Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to thank the gentleman from Tennessee for his leadership on this very important issue, Mr. Fincher, for being a champion for affordability of housing and manufactured housing in particular.

I want to thank all of my colleagues who are supporting this important legislation that I had cosponsored, the Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act, and it is a bipartisan bill, and that is important.

Affordable manufactured housing is a key source of housing for many of our constituents, particularly those living in rural areas, including my district in central and eastern Kentucky, many of those individuals who could not otherwise afford to buy or even rent a home.

Unfortunately, due to the regulatory requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act, many lenders have stopped offering loans for manufactured houses. The loans in question are generally fixed-rate, fixed-termed, fully amortized, small-dollar loans that have nothing in common with the bad mortgage loans that brought down the housing market in 2008; yet the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has treated retailers of manufactured homes as ``mortgage originators,'' despite the fact that they do not originate loans.

Furthermore, the small-dollar amounts of manufactured housing triggers high-cost regulatory controls since points and fees represent a proportionally larger share of a small-dollar loan than a larger 30-year mortgage on real property.

These definitions increase the regulatory and liability burdens on retailers and lenders, driving them from the market and resulting in higher costs and reduced choice for prospective home buyers.

In fact, due to the increased lender liability associated with this mortgage designation, some manufactured housing lenders have stopped making manufactured home loans entirely, and others have stopped originating manufactured home loans under $20,000, which is a typical price point.

The legislation before us today does nothing to roll back existing protections against predatory lending, as has been said previously by my friend on the other side of the aisle, Congresswoman Sewell.

H.R. 650 merely clarifies the definitions for mortgage originators in high-cost loans to correct an unfortunate consequence of these regulations that the Federal Government will be protecting homeowners right out of their homes.

This legislation will reduce the bureaucratic red tape, increase access to affordable manufactured housing for American families, and let me just conclude by saying this in response to some of the arguments made by the ranking member. She made the point that manufactured home sales are increasing. Well, that is not an argument against this legislation.

On the contrary, it underscores the extent to which Americans are relying on manufactured housing in the Obama economy and the need to preserve access to lower-priced, more affordable homes, homes such as manufactured homes, which commonly are available at lower monthly payments than what it cost even to rent. It also reinforces the need for this legislation because we need to preserve access to affordable housing.

This argument, this canard that this is somehow rolling back consumer protections for lower-income homeowners, this is not true at all. This legislation does nothing to roll back consumer protections. I simply do not define consumer protection as a law that tries to protect people in a way that makes access to housing completely unreachable. That is not consumer protection.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this bipartisan piece of legislation that preserves access to affordable housing and preserves commonsense consumer protections.

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