Recent MH and Modular Agencies Board and Council Meetings

On Friday, August 19, the Manufactured Housing Board of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs met. Budgets were the work of the day. The main agenda items were to approve the 2017 budget and also to approve of the Division’s request to the Legislative Budget Board for their 2018-2019 budget. Following a brief presentation and discussion, both items were approved by the board.

Then on Monday, August 22, the Industrialized Housing and Building Code Council of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation met. The Council approved moving the IHB construction code to the 2015 version of the IRC. The change will now go to public comment for 30 days. If no substantive comments are submitted, the new code will become effective June 1, 2017.

The IHB Council also approved changes to the monitoring inspection procedures for third party inspection agencies and third party inspectors. Unfortunately, a copy of the proposed changes was not provided at the meeting nor is a copy listed online at this time. TMHA is working to get a copy that the Council members and the IHB staff had during the meeting. However, specific IHB staff testimony was provided to the Council that the new provision would not have any impact on third party inspectors. The changes were clarifications related to staff processes.

IHB staff also presented some recent statistics about the department. For the current fiscal year of September 2015 – July 2016, there have been only two complaints filed related to industrialized housing. In fact, over the most recent five years the yearly average number of residential complaints are 3.8 complaints a year with annual five-year average of 681.2 residential modular units produced. Said another way, the consumer complaint to residential unit produced is just a little more than one-half of one percent (0.00557). The staff also reported within the last year there were 19 cases opened, 25 resolved and a total amount of penalties assessed of $23,000 for both commercial and residential industrialized housing and buildings.