Hold the headline for 125 words. Poisoning the well. Salting the fields. Those are but two of several ancient methods some enemies used to harm their opponents. The notion behind those vile tactics was if you could kill off their drinkable water or their food supply, someone could effectively destroy their enemy.

Other devious, ancient tactics are:

• scapegoating,
• tapping into prejudice(s),
• obscuring the truth,
• the big lie,
• making numbers of people fear doing or saying something that is normally quite natural.
• Still other tactics are buying or enticing someone to become effectively a ‘Quisling’ or ‘Benedict Arnold.’

 

All those are tools of manipulation or coercion, but they could in theory begin subtly. “Political correctness” might be viewed as an example of the deployment of a way to delicately influence millions.

Before proceeding, let me stress that this writer is a political independent. Affordable housing ideally ought to be a non-partisan or bi-partisan issue. My friends and family include Democrats, Republicans, libertarians, other minor parties, and the droves that could care less about politics. While I hold personal views on matters of faith, my friends and colleagues include self-professed atheists, agnostics, Buddhist, Bahai, Muslims, Jews, New Age, and oh yes, one of several branches of Christianity.

That said, the truth, evidence, reason, experience, logic, and history are among the intellectual drivers for this writer and our LLCs digital publications. Earning and keeping the biggest professional audience of its kind in our industry didn’t happen by accident. Or as a top man of a publicly traded firm said during the Tunica Show, he’s happy his company isn’t one of those we’re investigating, a back handed compliment. He went on to say that we lay out a case step-by-step in an evidence-based fashion that makes sense once an article is digested.

That corporate leader isn’t alone. Professionals from firms of all sizes have made this the number one digital platform of its kind in our industry’s history. Not bragging, just the facts made possible by the various tips, sources, and contributions of so many others.

Frank Rolfe, Dave Reynolds, Both Finger Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) Failures, in Writing, Again | Manufactured and Modular Housing Industry News

It has been a while since we’ve done a focus article on Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds, partners in RV Horizons, Mobile Home University, and other manufactured home industry related ventures. Per third-party sources, RV Horizons is now financially tied to TPG Capital. TPG and RV Horizons were the subject …

 

HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s Affordable Housing Educational Offensive

First, let’s acknowledge that a genius in one field doesn’t make someone all-knowing about other subjects. All truth is learned from another in some form or fashion. Before one knows the truth about any given subject, one is by definition ‘ignorant.’

That’s reality, not a slur.

Before becoming a political candidate for the White House as a Republican in the 2016 election cycle, the current Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) – Ben Carson, MD – was a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon. This writer was among those who grew up hearing amazing-but-true stories of the accomplishments of Dr. Carson. Carson in several ways epitomized the American Dream of going from rags to riches.

His is a story of discipline, endurance to overcome the odds, and the rewards that can come in a free market society that rewards honest accomplishments. So, of course Dr. Carson opposes socialism, and celebrates the American Way.

In an era when being a black man was considered to be automatically a Democrat, Carson – not unlike Justice Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Thomas Sowell, Alveda King, Carol Swain, Walter Williams or scores of others – came to believe that what modern Democrats embraced ran counter to many of the values that made America great. That’s not a slam on Democrats as individuals, but it is to question a party leaders that drifted from Democratic President John F. Kennedy’s professed anti-communism and tax cutting to one that increasingly embraces socialism and redistribution of wealth schemes.

Let’s note there have been GOP party issues I won’t go into now that kept me from embracing their views in toto as well. Each party – in some form or fashion – has something worthy of consideration. This writer, therefor, strives to support those who line up with proven historic principles.

Mocked!

There are times when we all say or do something inadvertently that if magnified and mocked, can be weaponized to create an illusion of ineptitude. Mocking someone can seemingly soil even the most gifted. Do that on national TV, social media, or cable news, and you can turn a truly wise or intelligent person into someone that can be made to appear clumsy. The “OREO” vs. “REO” item that made headlines about Secretary Carson a few weeks ago is an example of that in action.

Secretary Carson profoundly identified that mockery tactic on national TV spot posted below as borrowed from the pages of Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals. Alinsky and Hillary Rodham – the future Mrs. Clinton – were pen pals, and Hillary did a college paper on Alinsky and his methods. To dot the i on slips of the lip or honest mistakes, it’s as wrong to mock former President Barack Hussein Obama for saying 57 instead of 50 states, as it is to mock Secretary Carson for not hearing REO correctly during a somewhat raucous congressional hearing.

Stuff happens, but mature or fair-mined people don’t mock another for a simple misunderstanding.

Cheap shots at such slips are the tools of those with a weak argument. Which brings us to a reality that Secretary Carson well knows. The truth can be obscured or even turned on its head by a variety of means.

Before turning to affordable housing, let’s give but one more example of obscuring the truth. Prior to launching the campaign that led him to becoming the 45th president, try to find someone of stature who accused Donald J. Trump of racism or misogyny. The Trump Organization famously promoted women as easily as a man. There are scores of people like Tiger Woods, Kanye West, or Secretary Carson, that have or would attest to the fact that President Trump is no racist. Trump appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s program several times. Did she think him a racist then? If so, why did Oprah have him on…was she promoting racism or a racist? Of course not. But repeat a lie often enough, and a certain number will believe it.

Repeat a lie with millions hearing or reading it often enough, and millions will believe that lie.

With those useful analogies and examples, now let’s turn to Secretary Carson’s lessons on affordable housing. Note that in the video below, as Secretary Carson speaks about manufactured homes and windstorm resistance, Maria Bartiromo makes a sound, as if his statement caught her by surprise. One might think that the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) might want this video on their website. More on that later.

 

Secretary Carson and Affordable Housing

First, Secretary Carson begins with a free enterprise mindset. As a scientist – because that’s what a physician is – Dr. Carson is by training evidence, reason, goal, and solution oriented.

Reverend Donald Tye, Jr. told me something profoundly insightful, which we’ve held until now. Tye said that when he spent time working in social programs to help the disadvantaged, an odd shift can occur among those serving the needy. A job exists in government or a nonprofit in part because there are poor or other circumstantially disadvantaged individuals. Solving the underlying problem would eliminate jobs. Ouch, but that’s a deeply insightful point.

Rephrased, Rev. Tye was telling me that solving poverty was not the goal for many in a nonprofit or governmental role. Ouch, that’s painful to ponder, but it’s a notion that at a minimum merits consideration.

Carson has been asked to shrink the budget at HUD, as have others in various federal agencies in the Trump Administration. Shrinking HUD’s budget creates political enemies among those who benefit from the existence of programs and poverty. It should be common sense – besides being federal law – that illegal aliens don’t qualify for housing assistance, a topic mentioned in the first right-of-center Fox Business video above. That’s but one of many issues that some on the left have attempted to manipulate facts that creates a narrative that they can weaponize against Secretary Carson.

Carson, by a variety of means, has learned several things about manufactured housing. That’s come in part from trade associations, but also from HUD internal, and other sources.

Carson is not necessarily an expert, but he is intelligent. It is common sense that a home built in a factory is less costly than one built more slowly outdoors. Traditional ‘site building’ is subject to the weather, theft, subcontractors that don’t always show up when expected, inspections that get delayed, permitting, and a raft of issues that cost time and money. Build a single car in a driveway and see how much more expensive that one car is than one essentially identical that’s built on a factory assembly line.

Factory-building is common sense.

Secretary Carson doesn’t have to be a gifted genius to get that reality. Common sense ought to be enough.

In fairness, there is no doubt that Secretary Carson has learned some valuable insights from members of several different associations. I’d like to contemplate the good doctor as thinking for himself – as a scientist would – and not as a puppet for Berkshire Hathaway or their de facto association mouthpiece, based in Arlington, VA. Carson surely knows who Warren Buffett is better than most, because – as noted – he knows who Saul Alinsky is, of whom most Americans know nothing.

Carson, once he begins to learn the truth about manufactured homes, does what many do. He and others get excited about it. Carson seems to sincerely want to tell others, the best way his time and other demands allows him to do. That desire to share good news is common, until it is beat out of someone.

Now, sharing good news about manufactured homes as a tool in the chest for solving the affordable housing crisis may seem to fit what a manufactured housing trade association would – or should – want.

But what Secretary Carson – perhaps inadvertently, perhaps by intent – has done is reveal the utter purported hypocrisy of the Arlington, VA based Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI). How so?

Manufactured housing is now in its 8th month of year-over-year declining production. When one grasps the reality of what Secretary Carson says, it begs the question the Urban Institute asked in January 2018. Manufactured homes could help solve the affordable housing crisis, so why aren’t more HUD Code manufactured homes being sold?

There are over two decades of third-party research that tells the story of HUD Code manufactured homes. That research is largely absent from the MHI website. Why? Why doesn’t MHI have a page on their website with tons of third party research, as we have established on MHLivingNews?

Last year, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Certified Business Economist (CBE) Scholastica ‘Gay’ Cororaton wrote a fascinating research report that debunks large swaths of the misinformation that exists about manufactured homes. At least one MHI vice president took part in that research process, because she, I, and Mark Weiss from the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform are among those that NAR’s Cororaton cited in her first footnote on page 48. That highly useful NAR research by Cororaton isn’t found on MHI’s website. Why not? Wouldn’t third-party evidence which debunks outdated or errant notions help convince more Americans hungry for affordable housing to buy a manufactured home?

Of course, it would. Third-party endorsement, by whatever terminology or nomenclature one may use, has been powerful method for convincing skeptics for ages. A genuine third-party research that debunks fallacies goes to the heart of the quotes below, from a former MHI chairman, and a controversial but savvy MHI member.

 

 

There are reams of quotes similar to those we could cite, but let’s just use one more quote for the moment.

 

Decio’s question begs the question. Why is manufactured housing a secret at all? What is the job of MHI? Don’t they claim in writing and in videos to be promoting the manufactured home industry? Isn’t that part of what MHI’s President and CEO, Richard ‘Dick’ Jennison, swears to under penalty of perjury when he signs the annual IRS form 990?

 

 

I’ve not spoken to Secretary Carson. So, there is a bit of supposition here, based upon years of my reading and listening to the famous gentleman. At some point, Carson surely must wonder – why aren’t more manufactured homes being sold? Why didn’t his predecessor at HUD, who likewise praised manufactured homes, actively promote manufactured housing as I’m trying to do?

 

Secretary Carson is Exposing MHI and Berkshire Hathaway MH Brands

Secretary Carson has exposed MHI and Berkshire Hathaway in this fashion. A normal trade group would be celebrating what he said to them on May 7, 2019. There are numerous, powerful, pull quotes from his speech.

But no, now almost a month after the address by Carson, that speech is still not found on MHI’s website.

 

 

After weeks of our hammering that point, last Thursday, MHI finally posted a brief notice on an interior page about the Innovation in Housing event that Secretary Carson, HUD and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) are promoting. They sent out a message to their members via email with a few pull quotes from Dr. Carson’s 5.7.2019 address, to let their members know how great MHI is. That’s become MHI’s photo op campaign.

But after bragging to their members about ‘getting’ Carson two years in a row, they failed to promote his fine address this year or last on their own website. Where is the logic there? Doesn’t that make the point that Frank Rolfe and others have raised about failing to properly promote the industry?

 

 

MHI also apparently failed to use their media contacts to promote the good insights Carson has been making in mainstream news appearance exemplified by some videos shown on this page. The same was true in the run-up to the Innovation in Housing showcase that has 3 HUD Code manufactured homes on display.

It’s not the first such failure by MHI. Rather, it is only the most recent, as other examples posted above reflect.

Restated, there is a pattern of behavior that MHI has exhibited for years. It comes down to only a few logical possibilities. Pardon what will seem blunt, but let’s just state them. Among the logical possibilities:

• MHI – their staff – are inept.
• MHI – their staff – are incompetent.
• MHI – their staff – posture intelligent behavior to their members, but fail to effectively do so with the general public.

 

Let’s bear in mind that the association’s staff are intelligent people.

 

Let’s further keep in mind that the association’s staff do what the MHI Executive Committee tells them to do. Put 3 stars next to that point.

MHI’s staff have been paid bonuses, if the IRS form 990s filings are to be believed.

Bonuses, Bonuses! Manufactured Housing Struggles During Affordable Housing Crisis, While Top MHI Staffers Get Bonuses

Programming note. The forecast for Louisville has evolved, see that among the week-in-review headlines further below. What weather experts predicted at midweek – just a few days ago – has already changed. That should make American thinkers wonder.

MHI staff have been praised by Tim Williams and other MHI Executive Committee leaders. Given the opportunity to respond to concerns raised here or on MHLivingNews, they’ve ducked time and again for the last 2 years.

Rearticulated, the staff must be doing what the MHI Executive Committee desires. That doesn’t absolve them of moral or perhaps some legal responsibilities. But it causes one to look beyond MHI staff to those who pull the strings.

 

UMH President Sam Landy

Sam Landy, JD, UMH Properties President and CEO, said at an MHI meeting to a half-dozen or so listening to him a few years ago words to the effect that ‘there seems to be a lot of meetings, but that not much actually gets accomplished.’

Some MHI corporate members stopped going to many of their meetings, and send a delegate instead, for the same reason Landy stated.

Note that MHI’s 990s make it clear that events and meetings are a profit center for the organization. That’s fine, so long as the organization is doing something worthwhile to promote their stated mission.

There are some who do benefit from MHI, but not in the normal association manner. The evidence suggests that MHI as it has operated in the Berkshire Hathaway era (since 2003) as a tool for corporate consolidation. By appearing to industry members to do what a normal national association should do, they can effectively collect dues and PAC contributions from independents. That also provides opportunities for larger companies to acquire smaller ones.

How Industry Underperformance Benefits Berkshire and “The Big Boys” in Manufactured Housing

Because the industry is de facto underperforming, based upon historic data and the potential demand, it means that those who have sold out in the last 15 years have done so at a discounted value. Doesn’t that nicely fit what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger want? Isn’t that what investors who follow Buffett call an undervalued acquisition?

 

By suppressing the positive truth about manufactured housing, in direct and indirect ways, the powers that be in MHVille – exemplified, but not limited to, Omaha and Knoxville metro based firms – have turned the Arlington based MHI into a tool for consolidation that can readily escape normal regulatory scrutiny. It’s a slow-motion scheme. MHI appears to do what associations do. But they don’t make significant progress. It is a model predicated on the industry underperforming.

Does anyone but this author think so? Yes, and we’ve cited examples. Recent ones are Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds, who de facto doubled down on Frank Rolfe’s quote above. See the new report, linked below.

Frank Rolfe, Dave Reynolds, Both Finger Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) Failures, in Writing, Again | Manufactured and Modular Housing Industry News

It has been a while since we’ve done a focus article on Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds, partners in RV Horizons, Mobile Home University, and other manufactured home industry related ventures. Per third-party sources, RV Horizons is now financially tied to TPG Capital. TPG and RV Horizons were the subject …

Or Neal Haney, who as previously was noted, led numbers of this colleagues out of MHI, saying that they failed to represent their interests.

Or Bob Crawford, who on stage and in an entirely unplanned, explained to dozens of industry professionals why MHI was at best a 5 out of 10 in performance. Where so come from, that earns you an “F,” a failing grade. Keep in mind, this is a flashback to near the end of the Obama administration era.

Mark Weiss, JD, is the President and CEO of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR). He aptly called what MHI does the “Illusion of Motion.”

“The Illusion of Motion Versus Real-World Challenges” | Manufactured Housing Association Regulatory Reform

Motion – or, more accurately, activity – in and of itself, is not necessarily synonymous with, or equivalent to, realprogress, or, in fact, any progress at all.

Former MHI member and award winner Marty Lavin, JD, may have shrewdly understood this well before others did. For years, he said in writing or in meetings, the following.

 

More recently, the observant Lavin said the next potent quote.

 

Does Secretary Carson get all of this? I can’t say, because I don’t know him personally. I do know that HUD’s press office has arguably done all that they can to keep me and our publication away from Secretary Carson. Specifically, let me point the finger at HUD’s Brian Sullivan, who is either de facto working for MHI, or for some other reason fails to do what is in HUD’s – and Dr. Carson’s – and the Trump Administration’s goals of saving taxpayer dollars best interests. There is no logical reason that Sullivan would have, since we have be consistent public supporters of Secretary Carson since he was first nominated.

No one in MHVille could give Secretary Carson a better chance to talk directly to the largest audience of industry’s professionals of all sizes than this author and our digital trade media platforms. Furthermore, on MHLivingNews, Carson could be reaching current and potential manufactured home owners. That’s what Carson says he wants. So, if Sullivan is smart, he knows these things.

So why has Sullivan foiled every effort to date to make that happen? We’ll let that question hang, perhaps Mr. Sullivan will tell us, but what he’s said to date is intellectual mush.

One doesn’t have to believe in a grand conspiracy to recognize that people in the public sector may someday want to work in the private sector. Who better to work for later in life than a Berkshire Hathaway brand?

Further, former Office of Manufactured Housing Program (OMHP) Pam Danner, JD, was an Obama era appointee, with similar political views as the former 44^th president. Secretary Carson said that the regulations he reviewed were “ridiculous” in Senate testimony in 2018, and praised the evolution of manufactured homes as “amazing.” That was an indirect way of scolding Danner’s leadership.

Washington Post Underscores Need for An Independent Post-Production Association

A recent article in the Washington Post regarding the HUD manufactured housing program and the reassignment of former program administrator, Pamela Danner, vividly highlights the glaring need for a new, independent, collective, national trade association to more effectively represent the industry’s post-production sector.

Danner, per our sources, was inserted into her role at HUD by allies of the Berkshire brands.

What a growing number of professionals and legislators realize is the following.

• The power to tax is the power to destroy. The more complex the tax laws, the better for big businesses. The more complex the tax laws, the harder it is on small businesses.
• The power to regulate is the power to destroy. It’s another point that controversial MHI members Frank and Dave made just days ago. It’s a point we’ve made for years.
• Cut businesses of from capital and financing, and you limit or kill businesses off. Combined with the second bullet above, if you get industry members to fight no-win battles like the now dead Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act – which Frank Rolfe said his congressman told him was a waste of time in the Inside MH video posted above – and you will over time cause some to quit, sell out, or close up entirely. All of those are useful for a stealth monopolist. This writer recently referred to that tactic as the classic boxer’s “Rope-a-Dope” tactic, and I confess that I fell for it for a time too.
• Evidence exists that that Berkshire, Clayton Homes, 21^st did cut off lending. Neither of those brands, nor MHI, have yet to debunk – or even try – the documents, direct quotes, video and related evidence that in 2009 a blatant ‘smoking gun’ style antitrust action occurred during the aftermath of the financial crisis. We use the word alleged, because that’s what’s proper. But antitrust attorneys we’ve shown this to that’s looked carefully has said there looks to be a reasonable case, learn that at the link here.
• Last for now, but not least, Buffett’s money has been used to fund both sides of several fights, and it has routinely been MHI that ‘loses’ in the battles. We’ve followed the ‘dark money’ trail, see that linked below.

Prosperity Now, Nonprofits Sustain John Oliver’s “Mobile Homes” Video in Their Reports | Manufactured and Modular Housing Industry News

For those among the manufactured housing industry’s professionals, state association, or investment categories who stated a hope that the John Oliver video would blow over soon, guess again. “They’re [pro-MHI state execs] all drinking each other’s bath water with no objectivity left, whatsoever,” said a recent news tip to MHProNews included …

So with that series of examples of how to weaponize an industry, why would it be a surprise if the revolving door between government and the private sector – as well documented as that is – has also been used by the big boys of MHVille? Again, HUD’s Sullivan will be invited to reply.

But he – and perhaps HUD’s Teresa Payne, both of whom are nice people – are arguably sandbagging Secretary Carson from achieving what he claims to want to do. The arguable alternative is that Carson is doing an elaborate head fake, and Sullivan and Payne are covering for their boss. I’m not buying that, but time will tell.

Manufactured housing is underperforming. That harms most, save a few consolidators.

Let me hit one more note we’ve not hit before. There are companies that may disagree with Berkshire, with Warren Buffett, or with their politics. They may go along out of fear of retaliation, because our industry readers know the purported attempts by those in league with the Omaha-Knoxville-Arlington axis to punish those who would publicly oppose them.

But some could stand up and fight, but don’t. They currently have enough capital, enough power to resist. But they don’t. Why?

Because they are willing to allow the Berkshire brands to consolidate the industry, thinking that it helps them in an indirect fashion. Ouch, but I’ve heard that with my own ears from sources who know and are doing that very thing.

And Buffet and Munger don’t even need to know the vast majority of the people being impacted, so long as their minions in Knoxville and beyond are putting the principles of their strategic Moat is being put to work.

Why We Believe Carson’s at Least Partially in the Dark…

Enhanced Preemption is a provision of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000. As the name implies, it gives HUD Code manufactured homes preemption from a host of local or state regulatory mandates. It is in principle part of how the HUD Code saves a builder money, which in turn saves a home buyer money.

MHI mentions “enhanced preemption” not at all in their website. Why not?

By contrast, you’d find over a dozen articles on MHARR’s website about enhanced preemption. MHI has been online about 10x longer than MHARR. How to explain this disparity? Note that MHI rebuilt its website about 3 years ago, and topics that may have existed before, could have been purged at that time.

What we’ve not seen any evidence that Secretary Carson is aware of the notion of “Enhanced Preemption.”

 

On MHProNews and MHLivingNews, we’ve spotlighted “enhanced preemption” for years. We put it into our federal comments letters too. It is my understanding that MHARR has done so too. Videos like the one below touches on the topic.

So when MHI shows all of these photo ops with HUD’s Brian Montgomery, HUD Secretary Carson, or others, do their meeting minutes reflect that they’ve raised the issue with HUD? Because if so, in a snap, perhaps the single biggest challenge to sales growth would be remedied.

There is no need to pass a new law, when good existing laws are going unfulfilled. The same is true on the Duty to Serve. MHI has promoted the Clayton-backed ‘new class’ of homes, but has not pushed for full implementation of the Duty to Serve (DTS) by the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) on all HUD Code manufactured homes.

There is no longer any rationale that the GSEs can use to avoid the implementation of DTS. Why? Because Triad Financial, Credit Human, 21^st Mortgage, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance (VMF) have proven for years that they can do substantiable lending. Furthermore, the FHFA and NAR research that both say that manufactured homes can and do appreciate should be all the reasons needed for the GSEs to do what the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA 2008) requires.

But that would cost Berkshire Hathaway profits. Who says? Then MHI Chairman and 21^st Mortgage Corp – a Berkshire brand – Tim Williams did, in a meeting in San Antonio Texas to a few dozen people, with me in the room.

Not all, but many roads that explain MHI’s odd behavior go back to Omaha and Knoxville. But what seems ever more apparent is that MHI is – as Marty Lavin said – there for the big boys. By keeping the industry small now, once the big boys consolidated as much as they think they can get away with, watch as they magically take their foot off an invisible brake pedal. Berkshire’s coffers will open. A real marketing and educational campaign will suddenly come to life. Berkshire Hathaway’s “BH Media Group” will likely suddenly start educating the public.

There is no way that Berkshire can logically argue that they are doing their best to grow the industry. The evidence to the contrary is stark, and growing.

In the Inside MH video above, Dye specifically says that Secretary Carson should enforce enhanced preemption. The award-winning Dye does more, like explain that there are entry level manufactured homes, and residential style manufactured homes. Both types must meet all HUD Code standards, and thus both serve consumers in very necessary and valuable ways. Dye also says that over half his customers previously owned a conventional site-built house, before buying a manufactured home.

President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have both said they want to enforce the law. Secretary Carson has said similarly.

But Carson if doesn’t know the law on enhanced preemption exists, how can they enforce it? I don’t think Brian Montgomery – an establishment guy that MHI touted and was there at HUD previously for years – can make the same claim, but let’s hold that issue for another time.

The beauty of enhanced preemption is that all those local zoning and placement barriers that Secretary Carson has spoken of at times would vaporize if federal enhanced preemption were enforced.

The affordable housing crisis could be largely solved within a decade, perhaps less, largely be free enterprise. HUD’s budget could be cut without harming people, because the need for subsidized housing would shrink naturally.

That might upset for a time the apple carts of thousands of investors in rentals. But it would balance out and could bring ‘the rent is too damn high’ complaints to a halt. Because Secretary Carson is correct, the problem is one of supply and demand. Insufficient supply is fueling ever higher housing costs. The solution is more supply, which factory-building alone can rapidly meet.

Manufactured housing is valuable to individuals, to investors, and to society. It should be respected and encouraged as Secretary Carson is trying to do.

But wittingly or not, Dr. Carson has unmasked the most logical explanations for why the industry is underperforming. MHI are not doing their claimed job. That opens up several legal issues, which is explored in part in the linked report above.

Carson Opportunity Zones and Affordable Housing

Secretary Carson is also the head of the president’s “Opportunity Zones” initiative. A proper implementation of existing laws, noted herein above, combined with the opportunity zones, could fuel a growth of trillions of dollars in GDP, per third-party research.

 

That kind of economic growth would raise wages even more than they’ve been doing in the last 2 years. More home ownership would ease income inequality, which is a hot-button issue.

Secretary Carson – if he properly and fully implements the law – may hold the keys to a Trump Administration second term, or not.

Finally, he’s made a good start by just striving to educate the public. But the next step is to enforce the law, and to ask DOJ and others to investigate MHI, the Berkshire brands and others who purportedly have violated several laws in the scheme outlined above.

Unlike UFOs, the truth here isn’t elusive. The truth is hiding in plain sight. One must peel back years of BS to get to it, but Terry Decio’s and thousands of other industry professionals frustrations are solved by simply telling the truth and enforcing existing laws.

As a multiple year MHI former member, I watched from the inside how smoothly common sense was sidelined in favor of esoteric and ineffective often efforts. This writer was praised for years, until we raised too many questions, like about Pam Danner. It was after that San Antonio meeting, after asking about Pam Danner, and questions like those noted herein, that the powers that be that once praised us, turned on us, and booted me out. Fine.

After some 7 years of slow progress I saw all I needed to, thank you very much. We still have sources that tell us much of what is necessary to out what is either incompetence, or a hidden agenda.

 

Oddly, instead of MHI hiring an outside attorney:

• to push cities and local jurisdictions to fully implement enhanced preemption,
• or hire a lobbyist that does nothing more than get FHFA, the GSEs to do the Duty to Serve properly,
• or have that same lobbyist do nothing more push HUD to enforce “enhanced preemption,”
• MHI instead hired an attorney to threaten this writer and our publication, apparently unhappy with our fact checks and related – and they specifically mentioned an earlier graphic like the one immediately above, that they complained about our using properly cited under fair use guidelines for media.

We called their outside counsel’s bluff. It’s just one of several such messages from MHI over the years. But that’s just one of other such items that MHI has arguably been involved with aimed at a pro-growth trade media. Where is the logic? Why not use that money instead for doing the job they claim to do?

Lanham Act, Monopolistic Housing Institute, err, Manufactured Housing Institute, Legal Bullies, and You

Attorneys learn to think systematically. So too do engineers, philosophers, mathematicians, MDs, and other scientists. Ideally, attorneys and other thinkers consider not only their own position, but other perspectives too. The better an attorney understands their opponent’s argument(s), the more effective they can be in representing their client’s interests.

And our agenda at MHI was simple. Ethical, sustainable growth, that is good for consumers, independents, and all.

They praised that, until they didn’t.

 

Interesting isn’t it? That’s the rest of the story.

See prior Masthead’s related to Buffett, Clayton, and the related reports below the bylines and notices for more details. “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Industry news, commentary, fact-checks, and analysis.) ##

(See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them. Third-party images and content are provided under fair use guidelines.)

By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.

Tony is the multiple award-winning managing member of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.

Office 863-213-4090 |Connect on LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

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Prosperity Now, Nonprofits Sustain John Oliver’s “Mobile Homes” Video in Their Reports | Manufactured and Modular Housing Industry News

For those among the manufactured housing industry’s professionals, state association, or investment categories who stated a hope that the John Oliver video would blow over soon, guess again. “They’re [pro-MHI state execs] all drinking each other’s bath water with no objectivity left, whatsoever,” said a recent news tip to MHProNews included …

 

Ross Kinzler Confirms Allegations, MHEC Peer Claims “Association Malpractice;” Member Backstab, MHI Failure Concerns

There are several hot-button issues that are circulating in manufactured housing. They include, but are not limited to, the following. The failure of the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) to respond to the Bryan, TX “ban” and limitations places on new or pre-owned manufactured housing .

“Lead, Follow … Or Get Out of The Way” | Manufactured Housing Association Regulatory Reform

The last decade-plus has not been especially kind to the manufactured housing industry and consumers of affordable housing. The 21 stCentury began with a great deal of promise for the industry and consumers alike.

HUD Code Manufactured Home Production Decline Continues, May Updates | Manufactured Housing Association Regulatory Reform

Washington, D.C., May 6, 2019 – The Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) reports that according to official statistics compiled on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), year-over-year HUD Code manufactured home production declined once again in March 2019.

 

HUD Study, Analysis of Zoning Discrimination Against Manufactured Housing Sought | Manufactured Housing Association Regulatory Reform

MHARR SEEKS HUD STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF ZONING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MANUFACTURED HOUSING Washington, D.C., April 8, 2019 – The Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR), in an April 4, 2019 meeting with HUD policy, analysis and research officials, called on the Department to conduct nationwide research – and follow-up analysis – concerning local zoning mandates that discriminatorily exclude or drastically restrict the placement of federally-regulated manufactured homes to the detriment of lower and moderate-income American families in large areas of the country.

 

MHARR Recommending Independent Collective Representation for Post-Production

Washington, D.C., November 15, 2017 – The Board of Directors of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) has authorized the public release of a comprehensive internal study by the Association of the past, present and future representation of the post-production sector (PPS) of the federally-regulated manufactured housing industry.

Independent National Manufactured Housing Post-Production Association Takes Major Step | Manufactured Housing Association Regulatory Reform

Washington, D.C., January 8, 2019 – The National Association of Manufactured Housing Community Owners (NAMHCO), a new, independent association representing a key manufactured housing industry post-production constituency, has announced a major step in its initial organization and the start of national-level advocacy activities to better and more effectively represent the post-production sector in Washington, D.C.