Ben Carson: Manufactured Homes Are No Longer For Trailer Parks

Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is making factory-built housing, specifically, affordable and resilient housing a priority.

Fox Business’ Stuart Varney had a chance to speak with Carson at the Innovative Housing Showcase in Washington D.C. earlier this week. In regards to affordable housing, Carson had this to say: “We’re having a significant problem in our country right now with affordable housing and also with resiliency.

The Innovative Housing Showcase is a five-day event that is being co-hosted by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), and features new building technologies with updated solutions for housing. Carson believes that these technologies can remove some of the “many zoning barriers based on outdated thinking.”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 can actually happen here,” said Carson.

Having advocates for manufactured housing like Ben Carson, and having the topic of prefab homes come up more frequently through top news channels is impactful for the industry.

“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.”

It really only takes stepping inside a beautiful manufactured home once to understand that these homes are no longer for trailer parks. The homes that are being constructed today are technologically-advanced, well-built, safe, and affordable.