A substantial share of
the growth in low-income homeownership evidenced in the 1990s
has been driven by buyers of manufactured homes. These
statistics send a message to all who seek to promote homeownership
for low-income families, as well as promote safe, affordable
housing opportunities in disenfranchised com-munities. An increasing
share of the people served by community development organizations are opting to live
in housing that was built off-site, in
a factory, most of it to national HUD-codes. And many practitioners
do not entirely yet understand the implications of this for
their work.
The manufactured housing industry has come a long way from
its origins producing mobile trailers as an offshoot of the
automobile industry. Changes in designs in the last ten years, a movement towards higher-quality units, titled as real estate,
are positive developments.
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and other types of off-site construction units. NeighborWorks