It is a troubling story that has a better-than-expected ending. But former nurse Laurie Myers had to appear in Knoxville, TN “General Sessions Court on Tuesday, Sept. 14,” where she was told to expect “to be officially evicted from Amherst Ridge.” Amherst Ridge is a land-lease manufactured home community that per an informed local source was once owned by Clayton …

Words may sound good but are at times proven to be devoid of meaningfully matching action. A new HUD PD&R report effectively confirmed and amplified several findings in an August 2021 research report and analysis on MHLivingNews entitled “Why So Few Affordable U.S. Homes? Federal & Other Research – Monopolies, Moats, Manufactured Housing – Impacts Renters, Current Manufactured Homeowners, Conventional …

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is the primary regulatory of U.S. stock markets, announced a legal enforcement action against Cavco Industries over conduct involving former Cavco Chairman and CEO, Joseph Stegmayer, Daniel Urness, and the company. Cavco issued the following press release on 9.3.2021 which states their response to the complaint. The SEC Complaint – i.e. legal pleadings …

Properly understood, existing federal laws are routinely and broadly speaking on the side of residents and white hat independents who believe they are being victimized by “predatory” firms operating in the manufactured housing industry.  With that statement in mind, Berkshire Hathaway backed Apple’s recently announced settlement of $100 million dollars in a class action antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple by …

“The art of [good] economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” – Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson. What is true for honest individuals should also be true for a …

When someone wants to understand the lack of affordable housing in the U.S., by reading published studies from a range of sources, a few common facts emerge. The underlying causes of the affordable housing crisis observed by experts and partisans are often similar regardless of which of the two major political parties they may favor. For example, Zoning is a …

Why is there so little competition in the manufactured home lending market? While there are several interlocking factors, one of the simplest points to make is that the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not doing the robust lending in the manufactured home market as they are doing for conventional housing. What follows is a step-by-step explanation based …

The infographic below is the most comprehensive snapshot about modern manufactured homes and its evolution from trailer houses, into mobile homes, into manufactured homes found online today. The infographic image provides fact- and evidence-based snapshot with sources cited of manufactured housing on 6.23.2021. That image can be viewed in a larger size in many browsers, see the instructions below the …

The American Dream has to various degrees always included the ideal of home ownership. As conventional housing prices have long been out of reach for millions with more modest earnings and/or a smaller housing budget, the evolution from 1930s-1940s era trailer houses into larger mobile homes occurred during the 1950s into the early 1970s. While many of those post-trailer house …

Prejudice and ignorance are not bliss. Bias against affordable housing and/or manufactured homes are costly to most of society, save a few well-connected elites. In fairness, over a decade before the self-described “atheist” dark lord of Omaha entered the manufactured home industry, Americans were understandably complaining about a lack of affordable housing. Part of the problem was and remains NIMBY …

“The more things change the more they stay the same.” That’s the common translation of what French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849 – “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” per Wikipedia and Quora. Over 66 years ago, in 1954, a well-known leader at the time named Walter Reuther made the call for building 2 million new …

A documentary entitled “Walmart – The High Cost of Low Prices” presaged several of those observations by Kenton in the video posted below. But what does that have to do with affordable housing and manufactured homes? Follow along and, step-by-step, you may see how the dots connect. The stories in the video are gut-wrenching and tug at the heartstrings. Sometimes …

Some decades ago, the first two manufactured home communities that I lived in where quite basic. There were the streets, homesites, utilities, and the manufactured homes themselves. For first-time readers, it may be useful for me to mention that I’ve owned and lived in several of the various types of housing available in America. There were conventional ‘site-built’ houses, apartments, …

Facts matter. The true meaning of words matters too. The relationship between cause-and-effect matters. As MHLivingNews and our MHProNews sister site has each previously reported, Peter Buffett, Warren Buffett’s own son, has exposed significant problems with the so-called “philanthro-feudalism” industry. Prior to Peter’s revelations, the award winning documentary Poverty Inc, outlined numbers of problems tied to so-called charity or poverty …

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) are among the nonprofits, media, and public officials who have called RHP Properties and other “consolidators” of land-lease manufactured home communities “predatory.” While such comments were once more commonly reserved to Democratic lawmakers, Republican officials have, in recent years, also become concerned that what is occurring in what for decades was “affordable housing” is …