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SOMETIMES A DEBATE ABOUT MANUFACTURED HOMES TAKES UNUSUAL TWISTS and turns, especially when encountering deep-seated perceptions and misinterpretations.

While assisting a town update and revise its restrictive and antiquated mobile homes code, an evidently prominent individual opposed the proposed recognition of modular structures as part of the town’s housing stock. Our effort sought to expand the official role of those homes into affordable housing; he wanted to remove any ability to place them anywhere outside a manufactured home community.

He argued the insertion of affordable modular and manufactured homes into current neighborhoods would bring transients and lower income households causing reductions in business and town revenue. He opined existing home values would suffer inasmuch as modular and manufactured homes rapidly deteriorate and depreciate in value, then he buttressed such slanted allegations with a prediction of slums and abandoned homes. He said the code change would make a mockery of responsible town growth resulting in people relocating, thereby making folly of the expense to preserve a few historic homes by moving them from the path of development into residential neighborhoods since there would be nobody to buy them. Simply stated, his fire and brimstone imagery had the town sliding into a financial abyss if the new code was adopted.

One town representative asked the fellow if he was aware of the need for affordable housing (he said the need was exaggerated). Our team asked if he knew the difference between modular and manufactured homes (he said he knew they were the same from reading the town code).

We then asked him if he recalled the town code currently defined a modular and manufactured home as a structure that is built in one location but installed in another. He emphatically said yes and he wanted the code to keep those structures out of residential neighborhoods.

A look around the room suggested his comments might be resonating with some members of the public, which seemed problematic since the town appeared surprised and unprepared to appropriately respond to his orchestration of scare tactics. Several folks who supported the code revision donned expressions of concern, likely thinking the proposal to produce suitable affordable housing was in jeopardy before leaving the starting gate.

We then asked one more question: Why did not the gentleman object when modular/ manufactured homes were recently installed in the residential neighborhoods he mentioned? He stared … then said there were no such installations, that the code wouldn’t allow it.

We countered: Since the code says a structure built in one location but installed in another is a manufactured home, since the historic homes being preserved had been built in one location but were moved to another, and despite the special code exemptions that permitted them to be moved, under the code that was being revised those historic homes are modular/ manufactured homes by definition and they had been situated in residential neighborhoods as the gentleman had stated.

The point was made.

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Tags: license, management tips, manufactured home, manufactured housing, mobile home, property management, property manager, property owner

This entry was posted on June 8, 2014 at 18:00 and is filed under Manufactured Homes, Mobile Homes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.