manufacturedhomelivingnews.com Manufactured Home Living News
Washington DC – Chicago IL. On November 11, 2015, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro addressed the Manufactured Housing Institute’s (MHI) NCC membership via video, praising them for their work in addressing America’s affordable housing crisis with these words:
“Hello everyone! I’m HUD Secretary Julian Castro. I’d like to thank the National Communities Council for the opportunity to address your 2015 Fall Leadership Forum.
HUD is proud to partner with the NCC to support the dreams of American families.
A good home is a powerful platform to spark progress in people’s lives. It connects families to the communities that surround them, and it lays the foundation for their health, their happiness and their future success.
That’s why we call HUD, “The Department of Opportunity.” And that’s the importance of the work we do together.
The United States faces an affordable housing crisis. And manufactured homes served as a vital solution for folks of modest means; particularly in rural areas.
I’d like to thank each and every one of you for giving more families access to quality, safe and affordable housing.
Together, we can inspire new ideas that will help improve the lives of hard working Americans, and transform communities throughout our nation.
Thank you again, and have a wonderful forum.”
– Julian Castro, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (Editor’s Note: The above is an unofficial transcript by MHLivingNews, of the video shown above).
For those not familiar with modern manufactured homes, words like “good, safe and quality” may sound like a contradiction from what they think they know about ‘mobile homes.’ But HUD is also the agency that administers the federal manufactured housing safety and construction standards.
So Secretary Castro would have full access to the kind of information found in the videos and reports linked below that prove that today’s manufactured homes are not the trailers and mobile homes of the past.
Quality, Appeal and Value
Bill Matchneer – previous Administrator for the federal HUD Code manufactured housing program, explains in an exclusive video interview why modern manufactured homes are as good as conventional housing, for about half the price.
Safer and More Durable
Keeping the Home Fires from Burning: Fire Safety and the Modern Manufactured Home
Weathering the Storms: How Manufactured Homes Can Do It Better
In the light of these facts, Secretary Castro’s encouragement to all manufactured housing professionals – as well as those hundreds he initially addressed at the MHI NCC Fall Leadership Forum via this video – to serve the affordble housing needs of Americans is well merited.
One point that Secretary Castro didn’t cover in his brief address is the fact that the upper middle class and millionaires are also turning to manufactured homes in greater numbers.
The Future of HUD and Manufactured Housing
Our proposal, and links to proposals by MHARR and MHI, to transform the HUD Program, as a result of the invitation from House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling, is found at this link. ##
