Due to be finalized at the July 21 city council meeting, the new ruling does allow existing manufactured homes to be grandfathered in. Noting several roads within the city limits that are already lined with MH, John Amick, says, “This will affect me as a property owner and will inconvenience me somewhat, but the ruling will not break me one way or another. I am not really here for me; I’m here because I feel this is wrong.” Amick continued, “I don’t think they (city officials) put enough thought into it, and I think it’s easy to sit back behind a desk at City Hall and say, ‘Well, we don’t want mobile homes in the city anymore.’ It’s an affordable alternative for a lot of people — not just the disadvantaged — and to say we can’t have them anymore is wrong.”
He added if someone inherits a plot of land, especially in an area already dotted with MH, and they cannot afford to build a $100,000 or more home on the lot, what value is there to that piece of land.
Aron Kulhavy, the city’s director of community and economic development, erroneously says there are safety concerns with how MH are built. “The construction of the actual structures is not inspected by the city, nor constructed to building codes, so the city does not have the ability to enforce our building codes on the actual structure,” Kulhavy said, according to itemonline. “They are constructed differently than other houses.”
As MHProNews knows, since June, 1976 MH have been constructed to very stringent standards developed and continually updated by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Mr. Kulhavy has evidently not researched MH thoroughly. ##
(Photo credit: huntsvilleitem/Tom Waddill–manufactured home in Huntsville, Texas)
