manufacturedhomelivingnews.com Manufactured Home Living News
Americans overwhelmingly want a place that they can call “home.” The adage, “Home is where the heart is,” captures part of that deeply felt desire.
The saying, “a man’s home is his castle” may sound dated to some, but is a wonderful reminder that home ownership represents security, pride, and independence.
The Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) has frankly mishandled several matters in recent years, which are only mentioned to spotlight something they did that could be useful, had it been properly applied. MHI commissioned a survey by YouGov about manufactured home owners and Thanksgiving. The top line takeaway is simple. The owners of pre-HUD Code mobile homes, and post HUD Code manufactured homes celebrate thanksgiving much the same as any other Americans do. Quoting from that MHI/YouGov Survey in 2016:
“What we found is that when family and friends gather at home for the American holiday experience, those who live in manufactured housing have the same joys, concerns and memory-making as those who live in site-built homes, apartments and condominiums.”
Of course they do. Millions who live in a modern manufactured home first owned and lived in conventional ‘site built’ housing. Americans of all economic backgrounds, from those of very modest means, to the middle class, millionaires, and even a few billionaires own a manufactured home.
On the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) website, there are two videos near the top right of their home page. Those two videos are posted, above and below.
HUD Secretary Carson praised in Senate testimony in the spring of 2018 what he called the “amazing” evolution of the manufactured homes from the mobile homes of the past. That’s captured in the video below. In it U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (NC-R) says with fondness that he grew up in a mobile home.
The senator explained what for him was a wonderful experience, growing up in a pre-HUD Code mobile home, in what in those days was more properly called a ‘mobile home park.’
Today, there are newer land lease manufactured home communities from Michigan to Florida, to Texas or California and in virtually every state save Hawaii. They look and live much like conventional housing, only for a far lower cost.
The photo below is from a manufactured home community located in Glenview, IL. Sunset Village is surrounded by housing that starts around $300,000 for a condo flat, and can go well over $500,000 for conventional ‘site built’ single family housing nearby.
At the time this photo below was taken, a new single-level manufactured home about the same size as a condo was under $100,000, plus the site fees.
To remind readers that affordable housing is bipartisan, or perhaps more properly, non-partisan, the video below is a clip from the prior HUD Secretary, Julian Castro. Castro is a Democrat, while HUD Secretary Carson is a Republican. Both HUD secretaries praised manufactured homes.
We all want a place to call home, and we should celebrate that home with pride. On this Thanksgiving day, let’s bow our heads, and thank God for all of our blessings, as those first pilgrims did.
Then let’s give thanks for the millions who own and live in the most affordable, quality permanent home living found in America today. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
“We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (News, analysis, and commentary.
(Third-party images and content are provided under fair use guidelines.)
See Related Reports, further below.
