To: The Editor

Your article on the Clinton-Lazio Debate on Friday night while interesting, was wrong! As has been the case during our fight against the manufactured housing legislation mentioned by Mrs. Clinton, which Rep. Lazio, chief engineer for the Manufactured Housing Institute has been "railroading" through Congress to the detriment of manufactured home owners in America, (over $500,000 in PAC contributions from the manufactured housing industry buys a lot of track) the media has failed to contact the manufactured home owner organizations ("other organizations"), the only true consumer organizations for manufactured home owners, before inferring that because of changes they support this legislation. We DO NOT and it was wrong for you to infer that we did. The text from your article is below:

"At another point, Mr. Lazio became infuriated as Mrs. Clinton suggested -Let me perhaps enlighten you on his record," she said to Mr. Pressman -that Mr. Lazio had taken campaign contributions in return for supporting a bill that weakened consumer protections on factory- made housing."

"While it is true, that Mr. Lazio accepted donations from housing industry executives in the late 1990's, the final bill that passed this year was modified to address concerns raised by consumer groups and the AARP, an alteration that Mrs. Clinton failed to mention when she attacked Mr. Lazio."

She failed to mention it because it wasn't true! Had your reporter checked with our organizations he would have known that. Mrs. Clinton was completely accurate in her comments about this legislation weakening the consumer protections for manufactured home owners and the attack on Lazio was well deserved. In fact, this bill eliminates half of the consumer protections offered in the current Act, which HUD refuses to enforce. All of these un-enforced laws are the ones that hold the manufacturer responsible for their product's performance to the purchaser of their product, leaving the consumer to fight with the manufacturer for a home free of factory defects. This of course is the way that the Manufactured Housing Industry wants to keep it since it is cheaper to fatigue the consumer into giving up than to fix the defects in their homes. This is only one of the real purposes of the Manufactured Housing legislation. This legislation DOES NOT fix the problems that consumers currently experience with this product; it only acknowledges that we have the problems and that they will go unresolved. This legislation in short legitimizes the fact that HUD interpreted with bias the original Act instead of carrying out its' Congressional intent and purpose. This is the reason for HUD's propensity to go along with this industry written legislation. Mrs. Clinton was also dead on about the reason that Lazio is peddling this anti-consumer-make more money for the manufacturer's at the expense of the safety of home owners legislation, for the manufactured housing industry (Campaign donations, and lots of them). Does the recent Firestone tire scandal "ring a bell"?

Our organizations recently provided every member of Congress with a brief comparison of the Federal Act governing tire safety and how it failed consumers in this country and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of many car owners, and the Federal Manufactured Housing Act Representative Lazio and others are in effect trying to repeal which will have an affect on manufactured home owners in this country even more devastating than the Firestone scandal had on car owners. We would like to share this information with your reporter and editors as we did recently with the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News and Orlando Sentinel.

In fact, in addition to our two organizations strongly opposing the passage of this legislation, Consumers Union, the American Civil Engineers, NGA, local and state code enforcement officials, state administrative agencies, and many others across America, have publicly come out to oppose this legislation. Representative Lazio and Company did not fix it! In fact, the Congressman ignored correspondence from consumer groups regarding this legislation, until we visited him Washington. Even then, after an obligatory meeting with his staff, he ignored the "cry of the people". We can only assume that "We the people" does not have the same meaning to Mr. Lazio as it does to us. We do however appreciate and applaud Mrs. Clinton for having the tenacity to bring this subject to the nation's attention.

Before you published this article which inferred that we supported this legislation, it would have been nice if you had verified this with our "national manufactured housing home owner organizations". To restate, you would have found that, that is not true! Manufactured housing consumer organizations in this country do not support this legislation.

In our opinion, the only "just" thing for the NY Times to do at this point is contact us, read what we provided Congress, including Representative Lazio, and then publish with post haste, a counter argument from our organizations, since you have by your failure to verify and check the facts before publishing your article, pitched this legislation for the manufactured housing industry and its supporters.

WE TRUST YOU WILL BE IN TOUCH!

Sincerely

John Taylor
Founder - The American Internet Society of Manufactured Home Owners
www.taismho.com

Deborah Chapman
Chair - The National Foundation of Manufactured Home Owners
www.manhousingfoundation.org