When the public has been blistered with a seemingly nonstop array of half-truths, misinformation, paltering, spin, or deception and misdirection on almost any topic there should be an obvious need to routinely respond with accurate information by those who care about “reality” and the truth. That applies to manufactured homes or other subjects. Those who back Democrats and Republicans, along with independents or minor party supporters, have been told such half-truths for so long that some claims proclaimed by much of the media for years or even decades – be media members wittingly complicit or not – have to be reminded of what is true and what is only partially true or even deceptively false. In our MHProNews report linked here are several specific and contemporary examples of that phenomenon. For those who have watched stocks slide lately, due in part to market reactions to ‘tariff wars’ between the U.S.-Canada-Mexico-China or other countries, a very specific example of how President Donald J. Trump (R) responded to Ontario’s sharp hike on electricity exported to parts of the U.S. was rather swiftly concluded. Will markets rally today? That will be known by the time some find and read this article. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy was showing his proverbial derrièr to the President, Vice President and Secretary of State for the United States (Trump, J.D. Vance, and Marco Rubio respectively) on national (and global) television in the Oval Office of the White House recently. Zelenskyy was told by POTUS Trump in the Oval Office to his face that he ‘didn’t have the cards.’ Fast-forward to Saudi Arabia and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Zelenskyy concluded talks that resulted in Zelenskyy accepting the notion of a cease fire with Russia as a prelude to a more complete peace deal between the Russians and Ukranians. Those are just two of several possible examples that despite a portrayal by some in the media, political, business, or punditry classes of Trump as a president of chaos, a closer look reveals a steady shift in the old order of things. That shift, as Trump and Vance campaigned on during the last few months of the 2024 presidential and general election cycle revealed, promised systemtic change that would benefit the so-called 99 percent of Americans. Some on the right are saying Trump is “winning.” Among the thorny topics being addressed by the new Trump version 2.0 (a.k.a.: T2) adminstration is immigration. Illegal immigration drains governmental resources at the local, state, and federal levels. Economic ripple effects from high volumes of illegal immigration (not to overlook other factors, like U.S. trade policy that T2 tariffs are meant to help fix) – as well as other factors impacted, such as health issues and crime caused by individuals who were never formally vetted before entering the U.S. – are part of a tapestry of challenges that have been allowed to fester under prior U.S. adminstrations that allowed illegal immigration to occur in the first place. That is part of the backdrop for what T2 VP J.D. Vance (R) had to say to recently civic leaders on the topic of housing and immigration.

Part I of this report with manufactured housing industry (a.k.a.: MHVille) and other relevant facts-evidence-analysis (FEA) will utilize as a thoughtful summary of Vance’s remarks as provided by the Daily Signal‘s Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell to MHProNews.

The preface above and what follows in Part II will elaborate on how the puzzle pieces begin to fit into a broader pattern that will shape the U.S. economy, politics, and businesses including but not limited to HUD Code manufactured housing. Let’s dive in.

Part I From the Daily Signal to MHProNews is the following.

News

Illegal Immigration Worsens Housing Crisis, Vance Tells Cities’ Leaders

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell | March 10, 2025

Illegal immigration raises demand for housing, which increases costs for American citizens, Vice President JD Vance said Monday.

And when Americans can own houses, they are stakeholders in the nation, which makes them better citizens, he said.

“We want our citizens to feel that investment in their own country, and it’s hard,” he said. “It’s hard to feel that investment if you feel like you can’t even own a slice of it, even if that’s what you want to do.”

Vance addressed a bipartisan audience of local leaders who traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the National League of Cities’ Congressional City Conference this week.

“But when we talk about housing and why costs are so high, we don’t talk enough about demand,” he said. “And one of the drivers of increased housing demand, we know, is that we’ve got a lot of people over the last four years who have come into the country illegally, and that’s something we have to work on if we want to meaningfully reduce the cost of housing, too.”

Housing is a top financial concern for Americans, according to a May 2024 Gallup poll. Some experts worried that because Trump didn’t mention the housing crisis in his joint address to Congress last Tuesday, it is no longer a priority for him, but Vance’s speech sought to put those concerns to rest.

“Now the Trump administration has taken important steps to make building cheaper and to boost the supply of housing,” Vance said. “Of course, it’s going to take time, but this is a Day One issue for our entire team, from the president on down.”

Vance discussed “slashing needless regulations” that stand in the way of building new homes. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner is working to cut Biden administration rules responsible for high costs, the vice president said.

Many of the local leaders in the audience are also responsible for high housing costs, due to allowing illegal immigrants to increase demand for homes, Vance said.

“The reason why we care about border security is because we want your communities to be safer,” he said. “We want them want them to be more affordable. We want there to be less drugs in our country, and we want your citizens to be able to live the American dream. It is the birthright of every single one of our citizens, and we’re going to fight for it every single day.”

He told local leaders that while they can disagree with the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration laws, local municipalities will be expected to help as long as those laws are on the books.

“It will be the policy of the Trump administration to enforce the nation’s laws, and it will be the policy of the Trump administration to say that it is not up to local cities to choose which federal laws that they’re going to enforce,” he said.

“We’ve got to have everybody respecting the law, and that is going to be one of the major policy focuses, of course, of the Trump administration, and it already has been,” he continued.

Vance attempted to unite his audience around helping blue-collar Americans, urban and rural, afford to buy a home and raise their children in a safe area.

“With all respect for policy disagreements, I think that one thing that unites us in this room is that we want to give our blue-collar people in the United States of America a shot at the American dream again,” he said.

 

Part II – Additional Information with More MHProNews Analysis and Commentary

In no particular order of importance are the following.

1) Per left-leaning Google’s Gemini: “In English, “derriere” (or “derriere”) means the buttocks or rear end, though it’s often used in a humorous or euphemistic way.” Some might say, that derrièr means “ass.”  It wasn’t just Ukrainian leader Zelenskyy, who has been described as a former entertainer and actor, who have shown their private parts, their derrièr or ass to the public, but not always in the same manner.

2) As AI powered fact checks have been demonstrating on MHProNews for much of the past two years, the leadership of the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) have also been showing their derrièr or ass too, but perhaps more subtly. More on that with links to recent examples will be provided further below.

3) It should go without saying to regular and longer term readers of MHProNews that several (not all) MHI corporate and senior staff leaders have been all but mooning the industry for well over a decade. Per left-leaning Wikipedia: “Mooning is the act of displaying one’s bare buttocks by removing clothing. It is often used to express protest, scorn, disrespect, or for provocation, but can also be done for shock value, fun, or as a joke.” Wikipedia goes on to say: “In English-speaking countries, mooning is used to show protest or disrespect.” How so? Let’s look.

4) The Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) has never represented “all segments” of the industry, at least not well, as the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) has made clear to certain federal officials as well as to thousands in the manufactured home industry.

 

5) As but one example, without that sort of public pushback (i.e.: the press release, federal comments, and post on the MHARR website – all part of a broader effort that included pushback by MHProNews and MHLivingNews), it is entirely possible MHI leaders could have allowed the destructive Department of Energy (DOE) manufactured housing energy rule to go into effect.

6) If Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) leaders were literally making faces day-by-day at the industry, or were literally mooning the manufactured home industry’s members at every event they are present at, it may not take long for rank-and-file industry members to grasp that there is something terribly wrong at the Arlington, VA based MHI trade group.

7) But let’s ask again. How is it that MHI has failed to get good existing federal laws properly enforced? Besides its own coffers, among the financial giants behind numbers of publicly traded companies that are MHI members are operations like Berkshire Hathaway (BRK), BlackRock, State Street, or Vanguard.

8) To Warren Buffett’s point as expressed by Kevin Clayton: ‘you can access plenty of capital.’  It is absurd to think that MHI’s leaders want the Duty to Serve (DTS) manufactured housing robustly enforced for chattel lending, or that they authentically wanted the DOE energy rule killed years ago when the evidence exists that MHI helped bring that energy rule about, albeit behind the scenes. When different AI platforms have been used to shred the notion that MHI’s leaders can’t reasonably be inept or incompetent as to allow these issues to fester for so long, it should be every more apparent that MHI might as well be mooning the industry. But they are smart enough to know that if they literally made faces, or literally mooned the industry, that wouldn’t go over quite as well.  So what do MHI leaders do? They are deceptive instead.

As the classic movie clip provided and unpacked in the post above expressed:

Q

“Why do people have to tell lies?”

A

“Usually, it’s because they want something. They are afraid that they truth won’t get it for them.”

Bingo. If MHI and their allies in state associations were blunt and honest, this scam perpetrated against the industry and others – what MHARR’s President and CEO Mark Weiss, J.D., called a “shell game” – would likely have never gotten this far along. But by deploying years of posturing and de facto stage performance without meaningful results, the industry slid to its lowest point in the 21st century since its early days back in the 1950s.

9) Grab your favorite beverage and snack and see for yourself what AI powered Gemini and Grok have had to say about the MHI patterns of behavior. See the items linked below.

10) And it isn’t just AI, or MHARR, that has provided an evidence-based critique of MHI. There are others inside and beyond MHVille that have exposed the problems in MHVille. The fact that MHI, for instance, has only mentioned James A. “Jim” Schmitz Jr. and his various colleagues in the context of a slam is revealing.

Per MHI’s CEO Lesli Gooch via the MHI website and the left-leaning Washington Post.

Mr. Ohanian and Mr. Schmitz rightly acknowledged the important role manufactured housing has in addressing the country’s housing supply shortage. It’s a shame that their argument was so negative about the very homes they wanted to champion.

Instead of focusing on the evidence presented by Federal Reserve system linked leaders like Elena Falcettoni, Mark L. J. Wright, and Jim Schmitz Jr., MHI wasted time and digital ink critiquing Schmitz and Ohanian’s tone? Pardon me? Have they never read that their 80 percent friend is not their 20 percent enemy? Where did Lesli Gooch get that Ph.D. from again? The University of Cracker Jacks, where there is a toy surprise in every box? Will O.U. ask for their diploma back from Gooch?

11) MHI wants to create illusions of how wonderful MHI and its leaders are, apparently in order to keep the “shell game” going.

12) VP Vance has laid out a reasonable and evidence-based case for why illegal immigration has driven up housing and other costs. That is not to disparage millions of souls that came to the U.S. hoping for a better life, and thinking that they could skip the lengthy and potentially costly legal process for entering the U.S. properly. To be objective, it seems that MHI and their associated publisher and bloggers routinely fail to properly present both big issues and manufactured housing specific ones. The routine is pretty clear, for those who follow MHProNews by the tens of thousands in an industry that MHI once claimed had some 75,000 full time employees. If so, that’s a big share of the sharply diminished “MHVille” market.  Diminishing manufactured housing is how steady consolidation is accomplished. MHI’s own members have said so. But that means that good existing laws must be paid lip service and not much else. DTS and “enhanced preemption,” to name but two portions of two laws that get such lipservice by MHI, have been thwarted for all of the 21st century. So, tell us again – MHI leaders – how great MHI is at representing “all segments” of the industry? Please? Can you just lay that case out step-by-step where your humble servants can understand why after all these years you still can’t get done what you claim you want done, yet you are so great and powerful? Isn’t the hypocrisy and luducrious nature of their claims increasingly obvious?

But let’s illustrate that line of thinking. Consider these recent requests for comment by MHProNews to MHI corporate/staff leaders and one of their outside attorneys.

13) Note that the screen capture of the email below can be opened to a larger size for easier reading. Click here or on the image below and follow the prompts.

Why was Tim Williams at 21st among those contacted? As Williams may recall, he previously said this in an on the record remark to MHProNews. As a former MHI chairman, plus still the leader of 21st Mortgage Corp and years on the MHI board of directors, Williams is still considered to be a heavyweight at MHI.

There were responses, from the BCC’d. But not from MHI. But there is more.

14) More recently (3.10.2025) was the following. This one specifically invited MHI and/or corporate leaders to remark to ANY article, recent or prior.  Note the reference to Google’s AI powered Gemini and what Gemini said. To see the screen grab below in a larger size click here and follow the prompts or click the image and follow the prompts.

Ladies and Gents,

I think you all know the drill. While feedback is welcome on any article on MHProNews, the specific inquiry for this media request for comment is the 2nd linked article below involving  apparently Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds linked Table Mound as the jump off point to broader manufactured housing industry issues.

Note that three AI platforms have all been asked for feedback of late by MHProNews. Among them, Gemini said this:

Based on my current search capabilities, I can provide the following observations:

• Lack of Direct Public Response:
  • From the information available to me, I do not find evidence of a direct, public response from Scott Simpson or an official statement from the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) specifically addressing the articles in question.
  • It is important to remember that the absence of a public response does not equate to a lack of awareness.
• MHI’s Communication Strategies:
  • Organizations like MHI often employ various communication strategies, which may include:
    • Internal discussions and strategic planning.
    • Indirect responses through policy statements or advocacy efforts.
    • Choosing not to respond to specific media reports.
  • It is a common practice for legal counsel to advise against making public statements in regards to certain issues.

As a roughly 7 year prior member of MHI, plus being the publisher of the apparently largest and most-read trade media serving the industry, I think I have a good feel for how that Arlington, VA trade group and its leaders operate. Grok has confirmed several useful points, including our market size, which will be part of a planned upcoming report. But more broadly, Copilot and Gemini have each provided key insights that include MHI’s multiple years of apparent failure to legally push the need for the full and robust enforcement of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 and its “enhanced preemption” provision. The apparent reason for the disconnects between MHI’s claimed stance vs. MHI’s actual execution (or lack thereof) appears to be to foster industry consolidation.

If MHI or other business/corporate leaders are able to respond to these concerns, by all means, send a reply email. No word limits. Documents or links as evidence of your stance are welcome.

Follow ups are planned. Thank you.

L. A. “Tony” Kovach

———- Forwarded message ———
From: MHProNews-Dem Push Bipartisan MHC Move. NAHB-Trump-Grok. Goldman-2025 Housing. MO-AG-Biden. MHP
Date: Mon, Mar 10, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Subject: Dems Push Bipartisan MHC Move. NAHB-Trump-Grok. Goldman-2025 Housing Heat Map. MO AG Joe Biden Move. Mainstream Look at MH Production Trends.

15) The collage of two different screen captures below illustrates MHI’s potential motivation for not responding. Per Gemini.

16) For years, MHI leaders responded in a timely fashion to MHProNews inquires. The same is true and remains so for MHARR.  MHI linked Tim Williams at the Ohio Manufactured Home Association has responded to MHProNews inquires, past and more recent.  Clearly, MHI has a reason NOT to respond. One possible reason? Per Gemini.

It is a common practice for legal counsel to advise against making public statements in regards to certain issues.

Former MHI chair Tim Williams/21st Mortgage apparently knows our platform well, has engaged directly with this platform and writer on numerous occasions.

Williams knows what he stands accused of, as do MHI’s leaders. Rather than dig their hole deeper, Gemini suggested that attorneys for those operations may well have advised that no further comment is better for them than comments that can demonstrably be contradicted by other prior comments. A range of publicly traded firms that are members of MHI could be exposed to an array of legal and regulatory measures.  But for clarity, they are already exposed. Who said? Samuel Strommen in his manufactured housing industry focused thesis for Knudson Law.

17) The MHI house of illusion-supported cards has not collapsed. That said, they are shaky. Nothing happened during the Biden-Harris (D) to change that dynamic. Will something happen during Trump 2.0 that didn’t during Trump 1.0? That remains to be seen.

18) Vance said:

“We want them want them to be more affordable. We want there to be less drugs in our country, and we want your citizens to be able to live the American dream. It is the birthright of every single one of our citizens, and we’re going to fight for it every single day.”

…and…

“We want our citizens to feel that investment in their own country, and it’s hard,” VP J.D. Vance said. “It’s hard to feel that investment if you feel like you can’t even own a slice of it, even if that’s what you want to do.”

MHProNews has used remarks from political leaders across the left-right divide for years and shown how they could be used to advance the messaging of the manufactured housing industry. But MHI, and their dominating members, have failed to act. More on that is found in a specific and related example below.

19) To learn more, see the linked reports. According to details supported by AI powered Grok and other sources that will be shown, MHProNews dominates in the industry trade news and views. Part of that dominance is in terms of pages per visit as well as more visitors. That means that many readers like you not only read an article like this one, but then click on links from it to learn more.

MHI may as well have mooned the industry’s independents and rank-and-file, or made funny faces, but they have instead worn fake smiles as they have steadily allowed the industry’s consolidators to eat the manufactured housing industry up one bite as a time.

You are not alone if you have a thirst to understand why manufactured housing has underperformed in the 21st century and its well documented affordable housing crisis. J.D. Vance has pointed to A issue, not the ONLY issue. To learn more why the industry is underperforming, see the linked reports.

Whatever develops, MHProNews plans to report in future installments of “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” ^© where “We Provide, You Decide.” ^© Immigration’s links to housing and workplace enforcement of immigration law impacts our industry and others too. Watch for more MHVille specific items this week.

Democratic Lawmakers Push ‘Bipartisan Supported’ Bill to Limit ‘Mobile Home Rent Increases’ – What Residents-Advocates-Policy Makers and Public Officials May Be Missing; MHVille Facts and Analysis

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.’