A real estate agent recently asked a client whether they would consider a manufactured home.
The person said no, so the agent then asked the same question in a different way: Did they want a custom-built house that would be ready in four months?
“They’re like, ‘That would be great!’” state Sen. Matt Pouliot, R-Augusta, who runs his own realty firm in his home city, said.
The story illustrates the stigma around manufactured homes, which are often known as modular or mobile homes depending on how or when they were constructed. Policymakers are trying to dispel the negative perception of homes built off-site to drive down housing costs, and are targeting rules in some cities and towns that disincentivize manufactured homes.
A modular home can cost at least 20 percent less than a similar stick-built house. They are built quickly, mostly assembled off-site in a factory over a few months, and can be customized to fit a family’s needs. KBS Builders, a modular home manufacturing company based in South Paris, says it cuts standard project timelines by between 25 percent and 50 percent.
The main trade group for the industry, the Maine Manufactured Home Association, gave a presentation in 2019 that emphasized destigmatizing these kinds of homes. Nationally, progressive groups like the Center for American Progress have pitched them as an affordable way to increase housing stock with market-based arguments they share with conservatives.
“Modular homes are not what they used to be,” Pouliot said. “It’s not your great grandmother’s trailer from yesteryear. These are custom homes.”
Maine lawmakers are acting on the subject this year. A bill from Rep. Cheryl Golek, D-Harpswell, would amend local zoning laws to allow manufactured or mobile homes on any single-family lot across the state. Golek’s measure treats both manufactured and mobile homes similarly, except for trailers built before 1976.
“They are misperceived to be eye-sores,” Golek said of manufactured homes in testimony last month.
The Legislature’s housing panel endorsed the proposal in January despite opposition from the Maine Municipal Association for its encroachment into home rule. Most cities and towns do not restrict their use and the association mostly opposed the measure for stripping municipalities or their regulatory power, said Rebecca Graham, a lobbyist for the group.
In Waterville, single-wide mobile homes often are restricted to parks and areas away from the center of town. Other manufactured homes that do not have the appearance of a mobile home are allowed to be built on single-family lots in the city.
“Mobile homes traditionally have been thought of as an affordable option, but they depreciate rapidly,” Rebecca Green, the chair of Waterville’s city council, said. “So it’s not a form of wealth building in the way homeownership is in other contexts.”
Green said Golek’s bill paints with too broad a brush stroke. Though she’d support more high-quality, modular home construction, she said mobile homes vary too greatly in their quality to be allowed on all single-family lots.
The implication is that stick-built is the standard, but lawmakers and advocates say that’s an increasingly unaffordable bar to meet. Stick-built homes now take more than a year to build on average and cost around $300,000, testified Laura Mitchell, who leads the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition.
“The time and cost of building a home in Maine has become out of reach for the majority of our workforce and our aging residents that want to downsize or live in more accessible housing,” she said.
When municipalities craft zoning laws that restrict modular or manufactured homes from single-family lots, they intentionally or unintentionally push those who rely on the most inexpensive housing on the market to the margins of town. Pouliot called it “segregation.”
Since Maine is projected to need at least 76,000 more housing units to accommodate its existing and future residents by 2030, Pouliot said modular homes are a no-brainer.
“[They’re built] in a controlled environment with a lot of engineering and a lot of controls in place,” Pouliot said. “And I would argue sometimes, the quality is better when it’s done.”
