Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/100911
MHARR VIEWPOINT Positive News - A Step in the Right Direction BY DANNY GHORBANI With all of the challenges facing the industry and its consumers, good news ��� on any front - is welcome. So it was particularly gratifying to get some good news from HUD at the end of 2012 concerning production regulation and -just possibly ��� the Department���s increasingly strained relationship with the Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee (MHCC). The good news concerns a March 2012 American Wood Council Addendum to the 2001 National Design Specifications for Wood Construction (NDS) that lowered the design values for certain grades of Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) lumber used extensively in manufactured home construction. In an April 26, 2012 opinion letter issued without prior consultation with the MHCC (or anyone else), HUD had ruled that the NDS addendum would become part of the federal standards on June 1, 2012. As justification, HUD first stated that the federal standards require ���the design stresses of all [building] materials��� to ���conform to acceptable engineering practice��� and ���it would not be consistent with accepted engineering practice to continue to use higher design stresses when lower design stresses have been published and are known for a specific material.��� Second, HUD maintained that the Addendum would become effective automatically ��� with no MHCC or rulemaking procedures ��� because it merely modifies a reference standard already incorporated within the HUD Code. MHARR immediately objected on two policy grounds. To start, the vague and subjective concept of ���acceptable engineering practice��� ��� which can effectively mean anything HUD regJANUARY 2013 12 THE JOURNAL ulators want it to mean -- has increasingly been used as an all-purpose excuse to demand costly and disruptive production and quality control changes by manufacturers based on the whims of contractor ���audits.��� This practice, in itself, as MHARR has already made clear to both HUD and Congress, is unacceptable. A further expansion of this language, to justify and support unilateral changes to the standards themselves, would make a bad policy even worse. More importantly, MHARR objected to the further limitation on the role and authority of the MHCC implicit in HUD���s position that updates to existing reference standards -- including amendments with significant design, construction and cost impacts ��� can be implemented and enforced without MHCC review, a recommendation to the Secretary and rulemaking in accordance with the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000. Thus, in a May 2012 letter to HUD, MHARR asked that implementation of the NDS Addendum be delayed pending full MHCC review and cost analysis, noting that the 2000 law ���makes no distinction between standards developed by HUD and/or the MHCC, or standards developed by third-parties, including reference standards.��� In a response to MHARR, HUD agreed to delay enforcement, but offered only to ���notify��� the MHCC of the NDS Addendum. And, sure enough, the HUD program manager, at the October 2012 MHCC meeting, stated that an update to an existing, already adopted reference standard is not a ���change��� that would trigger MHCC involvement under the 2000 law, and reiterated that the Addendum would be enforced as of January 1, 2013 ��� a potentially disastrous outcome impacting not only new production, but possibly also existing homes under Subpart I. The MHCC, however, at its October 2012 meeting, strongly disagreed and ultimately passed a resolution calling on HUD to delay implementation of the NDS Addendum ���until it is presented to the MHCC or issued as an emergency rule��� under section 604(b)(5) of the 2000 law ��� which, as the only exception to the MHCC consensus process, allows the Department to issue an ���emergency rule��� without prior MHCC review if the Secretary determines, in writing, that emergency adoption is required because ���the consensus committee has not made a timely recommendation following a request by the Secretary��� or is needed to ���respond to an emergency that jeopardizes the public health or safety��� ��� neither of which has occurred here. To reinforce and advance this resolution, a member of the MHCC producer group took the lead to present the latest factual information to HUD concerning the SYP Addendum showing, among other things: (1) that new data was still being collected by the reference body; (2) that