Kimber Capen

Good morning, Honorable Chair and Members of the Committee, My name is Kim Capen and I live in Goffstown, NH in a manufactured housing community, Medvil Cooperative. I come to speak in support of HB 1357 The Stigma associated with Manufactured housing is alive and well in NH and that is unfortunate. The truth is that too few legislators along with the general public need to educate themselves as to what today’s manufactured home really is. It is an affordable home built by HUD standards that today are getting very close to the same BOCA and ICC codes used by towns to hold builders of stick-built homes to a higher standard. Energy Star ratings, 2X6 outer wall construction, ability to be placed on full foundations, and the list goes on. HUD has stricken from all their document language the wording “mobile home” and replaced it with manufactured home for good reason. They are no longer mobile; they are designed and built to be permanent. As we struggle in NH to provide unsubsidized affordable housing to meet the needs of a workforce that is needed to support our largest industry, tourism, we cannot afford to live in the past and we cannot afford to ignore the need to support a workforce whose wages are lower/middle income wages. We need housing for our workers, and they deserve the dignity of home ownership. The truth is one size fits all doesn’t work in a state that is mostly rural. We should not be catering to the unfounded concerns of our larger populated cities and their nearby neighbors. The likelihood of a contractor or landowner placing an $ 80-120,000 manufactured home on a $200,000 - $300,000 lot is highly unlikely. Would be homeowners should have the opportunity to place a well-constructed HUD home on a reasonably priced lot on our more rural towns in NH without a statewide restriction and should be encouraged by the fact that towns cannot unnecessarily restrict them from doing so. I live in a manufactured home in Goffstown, NH. That home was originally built in 1982 under the HUD code then. Its cost was about $60,000 at the time. I have kept up the home and made several improvements over the 19 years I have lived here just as anyone would do in any stick-built home. Today my home is valued at $250,000 to $260,000 in a manufactured home community owned and governed by the residents where homes are selling for about the same or more on a regular basis. The stigma associated with these homes is unfounded, backward thinking and a detriment to progress at solving the affordable housing crisis here in NH. Legislators should be promoting and encouraging new affordable home opportunities and not discouraging it by promoting the unfounded stigma of the past regarding manufactured homes. I applaud the legislators that are introducing such legislation and their forward thinking to solving a housing crisis, especially for the workers we need to support the industries in our state that help to maintain the affordability of raising a family in our great State. Support of this legislation is support for the dignity of the men and women we need in our service industries in NH. Respectfully, Kim Capen