Washington, D.C., November 19, 2015 – For the second time in less than a year, the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) had exposed an attempt to expand the reach and influence of the federal manufactured housing program’s entrenched “monitoring” contractor over the industry’s construction and safety standards and their enforcement (as well as revenues it derives from the industry) — this time under the guise of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “Advisory and Assistance” contract. The Association has called on FEMA to terminate this contract to establish a “rogue” inspection structure for FEMA-purchased manufactured homes which would parallel the existing U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) manufactured housing regulatory system, while circumventing legal restrictions on the role and influence of contractors within that HUD system.
As is explained in greater detail in the attached documents (which MHARR urges all industry members to review and comprehend), under the FEMA contract, the de facto sole-source HUD “monitoring” contractor for the past 40 years — placed under specific statutory limitations in the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 — would assume sweeping power and influence over the production of FEMA-purchased HUD Code manufactured homes and, by extension, virtually all HUD Code homes, even though each and every HUD Code home purchased by FEMA (and/or any other entity or individual) is already inspected for conformance with the HUD manufactured housing standards and is certified to be compliant with those standards under the existing HUD regulatory system.
This activity comes less than one year after the same entrenched HUD “monitoring” contractor entered into a subcontract for dispute resolution (DR) services within the federal (i.e., HUD) manufactured housing DR system for “default” states structured to circumvent the “separate and independent contractors” provision of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000. That effort was thwarted when MHARR immediately objected and – in the absence of appropriate responsive action by HUD – sought congressional intervention, which ultimately led to the termination of the unlawful subcontract by HUD in May 2015.
MHARR has – and continues to — maintain that HUD’s ongoing failure to fully comply with the 2000 reform law regarding the legitimate boundaries and parameters of the “monitoring” function and the HUD ”monitoring” contract, has – in this case, for example — led to the effort to create a “rogue” de facto regulatory system that, if left in place, would dramatically and unnecessarily increase regulatory and pseudo-regulatory compliance costs for all stakeholders.
