As implemented by the Secretary, the MHCSS Act serves as regulatory protection racket for manufacturers, whom are producing products that too often fail to meet a reasonable standard for the design, construction, and performance of such dwellings. In the absence of any creditable evidence to substantiate that, such products meet merchantability criteria, and with the Secretary’s complicity, the manufacturers nonetheless certify and market their products as meeting such criteria or the MHCSS. The Secretary’s regulatory program is designed implicitly to circumvent or undermine the intent of the law, also referred to as acting in fraud of the law.

The MHI Act of 2000, despite erroneous or unqualified claims to the contrary, will not correct the current and serious deficiencies in the Secretary’s regulatory system. The language in the MHI Act of 2000, which was drafted by the industry, makes it clear that the industry was highly successful in obtaining from Congress, legislation that not only legitimizes the Secretary’s current regulations, but also provides for a further degradation of the Secretary’s largely inept regulatory system. Complete ineptness is sought, and proposals towards this end have already been put forth by the industry dominated Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee, as established by the MHI Act of 2000. As well, the MHI Act of 2000 provides for lowering the MHCSS until they comply with the industry’s substandard design and construction practices, hence, such practices will no longer appear on the surface to be substandard. Hence, the MHCSS will become, and then remain a reflection of the industry’s design and construction practices, regardless of how many consumers are injured or killed.

The Secretary has clearly rendered inspection and enforcement useless as a tool for ensuring that the manufacturers, or any agents thereof, do not violate the rights of the purchasers of manufactured homes. The Secretary clearly disavows any post sale responsibility for nonconforming manufactured homes that have been sold to members of the public.

The National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards (NCSBCS), on July 23, 1973, entered the following into the public record for the MHCSS Act.

The means were provided in the MHCSS Act of 1974; however, the Secretary, apparently to appease his own partialities and corruptions, and those who seek ways of getting by without complying, rendered such deterrents useless by not implementing such, or by significantly weakening those he did, to the point of being largely useless. The Secretary’s dereliction of duty or violation of the public trust has led to the reversal of this overt statutory objective – the many sincere have been forced to design and construct substandard products in order to compete with those, the Secretary has provided with the means of getting by without complying.

This environment, as created by the Secretary’s procedural and enforcement regulations, would unquestionably subdue competition in the manufactured housing market, and thereby, and effectively, kill any improvement in the area of product durability, quality, and safety (performance). With the true characteristics of these aspects concealed behind the Secretary’s regulatory wall, the manufacturers need only concern themselves with bells and whistles, such as aesthetics and amenities – marketing gimmicks –, which the industry has made notable improvements in this area. Then pretty sales product, so the industry has a vested interest in improving aesthetics and amenities.

When taken into consideration with the high level of cooperation that is evident among manufactured housing manufacturers through their National and State associations, in controlling the regulatory and enforcement process, it is more than probable that manufacturers are using a federal regulatory program as a means of subverting or quashing competition from without. This raises the serious question of whether the Secretary’s regulatory program is being used to conceal violations of United States Anti-trust Law (42 USCA §5417). Perhaps this is the reason why the Secretary did not implement in his regulations, the Anti-Trust clause of the MHCSS Act.

Preemptive Federal standards and regulations largely absent enforcement is nothing short of utopia for the manufacturers. It is safe to say that the 93^rd Congress did not foresee that the agency they charged with assuring that there were no escapes, would purposely contrive a system of regulation absent doors, fences, and guards. The Secretary has purposely undermined the primary means under the MHCSS Act for protecting the purchasers of manufactured homes.

For these reasons, it would be first recommended that the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards Act be repealed by Congress – it simply does not serve legitimate governmental interests as implemented and carried out by the Secretary of Housing. This action would be consistent with the current trend of seeking ways, allegedly to eliminate government interference in the private market place.

If this were the course chosen, then the question would be; would the States be any better or worse at regulating the safety and construction of manufactured homes, and what about cost increases to the public.

With the exception of bells and whistles (appearance and amenities similar to site built housing), there is no evidence from outside of the regulated industry and their regulator, both with a vested interest in misrepresenting the facts to shine a favorable light on their performance or compliance with the law. There is simply no evidence that could be legitimately deemed as unbiased or largely unbiased that indicates that the durability, quality, and safety of mobile/manufactured homes (Pub. L. 96-399 §308(c)(4)) have improved by any tangible measure, since the Federal government preempted the States’ right, to regulate the design and construction of this merchandise. It is apparent that what few improvements have been made in this area have been driven by significant natural disasters that have garnered extensive media coverage, which are of course outside of the control of both the industry and government.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the States would stand as an obstacle to out of State produced affordable factory built housing, which it believed met a reasonable standard for the design, construction, and performance of such a dwelling [1], which met the needs of the public, including the need for quality, durability, and safety. As the Supreme Court explained, "[t]he existence of major in state interests adversely affected ... is a powerful safeguard against legislative abuse." Id. at 728 n. 17

Based on the industry and the Secretary’s own marketing propaganda, the MHCSS are largely equivalent to other major building codes for site built housing, meaning that designing and constructing to other building codes should have no more than a slight or insignificant impact, if any, on the design and construction costs of such products. This conclusion is however based on the assumption of compliance with all applicable standards, regardless of which building code is applied to the design and construction of such manufactured homes (emphasis added).

The industry has effectively proven by its voluminous use of the Secretary’s Alternative Construction Process that its manufacturing processes are flexible enough to accommodate the design and construct manufactured homes to ever-changing building code, and still produce a product that cost significantly less than site built dwellings. This is however once again based on the assumption of compliance with all applicable construction and safety standards. It is also true that the manufacturers have dominated the standards setting committees for manufactured housing, including the consensus committee established pursuant to the MHI Act of 2000, for the development and promulgation of building codes for their product. With this, to say that the manufacturers were not fairly represented, or would be unable to comply with other building codes without significant cost increases, or that without preemptive Federal standards their product cost to the public would significantly increase, would be without merit. There own claims/activities run contrary to such claims.

Short of complete repeal, and given the above facts, the MHCSS Act should be limited to the promulgation of minimum building standards for manufactured homes, which States and/or local building code jurisdictions could adopt in whole, in part, or revise for the design and construction of manufactured homes in a given geographical region of said State. Such Standards could be mandated as minimum property standards where the loan for the purchase of such a home, could be federally backed, much the same as is now done for site built housing. This acceptable means of imposing minimum property standards would force States by way of their own affordable housing initiatives for low-income families, where federal dollars may possibly be involved now, or in the future, to at a minimum, adopt standards for manufactured homes that were equivalent to the minimum Federal Standards.

The costs of promulgating such Federal minimum standards could be funded under the same funding scheme utilized in the MHCSS Act of 1974, and not the MHI Act of 2000, which politicizes label fees. The means provided under the original legislation would provide sufficient funding for the research and development costs associated with promulgating minimum building and safety standards.

With this said, the Federal Courts for all realistic purposes represent the only real hope for the purchasers of manufactured homes. The Secretary of Housing, in complicity with the manufacturers, has conspired to deny to the purchasers of msanufactured homes (void of constitutional due process) their rights under the MHCSS Act. The purchasers of manufactured homes simply do not have the financial resources in today’s political environment to fund the high cost of obtaining a political solution from Congress. This reality is evidenced by Congress’s passage of legislation in the year 2000 (the MHI Act of 2000), which had the primary purpose of creating the appearance of legitimacy, for what by its nature was, and still is a criminal conspiracy on a national scale to defraud the purchasers of manufactured homes.

See Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456, 473, 101 S.Ct. 715, 728, 66 L.Ed.2d 659 (1981), Id. at 728 n. 17, Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Md., 437 U.S. 117, 127-28, 98 S.Ct. 2207, 2215, 57 L.Ed.2d 91( 1978)