On May 26th, 2022, NPHS’ President and CEO, Clemente Mojica, alongside other community leaders, testified in front of the House Appropriations Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) appropriations subcommittee on manufactured housing. In his testimony, Clemente shared with the THUD subcommittee how NPHS uses manufactured housing as a viable solution to increase the supply and availability of affordable homeownership.

Given the skyrocketing development costs and as the current housing crisis deepens with affordable housing supply at historic lows, NPHS is urgently rethinking how to meet our communities’ housing needs, especially around affordable homeownership. Manufactured housing holds promise for economies of scale when developing scattered vacant lots in urban and suburban areas. NPHS is testing its infill strategy through relationships with cities like Chino and San Bernardino. Using manufactured housing to redevelop vacant and often very blighted lots in our suburban neighborhoods, NPHS has seen that factory-building leverages the efficiencies of the manufacturing process to increase the housing supply at an affordable price point and shorter construction timelines.

Based on the lessons learned from its initial experience with manufactured housing, NPHS has secured its retailer license to build and test a scalable and replicable manufactured housing social enterprise to help increase the supply of affordable homeownership. NPHS is also integrating additional strategies with the potential to grow and preserve the supply of affordable homeownership. These strategies include manufactured accessory dwelling units, placing manufactured homes on a community land trust to protect affordability, pushing design innovation and standardization, and integrating energy upgrades such as solar panels and energy storage.

To test these strategies, NPHS is about to break aground on a factory-built demonstration project in the City of San Bernardo which entails a manufactured single-family home and manufactured accessory dwelling unit on a community land trust with solar and energy storage. These strategies will test the potential to improve climate resiliency, protect affordability, and test the accessibility of first-mortgage financing for homebuyers purchasing manufactured homes on a community land trust.

NPHS would also like to acknowledge Representatives Norma Torres and Pete Aguilar, whose districts include NPHS’ service area, and thank Congresswoman Torres for the invitation to testify before the THUD subcommittee. NPHS is also grateful for the THUD subcommittee’s commitment to mitigating our nation’s affordable housing challenges and its ongoing support of NeighborWorks America. Without this federal resource, which provided critical funding to support NPHS’ manufactured housing program, we would not have been able to develop and implement this strategy in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.