The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) posted a notice in the U.S. Federal Register yesterday, inviting comments related to identifying existing HUD regulations that may be “outdated, ineffective, or excessively burdensome.”
The directive, issued directly by HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, is in accordance with Executive Orders (EO) 13771, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs”, and Executive Order 13777 “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda,” put forth by President Donald Trump in January and February respectively.
“The notice is somewhat unusual in that it was issued directly by HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson (and not a lower-ranking Department official),” MHARR President & CEO Mark Weiss told MHProNews.
The notice states that HUD is in the process of establishing the agency Regulatory Reform Task Force required by EO 13777, and is seeking input from affected stakeholders in order to identify regulations that:
(1) Eliminate jobs, or inhibit job creation;
(2) Are outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective;
(3) Impose costs that exceed benefits;
(4) Create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with regulatory reform initiatives and policies; or
(5) Rely, in whole or in part, on data, information, or methods that are not publicly available or are insufficiently transparent to meet the standard for reproducibility.
Weiss says that, as MHARR stated immediately after EO 13777 was issued, the President’s regulatory reform initiatives “offer, potentially, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the industry and consumers to put a severely out-of-touch and out-of-control federal program back on track.”
“For those in the industry who still downplay the possibility of regulatory reform at HUD and continue to believe that the intolerable status quo within the manufactured housing program is somehow good enough – or inevitable — this follow-through on the President’s regulatory initiatives by the HUD Secretary should be a call to action to move quickly and decisively for serious changes to the HUD program,” said Weiss, who continued, “to bring it into full compliance with the 2000 reform law and to conform the program to the reality of the manufactured housing industry today where outstanding homes, outstanding quality and outstanding value have resulted in unprecedented customer satisfaction and minimal levels of consumer complaints.”
The deadline for comments is June 14, 2017. Weiss says that MHARR plans to submit comments aggressively targeting these regulatory abuses, and urges others within the industry to do the same.
The full notice from the Federal Register is linked here. ##
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Submitted by RC Williams to the Daily Business News for MHProNews.
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