The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has taken recent actions toward addressing the national housing affordability challenge by offering a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) and restructuring an office that will support a new pathway to increasing the housing supply.
First, the agency’s NOFO will provide up to $4 million to “assess the potential for off-site construction methods to increase housing supply, lower the cost of construction and/or reduce housing expenses for low- and moderate-income owners and renters; and study how reforms to local zoning and other land-use regulations can increase the supply of quality, affordable housing and expand housing choices and opportunities for low- and moderate-income households.”
The opportunity addresses the research needs identified in the off-site construction research roadmap issued in January and is meant to help overcome the barriers of off-site construction and promote it as a solution to the housing affordability crisis.
“In recent decades, housing supply simply has not kept up with demand, which has driven up housing costs and limited affordable housing options for low- and moderate-income families,” HUD Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research Solomon Greene said. “However, the housing supply shortage has also inspired pro-housing policy reforms at the state and local levels and new attention to alternative construction methods.
“The goal of this research is to better understand which of these reforms and innovations are most effective at producing new affordable housing and what are the conditions for success.”
Proposals for the NOFO are due Aug. 1.
In addition to the funding opportunity that would bolster the supply-side of the housing market, HUD announced the creation of the Office of Manufactured Housing Programs as an independent office. This office, once organized under the Office of Housing’s Office of Risk Management and Regulatory Affairs, now will directly report to Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner Julia Gordon.
“This organizational change represents a recognition of the critically important role that manufactured housing plays in our country’s housing market,” Gordon said. “Thanks to the work executed by our Office of Manufactured Housing Programs over the last two years, we have made significant progress to support the availability of modern and affordable manufactured homes.”
The work Gordon referred to includes the office’s issuance of the first-ever industry-wide alternative construction letters, used to alleviate supply chain challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; implementing major changes to the manufactured home construction and safety standards (the HUD code); and initiating HUD code changes to bring it more inline with recent industry standards for more modern design approaches.
Manufactured housing, which has come a long way over the last two decades, is featured prominently in President Joe Biden’s administration as a means for low-income individuals take advantage of the benefits of homeownership and the generational wealth it can build.
Learn more about manufactured housing solutions here.