General & Housing Committee concurs with Senate on H.757; orders statewide report on mobile‑home funding barriers

The House General & Housing Committee met May 22 to review H.757, an act relating to manufactured homes and limited‑equity cooperatives, and voted by straw poll to concur with the Senate’s amendments, including a one‑year sunset on language that treats certain cooperative mobile‑home parks as nonprofits for state funding purposes and a requirement for a statewide funding‑availability report.

Cameron Wood of the Office of Legislative Council summarized the bill and the Senate changes for the committee. Wood said Section 1 contains mostly technical clarifications about definitions and when transfers of manufactured homes must be effected by deed. He described later sections as limiting subleasing in limited‑equity cooperatives to hardship or lower‑moderate‑income situations and allowing only cost‑recovery charges such as mortgage payments and utilities.

Wood told the committee that the Senate Economic Development Committee preserved the bill’s nonprofit‑treatment language but added a sunset provision that would repeal the treatment on July 1, 2027. He also described a report requirement: "Department of Housing and Community Development, in consultation with [the Agency of Administration, Agency of Natural Resources, and Agency of Transportation], shall submit a written report identifying all state funding, grant and loan programs available to mobile home parks and infrastructure improvements, with an analysis on eligibility and regulatory barriers," due Nov. 15, 2026. The Office of the State Treasurer was directed to provide technical support for that report.

Explaining the rationale, Wood said the Secretary of State’s office had told committees that some limited‑equity cooperatives had been registered as nonprofits in error. "These entities are not nonprofit corporations," he said, adding that the statutory framework treats them as cooperative housing organizations of a different type. He described two policy paths: amend funding programs to explicitly include limited‑equity cooperatives, or temporarily treat them as nonprofits to equalize access while the state compiles a comprehensive list of funding sources and barriers.

The Senate also offered a floor amendment changing the effective date for sales‑and‑use‑tax changes in H.757 to Jan. 1, 2028, citing potential fiscal impacts that could interfere with ongoing budget negotiations. Wood said the later date avoids disrupting the current budget cycle.

Committee members asked about timing and implementation, including why Jan. 1 rather than July 1 was chosen for the tax change, and about grant application cycles and construction season timing. Wood said the delay was intended to prevent the sales‑tax change from affecting current budget deliberations and to give agencies time to plan.

Chair closed the discussion by thanking staff and counsel for work on a technically complex bill and said the committee expects to revisit related registration and funding issues next year after receiving the report. The committee’s concurrence with the Senate amendments was recorded by straw poll; the transcript records members’ assent but does not include a formal roll‑call tally.