Advocacy

Your voice in Austin

A critical aspect of TMHA’s mission as well as where we dedicate a substantial amount of our focus is on political advocacy at the state level. This is TMHA lobbying the state legislature and regulatory agencies for a fair, balanced, and predictable business environment for the manufactured housing industry.

Our work statewide operates in two arenas. The first is directly with the state legislature every odd year during the legislative session, where for 140-days 181 House and Senate members gather in Austin to file, debate, kill, and pass new laws. TMHA lobbies those members to serve as a defensive shield against adverse legislation and to advance issues that benefit manufactured housing.

The second is interfacing with the state regulators that oversee your businesses. Manufactured housing is a diverse industry that is regulated by a myriad of state agencies.  All these agencies have on-going board meetings, disciplinary actions, new administrative rules, updated forms, and educational requirements. We always encourage our members to subscribe to the news alerts and updates from all of the regulatory state entities, as well as attend, monitor, submit comments, and testify at state agency board meetings, but know that even if a Friday or two board meeting misses your calendar that TMHA is there with your industry interests represented.

Industry Wins

The word “advocacy” and the concept of “lobbying” can be broad and too abstract to really understand what that means. TMHA feels our best explanation of what we primarily do is in the tangible results we have achieved over the years. We think that in looking at just a few of our legislative victories over the years, the picture will become clear just how TMHA’s lobbying efforts have fundamentally shaped and made the Texas manufactured housing industry just what it is today.

Here are a few of our highlights from over the years:

• Created centralized online state-based MH titling and lien perfection system that is the best in the nation
• Provided right to replace mobile homes with MH in cities
• Provided right to replace older MH with newer MH in cities
• Ensured MH community owners ability to replace homes within a community, even if they are classified as a “grandfathered” non-conforming use to end the, “you move it, you lose it” treatment by cities
  
• Eliminated all stale tax liens older than 4-years, resulting in over 100K+ tax liens being eliminated every year
  
• One-time elimination of all tax liens older than 4-years in 2013 resulting in 1.3 million tax liens (at an average of $400/per lien with the cumulative penalties, interest, and attorney fees) on MH being permanently removed
  
• Guaranteed MH owners, including personal property MH owners, the same homestead protection and tax incentive rights as site-built homestead property
  
• Created standalone Chapter 94 in the Property Code for MH communities with fair, but measured regulation of MH communities
  
• Created standalone Chapter 1202 for modular homes, and prevented cities from being able to prohibit or discriminate against modular homes in cities
  
• Carved out a specific MH industry beneficial lower tax rate for sales and inventory taxes
  
• Created standalone Chapter 347 in the Finance Code exclusively for MH chattel lending regulated by only one agency, the OCCC, to foster low barriers to entry for MH lenders
  
• Created reasonable administrative fee for MH community owners who submeter water and wastewater to recoup some of their costs
  
• Prohibited police or other transportation escort requirements imposed by cities or local governments other than appropriate escort vehicles for MH
  
• Created a five or less annual home finance de minims exception from the Texas SAFE Act
  
• Created a general exception for all retailers from SAFE Act that don’t receive specific financial related compensation (which became the model for both other states and later federally when the same language implemented in federal law ten years later)
  
• Lead the way to state preemption prohibition on local area business closures and/or cessation of factory operations due to non-statewide emergencies, and permanently designated our industry as an essential industry even in times of disaster or pandemic
  
• Joined as plaintiffs with MHI in a successful national lawsuit to delay unreasonable and costly DOE energy regulations for MHs
  
• Ensured minimally necessary initial licensing requirements and costs for Texas retailers, salespersons and installers to ensure adequate labor to continue our statewide industry operations
  
• Supported state pre-emption over unnecessarily burdensome and costly delays with local requirements on eviction procedures

Coordinating with Washington

TMHA also engages at the federal level with the Manufactured Housing Institute on federal MH policy. In addition to advocating to Texas’ two senators and 38 House members in Congress, TMHA serves in a supporting role to our national organization to advance balanced HUD regulation of our industry, sensible cost-efficiency energy policy, appropriate innovations in building code requirements, and necessarily tailored lending regulation for both real and private property MH lending.

TMHA at both the staff level, but also among our members, support MHI’s federal PAC efforts with direct annual contributions that support members and candidates for the US Congress that support MH, and are willing to hear our position on federal issues critical to our industry.

While there are many aspects of our industry still controlled at the state level (and some locally), the majority of our housing construction is regulated and federally preemptive throughout all 50 states, including Texas. The nature of having the only state preemptive federally regulated permanent residential building code, necessitates a constant, vigilant, and active role in both federal laws and regulatory oversight utilizing all aspects of advocacy from lobby Congress and the current administration, interacting with career bureaucratic regulators, and even utilizing the judicial system with, at times, targeted legal actions that have national implications.

Local Support

Local zoning fights and advancing policies and protections to allow for sensible and fair inclusion of appropriate types of manufactured homes within Texas cities are paramount concerns and a constant effort for TMHA. We work to provide resources, strategies, and support against locally imposed unreasonable restrictions.

Primarily TMHA works at the state level to try and preempt these unfair local actions, such as the 2013 “right to replace law” that we helped pass to allow MH community owners the right to replace old homes with new homes. But admittedly local policy, in particular zoning policy, is some of the most heated, controversial, and difficult policies to proactively address. The historical entrenchment of local control policy is a perennial and sizeable foe for all zoning reform efforts. However, TMHA does not shy away from difficult challenges even if they can appear insurmountable at times.

The main strength of TMHA is our longevity and patience to effect change over the long arch of time. This benefits long-term strategies to play the policy “long game” over years and decades to ensure the Texas industry thrives for decades.