Part-2

A couple of points need to be covered before continuing the discussion on the amendment to the Manufactured Housing Act. It is extremely important that you understand the process of interpretation, and how the industry and government apply the meaning of "affordability" to this product.

First, some basic information into how an Act of Congress is interpreted to create the regulatory structure (regulations). Acts of Congress are interpreted using several different sources. The primary objective of the interpretation is to carry out the Congressional intent or purpose of the Act. Once it is fully understood what the Congress intended, you can then interpret the text of the Act in a manner that carries out the Congressional Purpose(s) of the Act.

The Congressional purpose and the Congressional testimony are by far the two most important parts for interpreting the provisions of the Act. The objective is to carry out the Congressional purpose of the Act, and it is legally permissible to stray from the strict or literal meaning of the words to carry out the Congressional purpose. What is lacking in the case of this amendment is Congressional Testimony, or Congressional debate to guide the Acts interpretation. Without Congressional debate, or testimony to gain insight into what Congress wanted, this leaves only the written Congressional purpose to guide the interpretation of the Act.

Eliminating the original purpose of the Act was the single most devastating aspect of the amendment and the new purpose alters the meaning of the entire Act. Even in case where the provisions of the original Act are the same, they now must be re-interpreted in a manner that carries out the new Congressional purpose of the Act. For example, in the previous part we discussed a change to the Act that eliminated performance as a requirement of the Federal Standards. This change was placed in the enumerated Congressional purposes of the Act, meaning that wherever performance is required in the provisions, it means only to the extent that Congress intended, which as discussed in "Part-1", there will be no requirement in the standards for this product to perform. The new purpose of the Manufactured Housing Act will be discussed in Part-3 and Part-4 of this series.

Second, the term "affordable" is not defined anywhere in this Act, nor do the provisions provide any insight into its use, and again, there is no Congressional debate, or testimony to help determine it use. Does affordable apply only to the initial cost of the product, or does it also include the cost of upkeep, utilities, insurance, lot rental, etc? It is evident from the government, and industry actions concerning this product's regulation that the term "affordable" is referencing only initial cost of the home. To provide some insight into how the government and industry misconstrued this term to suite their needs, we will give you an example of a Texas rule, which was created under the TX State Act for manufactured housing, which also left the term "affordable" undefined. It should be noted that the same person that drafted the TX law for manufactured housing, and pushed through what will be discussed next, was also heavily involved in drafting the amendment to the Federal manufactured housing Act.

The short version of the TX rule is; the industry was having a difficult time installing soil anchors to there full depth in some soils, which they decided to term "difficult soils", which is very ambiguous. The State of Texas decided to test rock anchors, which are only rated for use in solid rock, in these "difficult soils". The testing proved that rock anchors in these difficult soils provided only a small percentage (app. 700 pounds) of resistance to horizontal movement that was required by the federal standards (3150 lbs). As a result of this study, the TX Department of Manufactured Housing refused to publish such a rule, which would allow the use of rock anchors in these "difficult soils". After the industry exerted its political influence, the State published a rule that stated that "affordable anchoring" is very important to Texas citizens. The rule goes on to state that the industry will install double the number of rock anchors for the required number of soil auger anchors. If you do the math, it is should be apparent that at even double the number, this still does not add up to even half of the resistance required by the federal standards. Because consumer advocates would have never agreed to such an absurd rule, the TX Department of Manufactured Housing issued this rule an emergency order, thereby denying TX citizens the right to comment before it was published. How many out there would prefer anchoring that worked, versus cheap anchoring that will most likely not work when needed. While it was claimed that this was for the benefit of TX citizens, this rule was not about the needs of TX citizens, it was about appeasing the industry's desire to keep the gap between the cost of their product, and their competition as wide as possible.

Now that interpretation and affordability has been discussed, it should be easier to follow the discussion in the upcoming parts of the series.