WASHINGTON, D.C. — As a coalition of 27 national and local affordable housing organizations, we urge Congress to restore the bipartisan PRICE Act to any final housing package following its exclusion from the House Financial Services Committee’s version of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act.
We appreciate the House Financial Services Committee’s broader efforts to address the nation’s housing affordability crisis and its recognition that manufactured housing must be part of the solution. But without PRICE, the bill fails to adequately address the needs of the millions of American homeowners already living in manufactured housing and manufactured home communities. This is why the full Senate and the Trump administration have endorsed PRICE’s inclusion in what may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to update our federal housing laws.
Manufactured housing is home to approximately 22 million Americans, including working families, seniors, and veterans, and accounts for roughly 15% of occupied housing in rural America. Manufactured homes also represent the nation’s largest source of naturally occurring affordable homeownership. Yet homeowners in manufactured housing communities are routinely excluded from the public investments and resources available to neighboring site-built neighborhoods. Without reinvestment in their communities, many are at risk of losing their homes to community closure or redevelopment.
The PRICE Act was designed to help manufactured housing communities preserve affordability, address critical infrastructure needs, create new homeownership opportunities, and remain viable long-term.
Congress previously appropriated funding for PRICE, establishing HUD’s first-ever dedicated investment in manufactured housing and manufactured housing communities to benefit low-income families. The program also has the potential to generate significant economic activity through infrastructure upgrades, home rehabilitation, new home placements, and construction activity in communities across rural, suburban, tribal, and urban America.
We urge Congress to include the PRICE Act in the final bill and fully harness the enormous potential of manufactured housing as part of the nation’s affordable housing solution. Few federal investments have the potential to deliver such outsized impact for low-income homeowners, rural communities, housing preservation, infrastructure revitalization, and affordable homeownership at such a modest cost.
Sincerely,
- ROC USA
- California Center for Cooperative Development
- CASA of Oregon
- Center for Civil Justice
- Community Solutions
- CoNorth
- Cooperative Development Institute
- Cooperative Development Institute Water Infrastructure Support Program
- Elevation Community Land Trust
- Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville
- Keweenaw Bay Indian Community
- LEAP Housing
- Low Income Investment Fund
- Manufactured Home Owners Association of New Jersey
- MHP (Minnesota Housing Partnership)
- National Consumer Law Center (on behalf of its low-income clients)
- National Housing Conference
- National Manufactured Home Owners Association (NMHOA)
- New Hampshire Community Loan Fund
- New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty
- Next Step Network
- North Carolina Justice Center
- Northwest Cooperative Development Center
- Opportunity Finance Network
- Thistle Community Housing
- UnidosUS
- Virginia Poverty Law Center
About ROC USA
ROC USA is a national nonprofit social enterprise working to make resident ownership viable and successful nationwide so that homeowners in manufactured housing communities can secure stable, affordable communities and build long-term wealth and opportunity. Learn more at rocusa.org.
