The National Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards Act.
Part I
Opening Statement
The Congressional Purpose
The Congress declares that the purposes of this title are to reduce the number of personal injuries and deaths and the amount of insurance costs and property damage resulting from mobile home accidents and to improve the quality and durability of mobile homes. Therefore, the Congress determines that it is necessary to establish Federal construction and safety standards for mobile homes and to authorize mobile home safety research and development.
Note: the term mobile home will be substituted for manufactured home for the purpose of presenting this in the way that it was originally discussed and written by lawmakers and to create an alignment with the testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs on July 23, 1973. The term manufactured home will not be changed when it is presented within the context of the Act or regulations and standards.
Title 42, United States Code - THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE, Chapter 70
This title, for under which the Act is codified, explains what this legislation is intended to accomplish. It loses its impact when it is referred to as just being a part of The Housing and Community Development Act. It makes it sound as if this Act is about nothing more than providing housing and this Act is not about putting people in cheap homes, it is about protecting their health and welfare. Cheap is defined as of little value or poor quality; virtually worthless. Affordable is defined as to manage to bear or to bear the cost of without serious loss or detriment. It would seem that we have headed down a path of saying that in order for a home to be affordable to low and fixed income Americans it must be cheap. The problem with this analogy is that if something cheap is causing serious loss or detriment to the homeowner, then it is not affordable. It is inappropriate to think of these terms as being the same or that in-order to have one you must have the other.
Reduce the number of personal injuries and deaths- Maybe Congress should have said, to "stop" the personal injuries and deaths resulting from mobile home accidents. Judging by HUD/FHA's blatant failure to carry out the Congressional intent of this legislation, it seems that HUD/FHA thought this meant the following. Reduce the number of personal injuries by one per year. Reduce the number of deaths by one per year. Reduce the amount of insurance cost by more than one cent per year. Reduce the amount of property damage by one cent per year. Improve the quality slightly. Improve the durability to last one day longer than what was being built before the Act. Anything that was less or greater depending on how it was directed was just an added bonus. Congress through this Act granted the Secretary of HUD broad authority to create whatever standards were necessary to carry out the congressional purpose and intent of Congress. Maybe if HUD/FHA did not understand the purpose or Congressional intent of this legislation they should have read the Congressional testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs on July 23, 1973. Lawmakers left no doubt as to what they wanted this Congressional Act to accomplish.
There is absolutely no way that what HUD/FHA has been doing for the last 24 years could have in any way achieved, was intended to achieve, or hoped to achieve Congress's intent or the Congressional purpose of this Act. Any Lawmaker at any level of government should consider what HUD/FHA, any other government agency with a conflicting agenda or the manufacturer's of this product present to them as what is affordable. This product is too often anything but affordable, and in many instances can be downright dangerous to its occupants. This is in part the result of laws that are intended to guarantee this product's safety by providing strict government standards, but most importantly, and as advertised, by providing government inspections and enforcement of those Federal standards. As a result, people may not, when it is appropriate, get out of harms way because they believe that their government through these laws, has insured that their home is safe. They do not realize that this belief is not warranted and the safety of this product is an illusion. Government, and especially the manufacturer's of this product who are responsible, just as any one else for following the laws of this country share responsibility for a person's injury or death when, they fail to get out of harm's way as a result of this belief.
We get small glimpses of this reality on a regular basis when we witness the total devastation of mobile homes and all too often, the death or injury of this product's occupants who sought shelter in the product they had thought was safe. Why should they have thought any differently? They are told about the government programs that make them safe through a variety of media outlets, including HUD/FHA's Web Site. In the early part of the last decade, we got a big reminder of this reality with Hurricane Andrew, for which once again HUD offered up the illusion that they had fixed things, when in reality they fixed nothing. This allowed the manufacturers a clean slate to continue to advertise to the public that this product is safe. Because of this special bond between the safety of this product and government created by the FMHCSS that permits this industry to advertise to the public the safety of this product, government has an enormous responsibility to the public. It is imperative that the government insures that this advertisement of safety of this product by the manufacturers is founded on facts that can be backed by evidence. To declare this product safe on hear say from the manufacturers being regulated and from an agency who is primarily interested in reducing their housing subsidy role for political purposes is completely unwarranted.
We should not be saying in-order to have affordable housing in this country that a certain percentage of injuries to persons and property and most especially a certain number of American's must sacrifice their lives towards this end. Even if this is being done unintentionally for what is being perceived as the noblest of reasons, it is still unacceptable and this is what the proposed amendment to the Act will be saying should it be passed into law. We shouldn't have to wait until the next Hurricane hits the U.S. Coast for Lawmakers to ask what went wrong so this report is going to tell you what went wrong and what is and will always be wrong until lawmakers stop giving credibility to these manufacturers and instead investigate these manufacturers and its often-dangerous product. This investigation should as well be directed at HUD/FHA for their complicity in conveying false or misleading information to lawmakers and to the public concerning the true performance of this housing, and this Federal program, and most especially for CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS for intentionally undermining Congress's Act of Law.
Lawmakers should not allow this industry to cloud their thought process by pushing their affordable housing hot button when deciding what is safe and affordable housing; if it is not safe, it is not affordable. Americans need affordable housing on which to build their futures, not housing that needs to be rebuilt direct from the factory. Had HUD/FHA carried out the Act that was passed into law in 1974, we would not have witnessed the same level of devastation of mobile homes, injury and death of the occupants of this product that resulted from Hurricane Andrew. We would suggest to members of Congress that they stop asking or listening to the makers of this product, HUD/FHA, or any government agency what is affordable housing and start asking the people what they think an affordable home should provide or is. It would be a safe bet given the choice between a microwave oven and knowing that there home is safely secured to the earth and will be at least durable enough to last as long as it takes to pay off the home loan, they would choose safety and durability over the microwave oven. It would also be a safe bet that they also wouldn't be willing to risk their or their families safety to <PROTECT> this supposedly affordable source of housing so that more families could assume this same risk to <PROTECT> the affordability of manufactured housing? Let's move on to the important aspect. Does the original Act contain the provisions to insure the first purchaser of a mobile home a safe and durable place to live? The answer is yes it did and this report will show this. Has HUD deliberately taken steps that would undermine this Act of Congress? The answer is yes, and this will be brought out in this report.
Since the majority of the controversy centers on the on-site assembly or completion of a home we should first clear up the illusion that the Act does not provide for this. The definition of installation was inappropriate to describe what must occur as defined in this Act and therefore was not used. It was discussed in length as to what it would take to make this product safe and durable for a family. They instead chose to incorporate all activities related to this part of the construction within the definition of "Mobile Home Construction" which will all be discussed in detail later in this report. Installation describes something that is ready for use and is simply fixed in place for use. The manufacturers of this product or others, including HUD/FHA could easily misconstrue this and apply this to this product. With HUD/FHA's complicity the manufacturers have, in fact used this term to pass their responsibility for their defective products onto others, which the lawmakers who drafted this Act went to great lengths to prevent. In hind site it might have been better to define it in this manner, "mobile home installation" - see "mobile home construction", this would have prevented this abuse of authority by HUD/FHA.
You must first understand what Congress was trying to accomplish and how they were trying to do it, to understand what has actually caused the Congressional purpose not to be carried out as envisioned by Congress when they passed the National Mobile Home Construction and Safety Standards Act into law. For this reason it will be necessary to take you through a series of steps. By the end of this report you should understand that it is not the "FMHCSS" Act that is broken, but the people who are responsible for following and enforcing the law that have caused this National program to fail its objective. What is the purpose of the program? It is to provide a place to the first purchasers that they can feel safe, and call home and this is too often not the case. Does this Act contain the provisions or language to carry out the congressional purpose of this Act, let's find out?
NOTE:
IT IS ABSOULETLY IMPERATIVE THAT A STATE REGULATOR UNDERSTAND THE ACT AND THE AUTHORITY GRANTED TO THE SECRETARY OF HUD BY THIS ACT BEFORE THEY CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT THEIR AUTHORITY IS OR CAN BE IN THIS NATIONAL PROGRAM IF THE CHOOSE.