For the next few moments, let me again encourage those on the fence to make the trek to Louisville for the 2016 Manufactured Housing Show. Industry pros need to get their batteries recharged! Many will need to get their inventory refreshed and restocked. Dozens of suppliers are waiting to share their latest. We’ll be at the show too, at booth #215. We’ll have some fun things, others will as well.
You can find a number of articles that are Louisville focused on the home page, under Featured Articles. Plus there are invites from others on the Corporate Press Release module, click here to scroll through the latest show related news.
With that necessary and upbeat break, let’s turn to the less joyous recent news hitting the MH industry.
Seattle Times/BuzzFeed’s Mike Baker Daniel Wagner duo Strikes Again
As NanoTech News and other published media outlets put it about Baker and Wagner:
“The writing duo’s use of the term “mobile home” is clearly meant to invoke the image of shoddy, pre-HUD Code trailer houses, and bestow upon billionaire Buffett the aura of an unscrupulous slumlord presiding over the financial rape of the poor and disenfranchised.
Nor do these so-called journalists, who claim expertise in financial reporting, seem to have even a tenuous grasp on the types of loans available to these buyers and how home-only “chattel” loans for manufactured homes are underwritten.”
But has the horse left the proverbial barn with respect to much of the mainstream media coverage of this story?
Beyond the original Seattle Times/Buzz Feed and related follow up articles, Bloomberg, The Hill and a host of others are covering the latest word that House Democrat Maxine Waters is calling for an investigation into the Warren Buffett MH “empire.”
If that isn’t enough, here is what the Motley Fool said a few days earlier.
To get the latest on this issue, see our Daily Business News report, linked here.
MHI has remained mute on the above, some say, understandably. But the numbers in the industry who see their need to publicly respond to the PBS NewsHour piece is growing. Our take on that, is linked here.
We’ve received numerous thank you style messages on our taking on the PBS and SeattleTimes topics, and providing the industry something – instead of nothing – for the more serious researchers into these stories to balance out the online coverage of MH in the News.
Please see the latest on public-focused MHLivingNews on these issues, linked below.
Bad and Good – Two Sides – Manufactured Home Living and News Reporting
About the bad news noted above, I was asked by an industry pro, the following via email:
“Do you think it would go away if we drop our legislation?”
No, I don’t think abandoning the Preserving Access bill would end this stream of bad news in the media. It would be hard to imagine anything more encouraging to Ishbel Dickens and company than MHI and others in the industry abandoning HR 650/S 682. It is my sincere hope that the powers-that-be decide to amp up, and give an all out effort to win on this bill. That can be done using ways we’ve already outlined that it could be accomplished.
I’ll close with the witty Matthew Silver’s headline on Wisdom Homes, which was touting their success and plans just a few months ago. Today, here’s that Wisdom related headline:
Manufactured Homes have Gone to Pot
Let’s catch up this weekend, your thoughts and news tips are encouraged and valued. ##
