CRA and Manufactured Housing

The answer to the question “What is wrong with our manufactured housing communities” has less to do with any specific problem and more to do with a thousand little shortcomings.  It is not just the lack of real property rules, not just the financing, not just the lack of consumer protections….Dayenu!

The list goes on and on.  Someone once asked if you can die by papercuts.  I imagine that trying to build wealth in a manufactured home faces the same kind of hazard.

Let me offer another way that residents in land-lease communities suffer from systemic disadvantages — the ability to qualify for credit under the Community Reinvestment Act guidelines.  CRA credit goes to banks when they make investments, serve consumers, or make loans to low and moderate income borrowers.

Most land-lease communities have little trouble qualifying for enough low and moderate income residents within their boundaries.  Yet they are not given the same attention.

Why?  Perhaps the government believes that their homes don’t count as “homes.”  Perhaps they would like to limit the scope of the CRA.  Perhaps it is something else.

But imagine if land-lease communities did qualify.  Even if the qualification only extended to loans on park acquisitions, then non-profits and resident owned cooperatives would be emboldened to act by the marginal increase available loans.  That would mean more control by residents over the land in their communities.  That cannot help but improve things.

Downstream, its also likely that when residents can put funds to use in their communities, that they will direct more investment into infrastructure.  That means more clean water, fewer broken septics, and more street lights.