A Simple Way to Make Housing Cheaper Is Languishing in the GOP House
The House of Representatives is sitting on bipartisan legislation sent to it by the Senate that could potentially help solve the housing affordability crisis. But Republican leadership is too busy trying to make it harder for some Americans to vote.
The housing bill, which passed 89–10, aims to make home building faster and cheaper, in the hope that increased supply will drive down the costs of renting and buying. Among the provisions is one that waives a seemingly obscure requirement: Manufactured homes—as the industry refers to what are commonly known as mobile homes—would no longer have to be built on a steel chassis, an outdated requirement left over from a time when these homes were truly meant to be mobile.
Manufactured homes are already built at about half the cost of homes constructed on-site, and waiving the requirement would make them even cheaper. It could also pave the way for more multifamily projects built from manufactured homes. But first, the bill has to pass the House, where it has stalled amid pressure from President Donald Trump to pass the SAVE Act, the GOP’s desperate bid to suppress voter turnout ahead of the fall midterm elections.
“No one gives a [expletive] about housing,” Trump allegedly told House Majority Leader Mike Johnson earlier this month. Ironically, better and cheaper access to manufactured homes could help Republican voters the most.
Almost all economists and policymakers agree that the country needs more homes, both single and multifamily, for home prices and rents to become more affordable. The lack of supply isn’t the only reason housing costs are increasingly out of reach for many low-income, working-class, and even middle-class families, but it is a big one.
“Manufactured homes” refers to those built according to a national standard set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They’re built in a factory, on a permanent steel chassis, with electrical and plumbing already installed. These are often the familiar single- and double-wide trailers that in the past might have been truly mobile, moving from one park to another as families looked for seasonal work or better opportunities. But today the vast majority of manufactured homes sold in the United States spend their lives on one plot of land. That became especially true after building standards were modified and updated in 1994, which made the homes safer, higher quality, and more expensive—and thus more appealing as a permanent housing option.
If the bipartisan housing bill becomes law, manufactured homes would no longer need to use a steel chassis for structure; instead, they could be transported on a removable steel chassis and attached to a foundation on-site, and the chassis could be reused for the next delivery. (The bill doesn’t require that the chassis be removed. Some families could choose to keep them if they wanted a truly mobile home.) Removing this requirement could save buyers anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000, a significant amount for homes that cost an average of $88,500 for single-wides and $152,900 for double-wides, according to Rocket Mortgage.
But the bigger potential impact might be that it makes it easier to build multilevel manufactured homes or homes with different designs. That could open up more possibilities to multifamily housing built off-site quickly, or more innovative, energy-efficient designs.
Laurie Goodman, of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, said removing the chassis requirement would also allow modular homes, which are now mostly built in factories but aren’t finished with plumbing and electrical work, to count as manufactured homes under the national standard. Modular homes, which come in many sizes and designs, currently are considered on-site builds, and can’t be completely finished before delivery, she said. Today they must meet state and local requirements, which can slow down their construction and limit their market reach. With the elimination of the steel chassis requirement, modular homes could fall under the same national standard as manufactured homes do. “I think it does fundamentally change the economics for modular construction, so I think it has a big impact there,” she said.
Homes built in factories can be built quickly, and the controlled environment allows for better quality control and access to year-round labor and better materials. (That’s especially important for rural areas, where manufactured homes are already relied on and where those resources may be lacking.) Making them cheaper and easier to build could inspire more competition, which could help them overcome their historically bad reputation for being cheaply made. If these homes become more appealing, and perhaps incorporate more higher-end materials, they could spread to new markets. That will especially be true if the loosened rules allow foreign competitors to enter the U.S. market.
“Manufactured homes definitely have an unduly negative reputation in the United States compared to Japan, where they are often considered premium products and have higher tech and can be turned around extraordinarily rapidly,” said Indivar Dutta-Gupta, an economist and founder and CEO of Blue Lotus Strategies. “So the performance and durability in light of the strict Japanese building and zoning requirements have also contributed to their highly positive reputation in Japan.”
The new factory-finished homes would also allow for more design potential, which means neighbors might be happier to see them on empty spots of land. “You can start building homes that don’t stand out for the reason that they appear to have been manufactured, but instead stand out because they look innovative, highly functional, including the energy efficiency, resistance to hurricanes, because they’re put down properly in the right foundation and are built with potentially even higher-quality materials,” Dutta-Gupta said. “Especially if there is a savings here from relaxing this requirement from the steel chassis, then that money could also be put back into higher-quality windows, exteriors, interiors, et cetera.”
Of course, none of this would solve all the problems with using manufactured homes to help increase supply. These homes have historically been difficult to finance. Some families choose personal property loans to buy them because they don’t have good enough credit for a home mortgage, but some states treat manufactured homes more like personal property for titling and tax purposes—like a car rather than real estate. That can mean families spend more than they need to on loan payments because they don’t have access to traditional 30-year mortgages, or struggle to keep up with maintenance because it’s harder to borrow to make repairs.
“Unfortunately for manufactured housing, sometimes it can be much more difficult to get financing, like home equity lines of credit and loans in order to, say, fix the roof, or a water heater, or something like that,” Rachel Siegel of the Pew Charitable Trusts said. Manufactured homes’ reputation for poor quality may stem in part from building standards, but “some of it is access to credit, when credit’s needed to be able to keep these homes up and ensure that they stay in good shape,” she said.
State and local zoning laws also pose obstacles, as do objections from neighbors to new or unfamiliar developments. But some states, like Kentucky, have passed laws requiring municipalities to treat manufactured homes like any other single-family home. Convincing people to accept them as such undoubtedly will take longer.
In the end, increased access to modular and manufactured homes might be the best solution for rural areas, where such homes are common already, and smaller, less dense cities where building a giant apartment tower wouldn’t make sense—in other words, places where Republicans are either in power or at least are politically competitive. Contrary to Trump, everyone in America—not just those living in expensive blue cities—gives a shit about housing. If the GOP doesn’t pass this bill, it may find that out the hard way.