Municipalities zone out manufactured homes to exclude affordable housing

Across the U.S., municipalities use zoning ordinances to effectively ban manufactured homes from single-family residential zones, even though modern manufactured homes are visually indistinguishable from site-built homes and meet rigorous HUD construction standards. Huntsville, Texas outright banned placement of manufactured homes on private property. Harrison County, Kentucky attempted to require 10-acre minimum lots for manufactured homes — compared to typical single-family lot sizes of 0.25 acres. Other jurisdictions restrict manufactured homes exclusively to designated parks, preventing owners from placing a home on their own land. This matters because manufactured housing is the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in America, housing over 22 million people. When a municipality zones out manufactured homes, it eliminates the most cost-effective path to homeownership for working families — a new manufactured home costs roughly $55 per square foot versus $150+ for site-built. The structural reason this persists is NIMBYism rooted in the stigma of "trailer parks" and property-value anxiety: existing homeowners and local officials associate manufactured housing with lower property values and undesirable residents, despite data showing modern manufactured homes appreciate at nearly identical rates to site-built homes (FHFA data: 211.8% vs 212.6% appreciation from 2000-2024).