Biden Admin Updates Mobile Home Code For Cleaner, More Affordable Housing

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Earlier this month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), announced some changes to the regulations for manufactured homes. While standards for the production of mobile homes, “trailers,” modular homes, and other homes built in a factory are important to have, sometimes they get in the way of delivering on the promise manufacturers homes have always presented: affordable housing for all.

Some Background

When people talk about manufactured homes, there’s often a lot of looking down past nostrils going on. After all, who would buy a house on wheels? That’s like living in a car, or living in an RV, right? That’s just a half step up from living on the sidewalk. Plus, there’s the old joke that tornadoes are always touching down in trailer parks, which might ring true because trailers often take a lot more damage than site-built homes, making for higher death tolls. After all, if it bleeds it leads, right?

But there’s a lot more to manufactured homes than busted trailers from the 1960s rotting in Tornado Alley with meth being cooked inside.

Manufactured housing does share a common ancestry with travel trailers. The idea of pulling a house around was impossible before automotive technology took off, and it wasn’t long before smaller units were in common use by people who needed mobility more than they needed to plant roots. But, the RV industry went one way (serving travelers), while the “mobile home” industry moved more toward houses that were meant to only be moved 1-5 times in their design life.

Today, manufactured homes aren’t all trailers, either. The early days of 8-foot and 10-foot trailers meant to be moved with a light truck or even a car gave way to much larger trailers that required the services of professionals using semi-trucks. Then, things like doublewides (two-piece mobile homes) and even triple-wides emerged. There are also modular homes, with irregularly-shaped non-rectangular pieces that can be moved onto a site to rapidly assemble a home that’s a lot like a site-built one.

All of these options, from the early RV-like homes to the latest in modular homes came about because demand for housing often outstrips the supply of companies and crews building homes on site. By moving construction to a factory, the speed of construction could be increased while the cost of the home could be decreased. This has made it a lot easier for people to have a home at all, making manufactured housing an indispensable part of the US housing market.

But, the rapid rise of mobile home technology outpaced housing regulations, and by a lot. Building codes are mostly set at the local or state level, which works well because homes have been built on site for hundreds of thousands of years. Automotive technology broke that assumption by making homes a form of vehicle and by making it possible to build homes in one place that will go to many different places. This left the United States with basically no standards for these homes, which could be built very poorly.

The only entity that has any authority to regulate items passed in interstate commerce is Congress (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution). This led to the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974, which (as the act is named) set standards for building them. This nationwide standard also made it possible for more manufacturers to sell copies of the same home into more states, which helped with economies of scale.

In the 50 years since that law was passed, regulations governing them have been promulgated by HUD, and have been updated from time to time, but have been falling behind in recent years. Aging regulations have left people unable to get the homes they want, and has crimped the supply of such housing.

Updating The Code

“Manufactured homes are an affordable housing option for Americans across the country,” said HUD Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman. “This update of the HUD Code is long overdue and will help increase production while also ensuring modern designs to suit the needs of families.”

To make it easier for manufacturers to supply the housing people demand, several things have changed in the new code, and a letter has been sent to manufacturers allowing the changes to take effect immediately.

A big one is that new manufactured homes can have up to four dwellings units in one structure. This means that larger units can be made to supply “quad” apartment buildings. This makes it easier for more property owners to supply more housing more quickly in places where there are severe shortages. Other things, like open floor plans, truss designs, attic standards, peak cap and peak flip roofs, more modern materials, accessibility improvements, and such, all help make building more efficient and flexible, too.

Cleaner Technologies!

But, you didn’t come here to talk about affordable housing (even if that’s awesome!). You probably came here to read about how HUD is advancing clean technologies.

The biggest one is that the new standards require included appliances to be more efficient. Tankless water heaters are now allowed, but many other things required special permission to include in each make and model. Now, these technologies are allowed from the get go without any need to apply for anything special.

Another important change has been to improve the efficiency of building and installation processing. Requirements have been streamlined, especially for water system testing during installation. Appliances can also now have QR codes to make it easier to share instructions!

Final Thoughts

Ideally, there would be plentiful site-built homes everywhere and everyone would be able to find an affordable place to live. But we just don’t live in that world. In many places, the price of housing is obscene. In some places (<cough>California</cough>) the shortages are so bad that many people who could afford a home elsewhere end up living in RVs or even cars.

While many people think that a “trailer” is basically the same thing, it really isn’t. At least since the 70s, it’s a much better experience than a travel trailer and it’s much safer in most cases. By opening up the supply and clean technology options, this can not only help people, but keep the environmental impacts down.

Featured image by Clayton Homes.