Pew expert tells Senate manufactured homes can expand affordable supply if zoning and financing change

Rachel of the Pew Charitable Trust told the Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs committee that manufactured homes — those built to the HUD code after 1976 — differ from older mobile homes and from modular construction and can provide a faster, lower-cost path to new, smaller housing units. She said manufactured single-section homes are often less than half the cost of similar site-built units and double-section homes are a little over half the cost, citing Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies comparisons.

Rachel said about 6% of Vermont’s housing stock is manufactured or mobile homes, roughly matching the national average, and reported that three-quarters of Vermont manufactured-home buyers who borrow do so with real-estate mortgages because they own their land. Shipments to Vermont peaked in the late 1990s and have never recovered to that level; national production is down roughly one-third since that period, she said.

The expert urged three policy levers to increase manufactured-home availability: allow manufactured homes where single-family housing is already permitted, broaden mortgage and financing eligibility, and reduce minimum lot-size requirements. She pointed to recent state actions (Maine, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Maryland and others) that treat manufactured homes as single-family equivalents and recommended pilots where a small number of homes are placed in visible locations so residents can inspect them. She also warned that fine statutory details and local loopholes affect whether reform actually operates as written in practice.

Committee members asked about land banks, pilot projects and how manufactured homes interface with local form-based codes. Rachel offered to share her 2025 Pew paper with bill text links and follow up with materials on land-banking examples, while noting local capacity constraints (water and sewer hookups, septic/well availability) are practical limits to building even where zoning permits.

The hearing’s immediate product was not a formal vote but clarification requests for legislative counsel and staff to ensure section 11’s language covers manufactured and prefabricated housing as intended while preserving any local standards for site safety and design. The committee asked staff to confirm that local building and form-based design standards would still apply to factory-built homes under the draft language.