From the 89th - Bills Targeting Manufactured Home Communities

Tags: Advocacy

Tuesday, March 4, 2025 8:16:18 AM

HB 2904 by Simmons

  • This is rent control
  • This is effectively a 5% max rent control and targeted directly at MH communities
  • The 5% maximum is triggered when the house is “affordable housing” which is defined in the bill as the tenants earning less than 70% of AMFI, which for most MH communities will be a lot of the residents

HB 2737 by Kitzman

  • Currently “bracketed” to only apply to Waller County
  • Redundant to current law where counties can already set roads in MH communities
  • Would allow the county to set lot sizes in MHCs
    • If these are reasonable, allow for density to preserve affordability, and not a pretextual means to allow counties to make lots sizes in a way that makes MH community construction unfeasible, then perhaps TMHA does not oppose, but in its current draft we oppose this broad grant of power

HB 328 by Vasut

  • Currently “bracketed” to only apply to Brazoria County,
  • Bill grants MHC infrastructure standards to allow 1) reasonable lot size, 2) road width, and ingress and egress.
  • Current law already has "reasonable specifications for streets or roads in the manufactured rental home community to provide ingress and egress access for fire and emergency vehicles."
  • Bill would add lot size authority.
  • TMHA’s concern, based on our experience with cities, some could use the lot size power to require large lots and make it economically impossible to build and continue operating MHCs.

HB 2232 by Vasut

  • Similar to Vasuts other MH communities bill
  • Same requirements on new MH communities in Brazoria, but this bill adds to this and treats the same “built to rent” site built
  • Current law is clear that counties can dictate roads and streets (along with water, wastewater, development plans, boundary and survey etc.) for MH communities, so those provisions in the bill are unnecessarily duplicative and confusing
  • This would specifically add to county authority the ability to set lot sizes for MH communities and build to rent site built.

HB 3561 by Barry

  • This would apply to all counites with a population of 400,000 or less (which means all counties expect the top 13 most populous)
  • The bill specifically says that it also includes and applies to manufactured home communities, as well as other site-built residential dwelling units.
  • Allows the county to require fire hydrants that are “sufficient to protect the dwellings…from fire”
  • Allows the county to also require two means of both ingress and egress for emergency vehicles and use during evaluation results from fire or other natural disasters
  • And can restrict all residential dwelling development that is not within 10-miles of an emergency service district.