Ben Carson: Manufactured homes are no longer for trailer parks
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson is making affordable and resilient housing a priority.
“We're having a significant problem in our country right now with affordable housing and also with resiliency,” Carson told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney from the Innovative Housing Showcase in Washington, D.C., this week.
The five-day event that is being co-hosted by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) features new building technologies and updated solutions for housing, that Carson believes can remove some of the “many zoning barriers based on outdated thinking.”
“That's one of the reasons that we're having this display, so not only that people can see this and disabuse them of the notions that manufactured housing are trailers and trailer parks and seeing what actually can happen here,” said Carson.
The houses are loaded with technology infrastructure, including plumbing, electricity and sewage without disrupting the “surface topography or the other structures around that.” They are also bolted down to cement foundations to add resiliency during natural disasters.
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“I'm standing inside of a manufactured home right now -- it's a beautiful place,” said Carson. “[It] has a living room area, three bedrooms, kitchen, couple of bathrooms. And yet you know the cost of this is 30 to 40 percent less than a site built home.”
Carson added that they are also manufacturing tiny homes.