Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger ran on a promise to improve housing affordability across the Commonwealth, and when she takes office this weekend there will be a myriad of legislative efforts to support that promise.
Among them is a bill which would expand the use of manufactured homes; they’re quick and easy to build but carry with them a perception of a mobile home industry that’s often unattractive to localities.
Randy Grumbine from the Virginia Manufactured and Modular Housing Association is standing in front of the Dorsey Homes community in Petersburg, a collection of freshly built manufactured homes. Nine such homes with similar and familiar siding and picket-fenced front porches have been built in the community; there's 40 more in the pipeline.
“Any place you’d be able to site build a home you’d be able to put a manufactured home. That’s as simple as it gets," Grumbine said. "Right now, manufactured homes are allowed by right only in agricultural zones. So, this said if you can build a home there, why not be able to build a manufactured home on the same space.”
As an industry Grumbine said they’ve dealt with aesthetic stigma for years and that stigma can be summed up pretty easily: “If it comes on wheels, you can’t do it.”
As the industry moved from what Grumbine admitted was lower quality, travel trailers in the 50s and 60s to more permanent structures, he said the structures have gotten better. But the aesthetic of so-called-mobile homes has stuck.
“This bill will be helpful to open eyes to what the homes are today," Grumbine said. "And to still have an affordable product, it’s built in a factory so it's very efficient, highly energy efficient. And gives the consumer options.”
Teresa Steele was among the first families to move into Dorsey, the 3-bedroom manufactured home isn’t on wheels, and looks as nice inside and outside as any other home.
It came in multiple pieces before being attached on site in less than a month, and Steele loves it.
“So, I’m extra. I’m a designer, I decorate… so I want my face and my story to let everyone else know if I can do it, you can do it," Steel says as she points out her own added-flare like gold-lined trim alongside modern appliances, including basin-style sinks and a matching pot-filler faucet over her electric stove.
"I’m disabled, I don’t have a job, I’m on disability. But God kept me here for a reason cause I almost died,” Steele said of surviving a brain tumor among other health issues and was the victim of violence by an ex-lover.
The home costs her just over $1400 a month, including internet and utilities with the option to buy after 15 years.
“I’m blessed, I’m humble and extremely grateful to be here. I’m a special role model for my four beautiful daughters to say, ‘hey look, mommy has a home now and I want to pass it on to you guys,” she says.
The not-yet-public legislative effort
The legislative effort to expand manufactured housing is set to come from Democratic Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg. He described localities' current disdain for manufactured homes as “discriminatory,” and his bill would put them in the same category as traditional homes.
“If localities are setting up barriers for manufactured homes, which they do, we are taking away one of the lowest-cost home ownership options that are available,” VanValkenburg told Radio IQ.
The Henrico-area Senator said similar bills have succeeded in other states, including Kentucky where it passed last year with nearly unanimous support.
But while Vanvalkenburg is pushing his bill as a kind of non-discrimination in housing-type, it is also a zoning bill, one that will take away authority from localities. And Virginia’s preference for local authority may run headlong into his bill’s dreams of success.
Democratic Senator Lashrecse Aird’s district includes the Dorsey community. She’s proud to see folks like Steele get a home they can pass on, but Aird also respects the legislature’s preference for local authority. She hasn’t seen Vanvalkenburg’s bill because it hasn’t been published yet, but she said she’d be open to negotiations on the idea.
“Dorsey Homes is a perfect example of what communities can do when we all get around the table and talk about how to make sure the law supports flexibility in local communities to move these types of projects forward,” Aird told Radio IQ.
There is also the aesthetic issue, but Aird said Dorsey shows a modern, manufactured homes community can be more than what folks might assume.
“They do not give home-on-wheels, they do give starter home," she said. "They are appealing to the eye for the aesthetics for a community feel and a neighborhood.”
Notably, manufactured homes are getting built in Virginia right now, Grumbine said, with an estimated 2,000 new such homes set to be built in Virginia by the end of 2026.
You can build them, but it's not easy
W. Howard Myers has been part of Petersburg City Council for 15 years.
He said housing has been an issue for the area, located south of Richmond, since he moved here 20 years ago. He's spearheaded the Dorsey Homes community as an effort to knockdown dilapidated houses and replace them with manufactured homes. He said federal and state tax breaks have helped get the project off the ground, but he also had to get creative with local zoning.
Petersburg bans "mobile homes," but, as Meyers convinced his fellow council members, it didn't ban "manufactured homes."
"The council saw the need and took steps to help our citizens," he said of local governing body's "liberal" interpretation of its zoning laws.
"Zoning regulations are very important to us, but helping our constituency is more important," Meyers said. "Everything that's necessary for a young person, someone trying to start a family, they can get that hear."
He also pointed to what he described as the high quality of the finished homes.
"They aren't mobile homes, they're manufactured homes," he said.
Tom Heinemann is with housing developer PB Petersburg Owner LLC, the company behind Dorsey. Beyond usual permitting complaints, he said installation of a manufactured home can last weeks and their standardized, federal building code can make installation even easier.
"Federal building code supersedes state local build codes," he said. "That can complicate how local officials view and inspect the buildings; it's not how they usually do things."
VanValkenburg thinks his bill can streamline the process. And Grumbine said if they can build more manufactured homes, they can fill gaps that many localities and their residents need.
“As seen here in Petersburg, they can make a significant difference to have that entry level, workforce housing that is so badly needed across Virginia,” he said.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
