The following 7 bullets are all actual headlines, a small sampling of their kind from this week.
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Suspected arsonist charged in car, mobile home fire
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HEMET: Son charged in parents’ deaths at mobile home park
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Armed woman barricaded at Castaic mobile home park
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Boy struck after trio flees mobile home park
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Des Moines trailer fire causes at least $25000 in damage
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10 years ago, Hurricane Charley turned away from Tampa Bay…”Residents of Windmill Village mobile home park near Alligator Creek sit in the shade of what’s left of their damaged clubhouse…”
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3 bodies found in mobile home; gas leak suspected
Murder! Mayhem! Fire! Death!
Lets look a few moments longer at the story from bullet #7, quoting in brown below, from click2houston, a story from Tomball, TX.
“SPRING, Texas –
Police say three people were found dead Wednesday night at a north Harris County trailer. One other victim was transported to a nearby hospital. According to authorities all the victims were children.
When firefighters responded to 8500 Scotch Pines Place, they found a smoldering fire inside the trailer home. According to Klein Fire Chief David Bessolo, carbon monoxide levels in the home were seven times higher than what firefighters consider a “danger level”.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office says the Klein Fire Department and Harris County Fire Marshall’s Office will be handling the investigation. “
Anyone who has used Google Alerts for MH sees lots of news items like these, day after day. These are the local news stories that create the impressions which gives us an avoidable black eye, costing our industry billions of dollars a year in lost sales.
The Other Side of such News “Stories”
In the Houston area story, what is utterly unclear from the “news” accounts given is – what caused the ‘smoldering fire’ that lead to the apparent deaths from carbon monoxide?
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Where kids burning something they shouldn’t have?
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Would the same problematic activity that killed those youth have just as tragically occurred in a site built house or apartment complex?
Far More Murder and Mayhem…
The reality is there are far more crimes and tragedies taking place in conventional housing, but that’s not how the media typically opts to tell the tale. We don’t hear or read ‘3 youth tragically died in a site built house when the fire they set in the kitchen reached critical carbon monoxide levels.’
Windstorms!
Often in the mainstream media, the unspoken rule is, ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ The story noted in the bullets above, from TampaBay, stated in part:
“By the time it was done, Charley had killed 10 people and caused more than $14 billion in damage, making it the third costliest hurricane in U.S. history. It was the first of four hurricanes to clobber Florida that year, a nightmarish run of bad luck.”
What their report didn’t state was that after $50 billion in damage from windstorms that year in FL, the Bush Administration was exploring how modern manufactured homes built and installed to the new wind standards did so well. 1600 modern manufactured homes, properly installed, where hit that year in FL; none were lost.
The IBHS hurricane wind study we reported on demonstrated that 80% of the damage done to manufactured homes in wind storms was caused by improper add-ons. The side by side photos shown on that linked page demonstrated that the site built house didn’t do as well as the least expensive HUD Code manufactured home in that same market!
We have the Answers to all these tragic tales of crime and woe! But will the MH Industry Robustly Share them?
At the pinnacle of the top stories viewed last month on MHLivingNews included the IBHS hurricane wind study. Every one of the negative stories local media often pounds on have good, solid, fact based replies!
Studies are available on fire safety being superior in a modern manufactured home than in conventional ‘site built’ housing.
In my experience in supervising the management of 7 to 17 MHCs, we learned about how effective resident screening was. We asked the local police for crime reports. Our crime rate was lower than the surrounding neighborhoods, where most of the conventional houses sold for 3, 5 or as much as 10+ times as much money.
Seasoned, level headed industry pros know such facts to be true. So why are they still almost “a secret?”
The solution to the Death and Disaster, “negative MH image campaign” is amazingly simple. We have to tell our side of the story – plus share the good news about manufactured housing – when negative stories are told.
We also have to tell our story effectively.
We should also shine the spotlight on any slip-shod media coverage, while praising the media when they do a good job telling the facts.
Related Segue
On a related note, Marty Lavin tell’s me he’s getting a steady stream of comments (we are too…) about his Exhaustion Sets In guest column. It’s been a hot read! Our midweek reply…
Is Marty Lavin stirring the MH pot again?
…is running at a similar pace for readership and is driving even more readers to his witty and candid comments.
We collectively have the solutions. The reward is an ever growing part of the trillion dollar annual U.S. housing market.
We either define ourselves, or others will – tragically – define us to our detriment, which costs us billions of dollars annually. Have you done the math on how much that de facto negative image campaign cost you? ##
(Image credits: click2houston, WikiCommons, NBC News Today Show and thinkstock vector clip art)
