| Yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee advanced the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act of 2025, a large bipartisan housing bill aimed at expanding the nation’s housing supply, improving housing affordability, and increasing oversight and efficiency of federal regulations and housing programs.
The bill contained eight distinct titles with related bills for each title included as sections. Manufactured housing received its own title, Title 3 – Manufactured Housing for America, with four related bills included as sections. The prominence of having a separate title and being in the top three titles of the bill highlights Congress’s support for the industry. There are four sections to Title 3, and MHI’s proposal to remove the statutory language requiring manufactured homes to be built on a permanent chassis is the first (Section 301). Sections 302 and 303 focus on FHA financing for modular construction projects and Accessory Dwelling Units. Section 304 includes language making the PRICE program, which was a congressional earmark intended to preserve manufactured housing communities, a permanently authorized program. The language regarding eligibility of grant recipients is problematic, and MHI is working to address that as the legislative process continues.
In addition to the manufactured housing bills of Title 3, the ROAD to Housing Act also included legislative solutions for overcoming local zoning challenges, making small dollar financing more available, incentivizing homebuilding, and building more homes in rural areas and opportunity zones, among other things. Both a section-by-section of the bill and the full legislative text are available for viewing.
The bill was passed by a unanimous vote and will now go to the full Senate for consideration. The House of Representatives has not yet moved on a similar package.
Read MHI’s statement on the bill’s passage from the Senate Banking Committee below:
The Manufactured Housing Institute congratulates the Senate Banking Committee for passage of bipartisan legislation to address the nation’s housing supply challenges. We are encouraged by the strong bipartisan statement this bill makes regarding the critical role that manufactured housing can have in helping to address the nation’s housing supply and affordability challenges. The inclusion of an entire title—Title III: Manufactured Housing for America—dedicated to manufactured housing reflects growing recognition that we are an essential segment of the housing market and our industry’s great potential to deliver more safe, affordable, efficient, and desirable home ownership opportunities for American families. We thank Chairman Scott and Ranking Member Warren for their leadership and support for manufactured housing.
We especially appreciate the focus on expanding the range of homes that can be built under the federal residential construction code – the HUD Code. Section 301 – the Housing Supply Expansion Act – is a forward-looking provision that, by removing outdated requirements that units be built on a permanent chassis, will help unlock innovative new design possibilities, allowing American manufacturers to produce a broader range of attractive and affordable housing options at scale to meet the needs of American families. We believe this is key to addressing our nation’s housing supply and affordability challenges—delivering high-quality, attainable homes to more communities across the country.
As this legislation moves forward, and for this provision to reach its full potential, it will be critically important that Congress reaffirm HUD’s exclusive authority over federal manufactured housing construction and safety standards (the HUD code). By ensuring that any standards promulgated by other federal agencies become effective only upon adoption into the HUD Code through the consensus standard and regulatory development process already established in law, Congress can help avoid confusing and divergent standards that undermine the bill’s central intention. Bringing this clarity will strengthen the cost affordability advantages that factory-built efficiencies bring to expanding homeownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income families throughout the country. We look forward to continuing our work with members of the Committee, Congress, and the administration to achieve this goal.
MHI also supports efforts to preserve affordable manufactured housing communities and thus appreciates the intention behind the inclusion of the PRICE program in Section 304. However, to avoid unintended consequences, we strongly recommend that the statute and any implementing regulations should ensure that where the program promotes “resident ownership” models, it ensures that it only supports such models in which residents in fact gain a direct and beneficial ownership interest in the land to protect residents from predatory models that fall short of this promise. MHI also recommends that eligibility criteria be tightened to ensure what we believe is the intent of the legislation – that all ownership types—nonprofit, for-profit, and resident-owned—should be eligible for preservation funding and that grant awards should be based on the best applications that
achieve program intent without discrimination on the basis of ownership. We are eager to work with lawmakers to refine this language and ensure that preservation efforts are effective, equitable, and limit opportunities for predatory behavior.
In sum, we commend the Committee leadership and all the members of the Banking Committee for putting housing supply at the center of the national agenda and elevating manufactured housing as a national priority. MHI and our member companies look forward to continuing our work with Senators, Members of Congress, and the Administration to continue to strengthen this legislation and do our part to ensure it delivers on its full potential to expand housing opportunity for all Americans.
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