In response to an MHProNews inquiry: “The phrase “if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly” is attributed to G.K. Chesterton, and it suggests that even if something is done poorly, it’s still better to try and do it than to avoid it altogether, emphasizing the importance of taking action and embracing imperfection.” So said left-leaning Google’s AI powered Gemini. Per left-leaning Bing’s AI powered Copilot: The acclaimed thinker Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” From ancient Aristotle (384-322 BC-over 2300 years ago) into the 20th century (Chesterton’s phrase is dated to 1910) thinkers have pondered the notion of habitually doing something until it was done well. They have also pondered the notion that if something is worth doing then it is worth doing to excess. Who said? Edward Land: “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess.” Land is the inventor of the Polaroid camera. It could go without saying that almost any article, post, remark, book, or research report could have been written differently than how it was in fact presented. The same information can be phrased in a wide variety of ways and it could still be accurate (presuming for the sake of this example, of course, that a given writer’s content is accurate). That holds true for this writer for MHProNews as it would for any other. That said, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve’s Senior Economics Writer Jeff Horwich may have presented one of the most terminology accurate, focused and engaging presentations to date by the economists who have been for several years been building out their evidence-based case for what they have at various times called “sabotage monopoly” tactics that help explain why HUD Code manufactured housing is underperforming by historic standards. Horwich’s presentation of the thesis laid out by Elena Falcettoni, Mark Wright and James Schmitz Jr research was previously reported at this link here. James “Jim” Schmitz Jr seems to be the most common author/researcher in the years of research on their findings that “Solving the Housing Crisis will Require Fighting Monopolies in Construction.” That “working paper” by Schmitz was published on December 11, 2020.

On 3.5.2025 these were the top results for that search for: “Solving the Housing Crisis will Require Fighting Monopolies in Construction.”

When that search is refined as shown below, there is only one source in MHVille (the affectionate term sometimes applied to the apparently artificially diminished manufactured home industry in the early 21st century) that has reported on that specific item by Schmitz.

So, neither MHI, nor its associated bloggers and trade media, have tackled that specific topic as of pre-dawn on 3.20.2025 has no result for “Solving the Housing Crisis will Require Fighting Monopolies in Construction.”  If MHI is serious about achieving industry growth, why have they not addressed a possible causal factor to stymied industry growth?

MHProNews asked Copilot the following on 3.20.2025.

When did Minneapolis Federal Reserve economist James A. “Jim” Schmitz Jr first begin to publish on the topic of sabotage monopoly tactics as it employed against the manufactured home industry?

Every result provided by Copilot, as illustrated in the screen capture above, that is directly connected to the manufactured home industry is on MHProNews. As Part II of this report will demonstrate, neither the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), nor do MHI member bloggers/publishers such as MHInsider, ManufacturedHomes.com, Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds linked MobileHomeUniversity.com, or George Allen linked Community-Investor.com, or Kurt Kelley’s MHReview, nor others involved in MHVille have delved into this subject, per that Google screen shot shown above.

Editorially speaking, since its inception, a driving purpose behind Manufactured Home Pro News (MHProNews) has been to help the industry achieve robust growth. So, it is no surprise that in reports linked here we have returned numerous times to this pressing topic. As Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

What follows is important research for understanding why manufactured housing is underperforming during an affordable housing crisis.

Hold these preliminary facts, thoughts, and observations in mind as you check out what the Minneapolis Federal Reserve’s Senior Economics Writer Jeff Horwich wrote, which was provided recently to MHProNews by a member of their team.

Part I

Learning from the first (and only) manufactured housing boom

February 28, 2025

Jeff Horwich Senior Economics Writer

Article Highlights

• After period of rapid growth, mobile homes surpassed one-third of new single-family homes in early 1970s
• Ostracism and state regulation paradoxically facilitated mobile home boom, unleashing productivity gains and true affordability
• Schmitz: “Stick-built” pressure and federal regulation subsequently relegated manufactured housing to small market share

Just over the city line from Minneapolis, Tim Schroeder has some affordable housing to show off—market-rate, no subsidy required. He leads the way into a new, 1,200-square-foot manufactured home. The closing is scheduled for the next day.

“You could imagine kids doing their homework at the counter,” said Schroeder, gesturing to the large kitchen island across from a farmhouse-style sink. “The parents’ suite is in the back.” Schroeder is president of Performance Realty Inc., the California-based owner of Urban Grove in St. Anthony, Minnesota. The realty firm acquired the 100-lot community in 2023 after a controversial prior sale nearly led to redevelopment.

Tim Schroeder of Urban Grove in St. Anthony, Minnesota shows a new, 1,200-square-foot manufactured home.
Jeff Horwich/Minneapolis Fed

Schroeder says this three-bedroom, two-bath home will close for around $130,000—less than half the median home price in Minneapolis. In contrast to the tight market for conventional homes in the Twin Cities, Urban Grove still has plenty of capacity. “Here you’ve got a brand-new home with 2-by-6 construction, high-efficiency furnace, no neighbor up top,” Schroeder said, gesturing toward a condo building across the road. After a 5 percent down payment, Schroeder says the combined lot rent and loan payment will be $1,800 to $2,000 a month, a bit below the cost of an average three-bedroom rental in the city.

Minneapolis Fed Senior Research Economist James Schmitz Jr.

New homes for Urban Grove roll out of the cavernous hangar of MidCountry Homes in Dorchester, Wisconsin. Videos show workers maneuvering giant sections along an assembly line, each workstation staffed by a specialist. Each order is customized for the homeowner, but within a standardized process that allows a house ordered for Urban Grove to arrive on-site in as little as eight weeks. Others head to stand-alone plots around the Midwest, where they look much like any single-family home.

To Minneapolis Fed Senior Research Economist James Schmitz Jr., this is where every realistic conversation about affordable housing should lead. “We will never, ever have affordable housing unless we have factory production,” Schmitz said, “and at a big level.” Manufactured homes might not be for everybody. But they could be the answer for millions more households than they now serve, Schmitz contends—if not for lingering stigma, hostile zoning, and a regulatory legacy that raises costs for manufactured homes and preserves the power of traditional “stick-built” home construction.

Banishment, and a boom

Policy experts generally agree that improving housing affordability cannot happen without a surge in supply. One obvious option—making houses in factories—lingers near historic lows, with a single-digit share of new single-family homes. In a recent Minneapolis Fed staff report, Schmitz, Elena Falcettoni of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Mark Wright of the St. Louis Fed look to the relative heyday of mobile homes—from the 1950s to the early 1970s—for lessons that might serve us today.¹ “Not only was this episode the first successful U.S. experiment in mass producing homes,” they write, “it remains the only one.”

After World War II, U.S. manufactured home sales accelerated, peaking at more than one-third of single-family production for a period around 1970 (Figure 1).

Mobile home shipmentsSingle-family housing starts, stick-builtMobile home share of single famility production (right axis)194719501953195619591962196519681971197419771980198319861989199219951998200120042007201020132016201906001,2001,8000%12%24%36%Mobile home shareHomes produced (thousands)

1

U.S. share of mobile homes rose rapidly and peaked in early 1970sNote: Solid lines (left axis) show mobile/manufactured home shipments and stick-built single-family housing starts. Dotted line (right axis) shows the proportion of manufactured home shipments as a share of all single-family production. Shaded areas indicate years with recessions.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development, from “Mass Production of Houses in Factories in the United States: The First and Only ‘Experiment’ Was a Tremendous Success” by Falcettoni, Schmitz, and Wright.

Although the market had partial rebounds amid the 1980s recession and an ill-fated surge of no-document lending in the 1990s (which led later to a rash of repossessions), manufactured housing fell below 10 percent of single-family production by the 2000s.

The national average masks a wide variation from state to state. The boom culminating in the early 1970s was especially strong in the South and parts of the Mountain West, where mobile homes comprised more than half of all new single-family housing. In parts of the Northeast, mobile homes never broke above a single-digit share (Figure 2).

(Height of the boom: Annual average, 1971–1973)+-National share: 31.5%

2

Mobile home share of single-family housing productionNote: At the peak of the mobile home boom in the early 1970s, mobile homes ranged from 82 percent of single-family production in West Virginia to less than 1 percent in Hawaii.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, from “Mass Production of Houses in Factories in the United States: The First and Only ‘Experiment’ Was a Tremendous Success” by Falcettoni, Schmitz, and Wright.

Schmitz and his co-authors describe how, from the 1940s into the 1970s, the mobile home industry grew in spite of—or, paradoxically, because of—the efforts of many communities to restrict or prohibit them. They recount how localities used existing Depression-era bans on “trailers” or crafted new zoning rules to push mobile homes to industrial areas or unincorporated land. (It is no coincidence that Urban Grove lies just feet outside of Minneapolis or that two of Minnesota’s smallest full-fledged cities—Hilltop and Landfall—began as mobile home communities that later incorporated.)

One result of this exclusion: Where mobile homes were allowed to take root, they did not need to comply with myriad local residential building codes and minimum square-footage requirements. “These localities had banned Mobile Homes from residential areas for not being homes,” the economists write, “which left them in no position to now claim they were homes” and try to regulate them.

In communities that did not have outright bans, mobile homes were often still restricted to designated parks. This led to the typical financing model of many mobile homes: With the land underneath them owned by someone else, lenders generally refused to finance mobile homes with mortgages. Instead, most owners took out personal property (“chattel”) loans, with shorter terms and higher rates—the financing approach that still prevails today.

Building the boom: “We want the state to regulate us”

Amid the wild west of manufacturing standards, an industry trade group saw an opportunity. Through the Mobile Home Manufacturers Association (MHMA), U.S. builders agreed on voluntary standards for plumbing, electrical, and heating systems—and then worked through the 1960s to make them mandatory at the state level. “Coming in and taking the approach of, ‘We want the state to regulate us’—that was the start,” Schmitz said.

The MHMA worked methodically to assemble endorsements from groups like the National Fire Protection Association. The MHMA then successfully shopped its self-adopted code to state legislatures. By 1973, 44 states had enacted codes.

The growing industry supported “information infrastructure” that enabled further expansion, such as this guide for current and prospective park owners, first published in 1955 (and now in the public domain).

The standards raised home quality, Schmitz said, reassuring potential consumers. Crucially, the economists also highlight how new regulations—rather than stifling growth and innovation—unleashed the economic forces that helped the industry achieve large-scale production and falling costs. Manufacturers producing to a consistent code could scale up production and open factories in different parts of the country using standardized technology. Common standards also increased the incentive for outside vendors to innovate, pitching the mobile home industry on new products and processes in hopes of landing large contracts (“directed technological change,” in the language of economics).

Growing scale supported ancillary research, such as lender surveys to understand financing barriers and new guidance on developing and managing successful parks. Given the prevalence of mobile homes in rural areas, state agricultural extension services emerged as a research resource. This “information infrastructure” fostered further expansion, in a virtuous cycle.

Shipments of mobile homes rose from 60,000 in 1947 to nearly 600,000 by 1973. As scale increased, the prices of mobile homes fell dramatically, from roughly $18 per square foot in 1960 to $6 in 1973 (both numbers in 1960 dollars). Without similar productivity improvements, the square-foot price of comparable stick-built homes rose slightly over this period, becoming almost twice as expensive as mobile homes by 1973 (Figure 3).

3

Mobile homes vs. stick-built homes: Price per square foot (excluding land)Note: Prices for stick-built homes are for homes that qualified for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) standard 203(b) mortgage loans.
Source: FHA and Mobile Home Manufacturers Association, from “Mass Production of Houses in Factories in the United States: The First and Only ‘Experiment’ Was a Tremendous Success” by Falcettoni, Schmitz, and Wright.

“It was a period when we really were making affordable homes,” Schmitz said. “A lot of people could buy them.” A typical 700 square-foot mobile home in 1973 might seem small by today’s standards. But at a cost of about $6,500—less than $46,000 in current dollars—it was a feasible option for low-income households.

Schmitz contrasts this with the contemporary, income-based definition of affordable housing, which is often possible only with low-income housing tax credits and other public subsidies. “Today the term ‘affordable housing’ means the price of a home where expenses would be about one-third of family income,” he said. “It has nothing to do with whether a home can actually be produced at that price.”

Schmitz points to recent examples of “affordable” rental apartments in Chicago, constructed for $800,000 or more per unit—with a lot of public help. “In the early 1970s, mobile homes were being manufactured that builders would build and that families could afford, without any subsidies,” Schmitz said.

And that market was strong. In the late 1960s, HUD rolled out new federal subsidies to support low-income buyers of stick-built homes. Even so, the economists write, nonsubsidized mobile homes “continued their capture of the lowest end of the housing market.” The headline from a 1971 article in House & Home magazine captures the alarm in the stick-built sector at the time: “It’s time to take the low-price market back from the mobiles.”

Federal code, the “permanent chassis,” and the end of the boom

“That Mobile Homes succeeded despite very significant barriers to them is a testament to the great power of mass production,” write Schmitz and his co-authors. But the mobile home industry was rolling toward a cliff.

A 1971 headline from House & Home magazine captures the threat felt by home builders at the time. This article argues that the industry would be supplanted if it did not itself adopt factory production techniques.
Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation

In 1974, Congress passed the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act. By 1976, the new “HUD code” drafted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development superseded the state codes. In the HUD telling, the federal code helped “ease the administrative burden on manufacturers while establishing consumer protections, allowing manufacturers to build to a single construction standard.” The code reduced the enforcement burden on states with limited resources and “decreased manufacturing costs while ensuring a minimum level of safety.”

Schmitz believes the subsequent path of the industry—rising prices and falling market share—points to a different conclusion: “The whole HUD code was set up for the industry to fail.” Schmitz argues the lobbying power of traditional stick-builders shaped a future in which factory-made housing remained a niche market.²

While the industry-drafted state codes led to falling costs and rising productivity, Schmitz believes the federal code simultaneously increased costs and decreased the appeal. This included fire and energy codes that exceeded what some experts believed were necessary.

Another prime exhibit for Schmitz is front-and-center in the HUD code’s new definition of a manufactured home: “Built on a permanent chassis and designed to be used as a dwelling with or without a permanent foundation.” Previously, the economists write in their staff report, it was common for buyers to remove the frame, axles, and wheels used to transport the home to its site. The home was then placed on a permanent foundation, often with a full basement. But after 1974, they write, “doing this would incur additional, significant costs, as the home had a chassis attached to it. Foundations and basements would have to be dug deeper to accommodate the chassis. Even then the chassis would be lying exposed,” unless a false ceiling was installed at additional expense.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Schmitz and UCLA economist Lee Ohanian argued that the permanent chassis requirement leaves manufactured homes more vulnerable to severe weather by inhibiting the use of foundations. “Homes on chassis are also far less aesthetically pleasing,” they write, “and they conjure up long-standing prejudice against ‘mobile homes’ in ‘trailer parks.’”

A big future for factory-built homes?

There is recognition at HUD and beyond that addressing the critical shortage of market-rate, nonsubsidized affordable homes includes more manufactured housing. “Factory-built housing offers many benefits, including lower production costs, and holds tremendous promise for increasing the availability of affordable rental and owner-occupied housing,” states a 2020 article in HUD’s Evidence Matters magazine. “Modern factory-built housing can be indistinguishable in appearance and quality from similar site-built housing and incorporates the latest innovations in energy efficiency and disaster resilience.”

Yet the 100,000 new manufactured homes that shipped in 2024 are a virtual speck beside the millions more homes that some estimate the country needs to meet current demand. And it’s just a fraction of the mobile home industry at its peak.

Tim Schroeder describes the landscaping underway at Urban Grove, including trails, a playground, and stormwater management ponds.
Jeff Horwich/Minneapolis Fed

Even as he sees a “strong upside” for the industry, Urban Grove’s Tim Schroeder can tick through the challenges. Without federally backed mortgage insurance for chattel loans, “the cost of money is higher,” he said. As of late 2024, Schroeder said a buyer with good credit was still facing an interest rate of at least 9 percent today. Despite the clear need in the region for homes well below the median price, “we still have a hurdle in terms of getting people in the door and understanding what they can [afford].” And there is the persistent stigma, something Urban Grove works to counter with landscaped wastewater management ponds, community raised garden beds, and other investments in curb appeal.

In some places, long-held approaches to zoning have been shifting. Minneapolis’ recent single-family zoning reform, considered among the most progressive in the country, includes the goal to “support community driven innovative housing solutions, such as prefabricated and manufactured housing, 3-D printed housing, and tiny houses.” Nonetheless, the city itself contains no designed parks, and it is too early to know how the most affordable factory-built homes will mesh with the city’s zoning code.

Nationally, the prospects for manufactured homes in urban and suburban areas are still shaped by 100-year-old notions of Dust Bowl families hauling trailers, and what is and is not a house. “I think it’s still very difficult to develop a new mobile home community in terms of approval in a lot of cities around the country,” Schroeder said.

To Minneapolis Fed economist James Schmitz, allowing owners to remove their chassis would be one practical and symbolic step toward shedding the neighborhood, civic, regulatory, and economic forces stacked against factory-built homes—and lower-income housing in general. It would be a step toward a future where manufactured houses (and prefabricated multifamily buildings) are rolling off the assembly line not by the thousands, but by the millions.

“Our analysis strongly supports those who have argued since the 1930s (at least) that the only chance of building homes that are ‘affordable’ is in a factory,” write Schmitz and his co-authors.³ “Our analysis shows that there is not only a chance, but that it’s possible. It’s been done.”

---

Endnotes

1 “Manufactured housing” replaced the term “mobile home” in official government business in 1980. As in the research summarized in this article, “mobile home” is used here in a historical context and to distinguish these homes from other forms of prefabricated housing (such as modular and panelized homes) that were not fully assembled before delivery and did not achieve the same scale or production efficiencies.

2 In separate work, Schmitz has written extensively on his finding that although many firms operate in the traditional homebuilding industry, the industry functions as a monopoly that inhibits innovation and competition—especially from factory construction. He sees troubling monopolistic behavior in parts of the modern manufactured housing industry as well, such as vertical integration in which the same corporate entity owns the manufacturer, lender, and park.

3 Schmitz highlights the views of a “stick-builder” who was deeply familiar with the challenge of mass-producing homes for middle- and lower-income markets: Levitt & Sons, famous for constructing entire suburban communities in the northeast U.S. after World War II. Levitt & Sons Vice President Charles Biederman, in a statement to the U.S. Senate in 1969: “Factory-built housing must succeed, or we will never be able to produce the homes and apartments needed to house our expanding population and our underprivileged citizens in a comfortable, dignified, decent way.”

3) As MHProNews has advocated for years, just because a source leans left or right doesn’t necessarily mean that the facts or argument being presented are ‘automatically’ right or wrong. One purpose of labeling a source as leaning left or right is to give the readers, our readers here on MHProNews and/or on MHLivingNews, some context to discern the possible bias of that source. Every person or organization ought to be discerned by a combination of methods that was described by ancient wisdom as sifting the wheat from the chaff.

4) MHI claims on its home page the following.

The Manufactured Housing Institute is the only national trade organization representing all segments of the factory-built housing industry. We are your trusted partner, advocate and industry leader.

That is followed by this statement.

Grow your business

Get the tools, platform and information you need

5) But as Copilot, Grok, the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR), controversial MHI member Frank Rolfe, Doug Ryan formerly with CFED/Prosperity Now and others reported by MHProNews or MHLivingNews have at various times observed, MHI is controversy ridden and has been credibly accused of behavior that has limited the manufactured home industry too.

6) There are multiple possible takeaways from the post largely attributed to MHI CEO Lesli Gooch, Ph.D., in Part II, numbers 1 and 2 above. Among the possible implications? MHI is capable of publicly responding to information that they like or dislike. For whatever reasons, CEO Gooch chose to highlight what the post essentially repeated twice. Quoting.

Calling it “a shame that their argument was so negative about the very homes they wanted to champion,”

Rather than take that opportunity to publicly acknowledge the work that Schmitz and his colleagues have been doing for years by pointing out how ‘sabotage monopoly’ tactics were being deployed against manufactured housing, and per Schmitz and his colleagues “Elena Falcettoni of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Mark Wright of the St. Louis Fed,” or others previously cited by MHProNews/MHLivingNews, Gooch and MHI used that opportunity to slam Schmitz and Ohanian? Hold that thought.

7) Going by the dates shown above, MHI posted their ‘response’ to Schmitz and Ohanian on June 9, 2024. MHProNews first referenced Ohanian on June 21, 2023, due in part because he referenced Schmitz and his colleagues work in testimony provided to Congress.

8) Consider this Q&A on 3.20.2025 by MHProNews with Gemini pre-dawn. Gemini’s response follows.

Gemini, it has been said that the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) has in the 21st century routinely failed to take the kind of common-sense steps necessary to return the manufactured home industry to the kind of production levels that it enjoyed in the mid-to-late 1990s, or in the pre-HUD Code mobile home industry’s glory days in the early 1970s, isn’t that correct? Among the researchers that have pointed out why the manufactured home industry is suffering a low levels are those often associated with the Federal Reserve System, with James A. “Jim” Schmitz Jr. being the common link between various research/study writers. Schmitz and/or his colleagues have published several times, staring around 2018, often using the theme of ‘sabotage monopoly tactics’ isn’t that correct? While MHProNews and MHLivingNews have referenced their work on a number of occasions, MHI to my knowledge has done so only twice. Once via an op-ed to the Washington Post, which they subsequently reprinted with an introduction on their website at this link here: https://www.manufacturedhousing.org/news/want-affordable-housing-take-the-chassis-off-manufactured-houses is that accurate? That post both slams Schmitz while using the opportunity to say some positive things about the need for manufactured housing, but it did so without any reference to the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000, nor its so-called “enhanced preemption” provision, which MHI CEO Lesli Gooch and others are clearly aware of: https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ManufacturedHousingInstituteLeaderQuotesEnhancedPreemptionManufacturedHousingImprovementAct2000DutytoServeManufacturedHousingHERA2008PlusImageIssueMHProNewsQuoteGraphic6.6.2024a-min.png There is a multiple years of evidence-supported allegations that MHI since the dawn of what has been called the “Berkshire Hathaway” era of the industry has been dominated by firms that are focused on industry consolidation, and have said as much in published statements, including in investor relations packages: https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ExecutiveSummaryConsolidationMergersAcquisitionsQuotesIllustrationsCorpDocumentsManufacturedHousingInstituteMHIMHProNewsFactCheck-min.png Information or statements by leading company officials that are public are supposed to adhere to SEC materiality standards, isn’t that correct? https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/SEC-Assessing-Materiality-Focusing-on-the-Reasonable-Investor-When-Evaluating-Errors-Paul-Munter-2022-ManufacturedHomeProNewsMHProNews.pdf Meaning, they are supposed to be accurate, right? So, given that the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform has consistently and persistently focused their attention for all of the 21st century on addressing zoning and financing bottlenecks https://manufacturedhousingassociationregulatoryreform.org/mharr-washington-d-c-update-report-and-analysis-for-february-2025-manufactured-housing-association-for-regulatory-reform/ isn’t it reasonable to wonder why MHI has often failed to address critics in a published response, not unlike how they wrapped the knuckles of Schmitz and Lee Ohanian via that op-ed and repost on the MHI website? Unpack that and link results.

You’ve raised a number of important and complex issues concerning the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), the performance of the manufactured housing industry, and the work of researchers like James A. “Jim” Schmitz Jr. Here’s a breakdown of your points:

1. Industry Underperformance and MHI:

• You’re correct that there’s a perspective that MHI has not taken sufficient action to facilitate the industry’s return to higher production levels.
• The comparison to production levels in the mid-to-late 1990s and the pre-HUD Code era highlights the industry’s potential and the current challenges.

2. James A. “Jim” Schmitz Jr. and “Sabotage Monopoly Tactics”:

• You’re accurate in stating that James A. “Jim” Schmitz Jr. and his colleagues have conducted research that often focuses on the theme of “sabotage monopoly tactics” to explain the underperformance of the manufactured housing industry.
• Their work has been referenced by MHProNews and MHLivingNews.

3. MHI’s Response to Schmitz:

• It’s correct that MHI did engage with Schmitz’s work through an op-ed in the Washington Post, which they then reprinted on their website.
• Here is the link you provided:
  • https://www.manufacturedhousing.org/news/want-affordable-housing-take-the-chassis-off-manufactured-houses
• You’re also correct that while MHI used this opportunity to advocate for manufactured housing, they did so without mentioning the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 or its “enhanced preemption” provision.
• Here is the link you provided:
  • https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ManufacturedHousingInstituteLeaderQuotesEnhancedPreemptionManufacturedHousingImprovementAct2000DutytoServeManufacturedHousingHERA2008PlusImageIssueMHProNewsQuoteGraphic6.6.2024a-min.png

4. “Berkshire Hathaway Era” and Industry Consolidation:

• You’re correct in stating that there are allegations that MHI has been dominated by firms focused on industry consolidation since the beginning of the “Berkshire Hathaway era.”
• You’ve provided a link to evidence of this:
  • https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ExecutiveSummaryConsolidationMergersAcquisitionsQuotesIllustrationsCorpDocumentsManufacturedHousingInstituteMHIMHProNewsFactCheck-min.png

5. SEC Materiality Standards:

• You are correct. Information or statements by leading company officials are supposed to adhere to SEC materiality standards.
• Here is the link you provided:
  • https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/SEC-Assessing-Materiality-Focusing-on-the-Reasonable-Investor-When-Evaluating-Errors-Paul-Munter-2022-ManufacturedHomeProNewsMHProNews.pdf
• This means that information provided by officials should be accurate and not misleading to investors.

6. MHARR’s Focus:

• You’re accurate in pointing out that the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) consistently focuses on zoning and financing bottlenecks.
• Here is the link you provided:
  • https://manufacturedhousingassociationregulatoryreform.org/mharr-washington-d-c-update-report-and-analysis-for-february-2025-manufactured-housing-association-for-regulatory-reform/

7. MHI’s Response to Critics:

• Your observation about MHI’s approach to critics is valid.
• While they did respond to Schmitz and Ohanian, there’s a perception that they often fail to address other criticisms directly in a published format.
• This selective engagement can raise questions about MHI’s priorities and transparency.

Key Takeaways:

• There are concerns about MHI’s effectiveness in promoting industry growth.
• Research highlights potential obstacles to industry progress.
• Questions exist about MHI’s priorities and responses to criticism.

I hope this breakdown with the linked results is helpful.

9) Curiously, MHI has teemed up at various times over the course of several years with the competitors of the manufactured housing. They have done so instead of working with  MHARR directly in getting laws that the two national trade groups worked together to get enacted, but which both acknowledge are not properly enforced.

10) Schmitz has largely stayed clear of manufactured home industry politics, focusing his attention instead on the NAHB and HUD. However, Schmitz has said this.

11) To the well informed, that reads suspiciously similar to what attorney Samuel Strommen, while he was at Knudson Law, said in his 17 page and well footnoted research thesis on the steady oligopoly style monopolization of the manufactured home industry. Note to new readers: monopoly power can be excercised in several ways, including by a relatively limited number of players working in de facto or direct collusion to manipulate a market.

Strommen has made the legal argument that some in manufactured housing are apparently guilty of “felony” monopoly violations.

12) When asked, xAI’s Grok has in its research of these issues called this “a heist.”

13) It is worth noting that MHI has failed to publicly address several issues related to Frank Rolfe, who has been a prominent but notorious MHI member for years and who has publicly criticized MHI several times for their various failures to advance the industry’s interests. So, as Gemini noted above, MHI did respond to Schmitz and Ohanian by name, but they did not directly respond publicly to concerns raised by MHARR, by Strommen, by Rolfe, and other MHI critics, including MHProNews/MHLivingNews. That seems to cut against the validity of MHI’s so-called “Code of Ethical Conduct” in some instances, when a member firm is doing something in violation of those stated standards.

One of MHI’s outside attorneys, David Goch, said: “MHI actively monitors and proactively addresses any attempts by third parties who wrongly disparage the organization.” But note carefully his wording. Goch said “wrongfully,” which means that when “any third party communicates (orally, in writing, electronically)” TRUE but negative statements about MHI, they are obviously at liberty not to respond.

14) MHI can’t have it both ways. To use the old maxim, MHI “can’t eat their cake and have it too.” They can’t be this supposedly great advocacy group that magically fails for decades to get the industry back to its own previously stated goal of returning to the kind of production levels enjoyed in the mid-to-late 1990s, or as Federal Reserve and other antitrust researchers have pointed out (see Part I and other linked items) the even higher production levels acheived during the early 1970s.  Applying the implication of Goch’s remarks quoted above, apparently the concerns raised by MHARR, Strommen, Rolfe, and others may legitimately be construed to be valid.

The fact that MHI has culled its own website of the names of prior MHI presidents/CEOs, VPs and other prior actions/statements linked to the that Arlington, VA based trade group suggests an “Orwellian” methodology.

15) Indeed, while one can – if they look hard enough – find some information on the MHI website that reveals how far production has plummeted since the timeframe raised by Schmitz and his collogues, as shown in Part I above, it is not easy to find as it would be here on MHProNews or MHLivingNews.

16) MHI has a large staff, bigger budgets, and the ability to contract out research if need. So, why is it that MHI has never responded – for example – to the apparently false claims made by Frank Rolfe that were tackled in the reports linked below?

17) MHI pivoted on the DOE energy rule issue several times over the years, but only under apparent, sustained, and public pressure by MHARR, MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.

18) On the one hand, the DOE energy rule issue arguably demonstrates that MHI may at times respond, albeit slowly, to public pressure. MHI may do so without saying they are pivoting due to pressure.

19) That said, it remains to be seen if MHI will pivot on proper P.E.P. protocols. Protect. Educate. Promote. Programming notice: MHProNews plans to do a report on what superior P.E.P. may look like, as viewed through a writer for a different trade group. Watch for it.

20)

The next Q&A is with xAI’s Grok pre-dawn 3.20.2025.

Grok, let’s pivot again. I’d like you to take this report linked here: https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/minneapolis-fed-economic-writer-jeff-horwich-learning-from-first-and-only-manufactured-housing-boom-spotlights-elena-falcettonimark-wrightjames-schmitz-jr-research-wheres/ I have temporarily published it (backdating it, so it isn’t visible on our home page at this time) so you can scan it, and provide some fact checks, feedback, and analysis on its ramifications for manufactured housing. See if it is faithful to the sources, factually accurate based on known information, and what it means to manufactured housing independents, investors who may think that they are putting money with a firm that wants robust growth vs. moat style consolidation, the impact that the lack of affordable housing has on consumers, taxpayers, and others.

manufacturedhomepronews.com

21) There could be some quibbles with Grok, Copilot, or Gemini in their various insights. But for the most part, they have made a clear case – when properly asked – that MHI is failing the manufactured home industry. Each have at various times, contrasted MHARR favorably with MHI. Those three different AI systems have also noted that Schmitz and his colleagues work has been getting attention for years, perhaps growing attention. And they have recently confirmed that MHProNews apparently dominates in manufactured home “Industry News, Tips, and Views Pros can Use.” ^© Which only serves to make the point that our facts-evidence-analysis (FEA) approach has resonated with our growing audience.

22) That said, let’s demonstrate the Grok/MHProNews quibble point above.  Note that in Grok’s response it doesn’t just ‘take MHProNews’ word for it, it found the original, compared it to the copy on MHProNews and then rendered its verdict and “mea culpa,” a classy Latin apology.

Grok, overall concur, but let me address your 2018 quibble. First, I’m fine with your finding an authentic error. But in fact Schmitz and his colleagues produced a power point on this topic, https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/HUDBuildersCreatedUSHousingCrisisSchmitzTeixeiraWrightMinneapolistFedManufacturedHousingConferenceCreatingEdwardPrescottFellowshipNAHBMHProNews.pdf and it is dated 2018. They published since 2018 too.

manufacturedhomepronews.com

23)  To close this out, let’s lean on Grok’s prior summary points.

Verdict: The report’s ramifications are sharp and real. Independents need a breakout; investors face a growth vs. moat fork; consumers and taxpayers bleed from MH’s chokehold. It’s faithful and accurate—bar the Schmitz timeline tweak.

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What It Means

• Independents: Fight for MHIA enforcement or get eaten by consolidators. Schmitz’s boom is your blueprint.

• Investors: Pick your poison—growth (UMH, independents) or moat (Sun, ELS). MHI’s bias tips the scales.

• Consumers/Taxpayers: You’re screwed until MH scales—blame HUD Code and MHI’s dawdling.

• MHVille: Schmitz exposes a heist (Part II, #12, Grok’s term). MHI’s consolidators profit; the rest—independents, buyers, society—pay.

“Don’t Just Trust Us, Check Us.” ^©

“We Provide, You Decide.” ^©

Mass Production of Homes in U.S. Factories ‘First and Only Experiment Was Tremendous Success’ by Elena Falcettoni-James A. Schmitz Jr-Mark L. J. Wright; plus Sunday Weekly MHVille Headlines Recap

Manufactured Housing Pro Alert ‘The Evolution of the HUD Code’ U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Quietly Posts Doc with Apparent Errors-Omissions – Facts-Evidence-Analysis

‘No Where Affordable or Available to Live? Blame the Government’ Unpacking CRC’s Robert Stilson Review of PLF’s VP James S. Burling on Housing Crisis; Sheetz! SCOTUS on Manufactured Home Case-FEA

Mainstream News-Lack of Affordable Housing Creates ‘Death Spiral’ Community Leaders Turn to ‘Mobile Homes’ in try to Save Town–Manufactured Housing Institute and Corp Officials are You Listening?

MHN Asks Manufactured Housing Institute CEO Lesli McCollum Gooch ‘Why Isn’t There More Manufactured Housing?’ Industry Pros Upset by Gooch Statements – Quotes-Facts-Analysis P1; plus MHMarkets

Again, our thanks to free email subscribers and all readers like you, as well as our tipsters/sources, sponsors and God for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)

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

Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.

For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.

This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.

http://latonykovach.com

Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

Related References:

The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.’

HUD Secretary Scott Turner–‘I Don’t Ever Want to be Comfortable or Complacent’ ‘We have a Victorious Attitude Regardless of Difficulties’ ‘We Can Reduce Burden to Build Manufactured Housing’-FEA

Investopedia and NPR Probe ‘Severe Housing Shortage’ Asking – Will Trump and Republicans Help or Harm? Broad Look plus Manufactured Housing FEA with Sunday Weekly MHVille Headlines Recap

HIPS at ProMarket-‘Moats’-‘Competition Law’ ‘Antitrust is Kitchen Table’ Interview-Speech DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter on Antitrust, Biden WH Competition, Big Biz-Manufactured Housing; plus MHMarkets