing and economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) with respect to the personal property loans which finance nearly 80% of the industry’s most affordable homes. This failure, in particular, affects both the availability of manufactured home consumer financing and financing rates, which are higher than necessary due to the absence of securitization and secondary market support. These inequities, moreover, will be significantly aggravated by impending discriminatory federal energy regulations that will impose disproportionate cost burdens on HUD Code homes and HUD Code consumers.

Therefore, and leaving aside the pending energy rule for the moment, the reality is that the dual bottlenecks of zoning exclusion and lack of parity in consumer financing have been decimating our industry and driving away consumers in significant numbers for the past two-plus decades. This is unacceptable and must be rejected by every member of the manufactured housing industry. Consequently, the industry’s post-production sector (i.e., retailers, communities, developers, finance companies and insurers) – in particular – must aggressively and competently fight to remove these bottlenecks, so that the industry can produce and market hundreds-of-thousands of affordable mainstream manufactured homes annually, as MHARR has consistently advocated.

Although MHARR, as a manufacturer-financed organization, does not receive funding from the industry’s post-production sector, where these principal bottlenecks reside, our members – and MHARR as an organization – have bent over backwards to address and seek to remedy these bottlenecks. More is needed, however, from the industry’s post-production sector in order to achieve the necessary positive results.

David, you asked for an explanation in straightforward terms of what needs to be done. Here it is. The bottlenecks or roadblocks that the industry faces have already been addressed by Congress in straightforward and powerful laws that are already on the books. The industry and the post-production sector in particular need to relentlessly push for these laws to be enforced and the roadblocks to be cleared away.

Given the continuing importance of the two issues noted above, we hope that you don’t mind us sharing this communication with our other industry colleagues.

Best regards,

Mark

Attachments

Mark Weiss
President and CEO
Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform
1331 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Suite 512
Washington, D.C. 20004
Tel. (202) 783-4087
Fax: (202) 783-4075
MHARRDG@aol.com

##

 

Part II – MHI’s Code of Conduct 

(MHProNews Note: It is worth noting that on the date of this download from the MHI website, this document lacks the MHI logo, but it does refer to MHI repeatedly. Highlighting in what follows is added by MHProNews).

Code of Conduct

1. 1. This Code of Conduct applies to all MHI members and anyone who attends an MHI event. MHI events include, but are not limited to, all meetings, conferences and symposia, assemblies, receptions, workshops, exhibits, gatherings, and any other forum that is (1) organized, hosted, or sponsored in whole or part by MHI, (2) located on MHI premises, or (3) related to MHI business of any kind.
   2. MHI strives to provide a safe, inclusive, harassment-free environment for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, beliefs, citizenship, age, or any other category protected by federal, state, or local law.
   3. MHI does not tolerate conduct that threatens, intimidates, or coerces another person.
   4. MHI expects members and event attendees to act in a legally appropriate, professional manner that promotes a positive and collegial atmosphere free from harassment and other unacceptable behavior. Members and event attendees are expected to act with courtesy and mutual respect towards others.
   5. No member or event attendee may engage in conduct that is discriminatory, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy or publicity, or otherwise violative of any law.
   6. Harassment is any improper or unwelcome conduct that might reasonably be expected or perceived to cause offense or humiliation to another person. MHI prohibits all harassment, including, but not limited to, harassment related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, physical ability, physical appearance, ethnicity, race, national origin, political affiliation, age, religion.
   7. Sexual harassment is a specific type of prohibited conduct. Sexual harassment is any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature that might reasonably be expected or be perceived to cause offense or humiliation, including but not limited to, unwanted physical touching or closeness, physical gestures that imply a sexual act or sexual anatomy, using vulgar words of a sexual nature, and unwelcome sexual flirtations or propositions. Sexual harassment may involve any conduct of a verbal, nonverbal or physical nature, including written and electronic communications, and may occur between persons of the same or different genders.
   8. Members and event attendees must stop any behavior in violation of this Code and must comply with this Code immediately.
   9. This code provides general guidelines and cannot cover every possible type of unacceptable behavior. MHI has the right, but not the obligation, to decide what conduct constitutes harassment.
   10. MHI reserves the right to take any appropriate action against a member or event attendee who engages in any form of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or inappropriate behavior in violation of this Code.
   11. To the greatest extent allowed by law, MHI is not and will not be held responsible for any member or event attendee’s alleged violation of this Code or otherwise inappropriate or unlawful act. ##

MHProNews notes: to paraphrase aspects of the above, MHI can arguably decide that anything they don’t like is “harassment” or is “unacceptable behavior” at any meeting that simply has an MHI member as a sponsor.

Using that MHI definition, SECO is an MHI event, because MHI members are sponsors, and likely several people connected with MHI will attend.

So, if someone questioned an MHI staffer, for example, that might be deemed by MHI as ‘harassment’ based upon this so-called code of conduct, shown above – it is possible for MHI to threaten or engage in some sort of ‘legal’ response.

Because the language in their ‘code of conduct’ indicates that MHI alone asserts what they want to decide that they wish to enforce and what they don’t, this could be viewed as a thinly veiled form of cover to suppress free speech and avoid accountability. More on this below and in Part V too.

 

Part III – MHI’s Code of Ethical Conduct – per their website on 6.4.2024.

 

 

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Select Items from bestselling author and global speaker (over 2 dozen countries) Tim Connor, CSP, Words of Wisdom