White House Aims to ‘Boost Supply and Affordability of Manufactured Homes’ with New Actions

Today, the Biden Administration announced a number of Actions to Boost Housing Supply and Lower Housing Costs, including several actions about manufactured housing.

First, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a Final Rule raising loan limits for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Title I manufactured home single-family loan program. Loan limits for a home-only loan would rise from $48,600 to $69,687, the limit for lot-only loans would rise from $16,200 to $23,226, the limit for property improvement loans would rise from $7,500 to $25,090, and the limit for combined home and lot loans would increase from $64,800 to $92,904. To support this, the White House also announced revisions to Ginnie Mae’s eligibility requirements for Issuers of its Manufactured Housing Mortgage-Backed Securities program.

Inflationary adjustments for FHA manufactured home loans were required under the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery (HERA) law and have been cited as one of the factors causing the Title I program to fall into disuse. MHI has advocated for action to revive the FHA Title I program for some time by updating FHA and Ginnie Mae rules and increasing the FHA loan limits. While this announcement does not include all of MHI’s recommendations, it is a positive step toward ensuring the FHA Title I program is available for purchasers of manufactured housing.

The White House also announced a HUD Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the availability of $225 million in Competitive Grants for certain manufactured home community (MHC) owners, pursuant to funding approved by Congress in 2023. Eligibility for the grants is limited to resident-controlled MHCs, cooperatives, non-profits, state governments, Indian Tribes, and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). MHI worked hard to secure authority for HUD to make for-profit MHC owners eligible for the grants when the program was passed in Congress. MHI is very disappointed that HUD elected not to use that authority to make for-profit owners eligible.

HUD grants would be used for “critical investments such as repairs, infrastructure improvements, upgrades to increase resilience, services like eviction prevention and housing counseling, and planning activities.” Of the total grants available, $25 million is set aside under a pilot for redevelopment of manufactured communities as replacement housing that is affordable.

To complement these grants, FHA also published a draft Mortgagee Letter reactivating the FHA Section 227(f) loan program for manufactured home communities, which the same entities eligible for the grants announced today could use in conjunction with the grants.

MHI will continue to combat the negative narrative repeated in this announcement about land-lease communities by sharing the facts about what owners and operators of land-lease communities are actually doing to preserve and improve these communities without government subsidy.