Mark Weiss, J.D., President and CEO of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) provided exclusive questions and answers to MHProNews

WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES, May 2, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Against the backdrop of the seemingly growing affordable housing crisis, the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform recently provided a copy of their formal comments to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on the topic of the developing Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. According to Mark Weiss, J.D., President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Washington, D.C. based MHARR, HUD’s role in manufactured housing is broader than many may imagine it to be. “Look,” said Weiss, “HUD Code manufactured housing is regulated by HUD itself. And HUD’s authority over – and responsibility for – the manufactured housing industry is quite broad.”

In a new and exclusive question and answer interview with MHProNews, Weiss said the following.

“That’s why HUD’s regulations under the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974 did – and still do – refer to HUD’s “superintendence” of the industry. That language was not an accident. It refers to HUD’s statutory obligation to advance the availability and accessibility of affordable HUD Code manufactured housing for all Americans as a necessary and essential affordable housing resource. And, just in case there was any doubt, when Congress updated the law in 2000, it explicitly emphasized that HUD’s mission with respect to manufactured housing involves more than mere “structural” regulation. Thus, in the “Purposes” section of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000, Congress stated that one of the key purposes of the law (and hence, of HUD’s regulation of manufactured housing), was “to facilitate the availability of affordable manufactured homes and to increase homeownership for all Americans.”

Again, the word “facilitate” was not an accident. It was chosen to reflect an affirmative statutory obligation, on the part of HUD, to use all of the powers and authorities available to it, to advance the availability and utilization of HUD Code manufactured homes across all areas of the United States, among all groups and populations, and among all income levels.”

Weiss is an attorney who was reportedly involved in the drafting of some of the language that went into the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act (MHIA) of 2000, which MHARR sometimes refers to as the 2000 reform law or the “2000 Act.” Restated, Weiss is a legal expert on the law, besides now being the president and CEO of MHARR.

Weiss told MHProNews the following. “Congress extended the scope of federal preemption not just to state and local building standards, but to all state or local “requirements” affecting manufactured housing. Indeed, key sponsors and proponents of the 2000 law, made the connection between HUD’s expanded role and authority, and made that connection unmistakably clear in a 2003 letter to HUD, where they wrote, “the 2000 Act expressly provides, for the first time,” that federal preemption “be ‘broadly and liberally construed’ to ensure that local ‘requirements’ do not affect ‘federal superintendence of the manufactured housing industry.’” “These combined changes have given HUD the legal authority to preempt local requirements or restrictions which discriminate against the siting of manufactured homes….”

One of MHARR’s key issues as a production-focused national trade organization is to get the MHIA’s so-called “enhanced preemption” of manufactured housing properly implemented and fully enforced. MHARR’s leaders believe the fastest and most cost-effective way to solve the affordable housing crisis could be for HUD to fully implement “enhanced federal preemption” of HUD Code manufactured homes.

In a separate communication, MHARR’s Weiss told MHProNews that some of the misunderstanding about enhanced preemption is caused by what the attorney called dicta. Dicta is short for the Latin phrase obiter dictum, meaning "something said in passing," per Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII). Weiss also pointed out that some of the court rulings some believe sheds light on the MHIA actual don’t reference the 2000 reform law, so they don’t apply.

The full Q&A and related MHProNews analysis and commentary by MHARR's Weiss is found at this link here.

MHARR's comments letter is found on their website at this link here.

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Exclusive Video interview with William "Bill" Matchneer, JD, Prior Program Director, HUD Code Manufactured Housing, also previously with CFPB.