Attached for your information, in advance of the Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee’s (MHCC) October 25-27, 2016 meeting, is a copy of MHARR’s latest communication (October 20, 2016) to HUD program Administrator Pamela Danner. This communication addresses the latest step in the Department’s apparent effort to exercise de facto control over installation standards in both HUD-approved states and default states and, in the process, impose substantive and procedural mandates that will significantly increase costs for manufacturers, retailers, communities, installers and consumers, as well as state installation programs.

This latest attempted power-grab by HUD, which could threaten continued state participation in an installation regulation system designed by Congress to give state governments primary authority over installation regulation, comes in the form of a “report” by the HUD program’s federal installation contractor – SEBA Professional Services, L.L.C. – purporting to set forth “recommendations” and “guidelines” concerning manufactured home foundations in “frost susceptible” climates.  The SEBA “report,” however — which according to the published MHCC meeting “Tentative Agenda,” will be presented to the Committee at its meeting next week – appears to incorporate mandatory prescriptive requirements that would change the nature, scope and cost of the existing federal installation standards, with related mandates and demands imposed on state and/or local officials.

The installation regulation structure legislated by Congress, however, in place for the last nine years, has been — and continues to — function successfully for all stakeholders (including consumers), particularly in complying states, making such changes unnecessary.  Moreover, as MHARR’s letter stresses, such fundamental modifications to existing federal standards constitute substantive amendments rather than mere “interpretations.” As a result, they must comply with all applicable requirements of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 (including, but not limited to, objective justification and full cost-impact information), which the SEBA report does not.

We urge you to review this communication and to take steps at the MHCC meeting to ensure that this effort to skirt applicable law and implement major, costly and unnecessary de facto changes to existing installation requirements is stopped.

Thank you.