Opinion: Congress, don’t mock homeownership month: Fix or flush 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act

Pini Dunner’s “The Blackest of Lies” opened with: “Benjamin Franklin declared that ‘half the truth is often a great lie.’ Mark Twain put it slightly differently: ‘A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.’ And this, from Tennyson: ‘The lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.'”

What Dunner is describing is known as paltering, an active use of selective, factually truthful statements to mislead someone or create a false impression. There is an evidence-based argument that, without needed amendments, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is just the latest bipartisan deception, which strong-willed advocates, Congress and/or the White House should demand be fixed or flushed.

This pushback survey illustrates the following:

Per the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.

• “A Bipartisan Housing Fiasco,” “The new House legislation will raise costs and give more power to regulators.” “Housing shortages are the result of restrictive state and local zoning and permitting” and “…eager to claim a victory on affordability, even if it’s likely to be pyrrhic.”

Per the WNG.org.

• Heritage economist E.J. Antoni, whose Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) nomination was pulled by the White House, said: “Unfortunately, though, a lot of them [aspects of the ROAD bill] are just more demand subsidies, and they’re more government programs, which aren’t actually going to fix the fundamental mismatch between supply and demand that we face today.”
• “Norbert Michel, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, told WORLD”…“Whatever outcome current government policy and previous government policies have wrought, that’s where we are now. And you really shouldn’t expect anything radically different from this [housing] bill,” Michel said. “It really doesn’t radically change what we’ve been doing for the past several decades.”
• “Francis Torres, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s housing and infrastructure projects…” said: “I wouldn’t say that, as a renter, I would expect my rent to go down the month after this bill passes just because of this bill. I think in the long run, me and other people who rent would benefit from a more abundant rental housing market—would benefit from housing being easier and faster to build in the places where there’s most access to jobs and opportunities.”

AEI Housing Center’s Edward Pinto and Tobias Peter asserted the ROAD bill’s leftward subsidy-minded lurch is a “pork-filled potpourri,” a “ROAD to less housing” and “Elizabeth Warren’s Housing Coup: The GOP Senate Is About to Pass a Bill That Is Great for Progressives.”

Antoni argued that more migrant deportations can help the housing crisis, because it opens up existing housing. Roughly three million people have been deported or self-deported. But at that pace, a housing crisis estimated at some five to eight-plus million units isn’t enough.

Construction is needed near where demand is and requires federal preemption.

HousingWire:

• “Recall HUD’s Pamela Blumenthal and Regina Gray said: “Without significant new supply, cost burdens are likely to increase as current home prices reach all-time highs…” and “The regulatory environment — federal, state, and local — that contributes to the extensive mismatch between supply and need has worsened over time. Federally sponsored commissions, task forces, and councils under both Democratic and Republican administrations have examined the effects of land use regulations on affordable housing for more than 50 years.”
• Perverse incentives and the fingerprints of the Iron Triangle or AmeRegCorp are in evidence.”

For six months, an evidence-backed op-ed series via HousingWire made the argument, advanced by cited sources including MHARR, that without amendments to preempt zoning barriers plus affordable lending for more “inherently affordable manufactured homes” the ROAD bill won’t work.

Stating the obvious can be clarifying.

• The National Association of Realtors (NAR) doesn’t build houses.
• The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) for years said that without subsidies, conventional building/development is “untenable.”
• Nearly 75% of Americans can’t afford a new site-built house.

Subsidies are a leftist ‘solution.’ Applying economic insights from Thomas Sowell reminds us that subsidies shift and mask costs without fixing problems. “TANSTAAFL” is short for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” because someone must always pay.

Both NAR and NAHB have provided research documenting how modern manufactured homes defy decades of outdated mockery as “trailers” or “mobile homes.” HUD and NAR documented that manufactured homes appreciate at similar or sometimes greater rates than conventional housing.

Per Catherine Koh/NAHB.

“The gap widens among homeowners, with manufactured homeowners earning a median of $41,500 versus $93,000 for single-family homeowners.

…The average cost per square foot for a new manufactured home in 2023 was $86.62, compared to $165.94 for a site-built home (excluding land costs)…”

The Biblical wisdom and ancient principle of ‘separating the wheat from the chaff’ must be applied to all sources, including purportedly notorious Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) member Frank Rolfe. “So don’t tell me ‘we can’t solve affordable housing‘ because the correct statement is ‘we don’t want to solve affordable housing.’ ‘American incomes cannot support $400,000 homes and $2,000 apartment rents. Not even close. How did we end up in such a mess?’ ‘But there’s nothing more annoying than watching state and federal bureaucrats and non-profits that come up with ideas that don’t have a prayer of working and just throw good money after bad…news articles are a cornucopia of such idiocy. If you want to solve U.S. affordable housing you would have to eliminate all the barriers…'”

Per HousingWire: “Manufactured housing is the homeownership solve we keep ignoring” and “Comparing RV and manufactured housing data sheds critical light on U.S. affordable housing crisis.”

National Homeownership Month is typically celebrated by NAR and NAHB to promote their members’ products and services. Understandable. So, why has MHI for years failed to similarly promote it, as MHProNews repeatedly documented?

Why have smaller businesses and professionals within the MHI orbit asked them for years for a proper image and educational campaign, one mimicking for manufactured housing what the GoRVing campaign does for the RV industry?

Will detail- and honest-minded souls gaze beyond half-truths and paltering?

Without more inherently affordable manufactured homes, there will be more homelessness and more struggling to pay rent or higher-cost mortgages. 

Perverse incentives – AmeRegCorp, the Iron Triangle – keep housing constrained due to “man-made barriers.” Who says? Artificial intelligence-powered Gemini, Grok, Copilot and ChatGPT. Let’s be clear, AI and all computing rely on Two GIGOs: “Garbage In-Garbage Out” or “Good In-Good Out.” Given accurate information, AI is adept at pattern recognition.

Most MHI leaders, corporate and staff, for years declined directly mentioning MHARR or yours truly. Why? AIs suggest strategic avoidance. Consolidation-focused MHI insiders want low production. Low 21st-century production, EconomicLiberties.us throttling plus limiting capital access foster consolidation into deeper pockets.

Those tables are evidence that without millions more manufactured homes, the housing crisis will continue. 

Congress and the White House can patch the potholes in the ROAD bill by adding the MHARR amendments. Fix it or flush it. 

L. A. “Tony” Kovach is the co-founder and publisher of ManufacturedHomeProNews.com and ManufacturedHomeLivingNews.com. 
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: [email protected].