A once obscure office at HUD is the subject of unusually intense lobbying effort

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Washington Post

Politics

A once obscure office at HUD is the subject of unusually intense lobbying effort

By Juliet Eilperin April 30 at 10:45 AM

[e-mail]

For most of its existence, the Office of Manufactured Housing has been an unassuming office within a federal department not known for its glitz and glamour. ... But the little-known agency in the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been thrust into the spotlight as trade groups mount an unusually intense lobbying effort, seeking to scale back regulations that they say are hampering an industry that could provide a market-based solution to the affordable housing crisis.

In the process, the groups are gaining influence with Trump administration officials trying to purge their ranks of holdovers from the previous administration and put their stamp on every part of government, no matter how obscure.

The growing clout of the industry came into sharp focus last summer, when a trade group demanded — and got — the ouster of an agency official who favored more regulation of the industry while serving in the Obama administration, and an underling who donated to the former president’s campaign. ... “That the Trump Administration would be party to such an amazingly ill-considered, offensive and arguably scandalous action . . . is directly contrary to president trump’s own pledge to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington D.C.,” wrote Mark Weiss, president of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform, in a July 27 letter, which was unusually harsh even by Washington standards.

Within a few months, Office of Manufactured Housing Programs Administrator Pamela Beck Danner had been reassigned, and the woman she had hired, Lois Starkey, had been terminated. ... Not long after, the department kicked off a formal process to reconsider several of the new federal requirements the office had advanced over the past two years.
....

Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's senior national affairs correspondent, covering how the new administration is transforming a range of U.S. policies and the federal government itself. She is the author of two books — one on sharks and another on Congress, not to be confused with each other — and has worked for The Post since 1998. Follow @eilperin

https://twitter.com/eilperin

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-once-obscure-office-at-hud-is-the-subject-of-unusually-intense-lobbying-effort/2018/04/30/3dfc7ba0-3841-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html

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Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold

SCOOP: Last year a lobbying group told HUD that keeping on two career staffers affiliated w/ Obama contradicted Trump’s “own pledge to ‘drain the swamp.’” By the end of 2017, one was fired, the other was reassigned. Via @eilperin

Link to tweet

[groundloop]

1. Yet again, what this boils down to is less regulation equals less safety equals more profit

Spanky and his crew will give CEOs pretty much anything they want. This cry for less regulation is nothing more than a grab for higher profits at the expense of consumer safety.

[aggiesal]

4. Not just less safety, but also ...

less oversight.

This can lead to abuse and waste, where a vendor could seriously overcharge for a service
on a grand scale.

Government might eventually catch up with the vendor, but it could be years
and thousands maybe millions of dollars later, from both the overcharging and
the time wasted in tracking down the overcharging and abuse.

[Lonestarblue]

2. Meanwhile, taxpayers will pick up the costs.

Some of the regulations in recent years have been in response to the damage and destruction of tornados on flimsily built manufactured homes, needed t to mention the deaths of inhabitants. No home will withstand a direct hit, but better construction means that homes not in a direct path will fare better. In Florida, more stringent building codes helped homes better withstand hurricanes. Trump and his executioners don’t care about saving lives, only about making money, money, money.

[KT2000]

3. regulations for health and safety?

of course. Some of these homes are so toxic with formaldehyde and I will bet they want any limits removed. The damage to a person can be life long and some will end up on welfare and Medicaid. Of course they want to kick them off too.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. You took the words out of my mouth!

Formaldehyde is dangerous indeed. I wondered about this when I read the OP, and thought immediately of this. Manufactured homes are oftentimes the only recourse for those wanting to retire elsewhere and can't afford the insanely high real estate prices in FL (or for that matter, anywhere along the coastlines of the USA). They are also sometimes the only way for some to have an affordable home.

Standards have been beefed up on these homes from the size of the wood supports used in framing of the modular homes (larger from 2x4s) to 2x6s or larger, as well as insulation, electrical etc. They have come a long way from the early days of the 1970s, when basically nothing was standardized, and strictly used by low income residents on the outskirts of cities (in mobile home parks and the like)...

Now they can make decent homes, if tied down properly (I used six tie downs on each side of the mobile homes I brought and rented overnight in a mobile home park near a state park). Other than giving it more security (wouldn't shake during the spin cycle of a washer or dryer even), and able to withstand a little more wind, we went through where a tornado hit up the road about 1 mile up from us, no damage was found. So there is benefits to these upgrades (and the prices went up quite a bit too, so manufacturers have nothing to gripe about, they got money in exchange to what the market wanted. A well built, manufactured home that mocks the older generation of mobile homes from the mid 1960s through the mid 1980s. Don't get me wrong, these older homes were still good, and provided shelter and so forth to my out-of-work brother at one time. Better than being on the streets...steps such as opening windows, or (more expensive) covering up the old original particle wood floors (w/ formaldehyde) w/ newer floor materials and floor plastics (plastic to cover particle wood and then cover w/ new flooring) were some of the fixes done. It's expensive, but worth it to protect health and extend the life of an affordable home.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

6. +1...

... ditto. eom.