Doublewide Dudes

We connected with Becky Gray of Chaffee County, Colorado, to talk about the impacts a lack of sustainable housing has on a community. Gray is the Director of Housing in Chaffee County and a graduate of both Rogers State University and Pittsburg State University.
Some helpful links related to our conversation include:
http://chaffeecounty.org
www.wearechaffee.org
https://www.facebook.com/HPACChaffeeCounty
https://www.housingcolorado.org/default.aspx

It sounds too good to be true, but it is legit. There are several grants available to potential homeowners to help them buy a home.
For this podcast, we are joined by Kelly Fleck, who is the Homeownership Manager for Next Step, where she leads her team in implementing comprehensive factory-built housing homebuyer education and counseling training program. Kelly graduated from Morehead State University and has over 20 years of experience in affordable housing.
If you are interested in down payment assistance programs visit Next Step’s down payment assistance finder.
https://nextstepus.org/downpayment/

Matt Fast from LEAP Charities joins us this week to talk about Renter Owned Communities, how they are different than most mobile home parks, and why they make a difference in the lives of mobile home owners.

Are they a good idea? Are they sustainable? And what do they have to do with Sustainable Affordable Housing? Oh, and what in the world is "athirdability" anyway? We answer these questions and more on this Doublewide Dudes podcast.

You can learn more about Matt Fast and Leap Charities at:
https://www.leaproc.org/
or
https://www.leaphousing.org/

We sat down with Ben Navarro this week to discuss Fannie Mae's "Duty to Serve"
initiative which is how Fannie Mae is fulfilling Congress's mandate for Fannie Mae to
participate in helping three underserved markets.
Supporting these three markets should help create the availability of more
affordable housing without government subsidies. As you listen to the podcast, you
can learn how sustainable affordable housing availability can be affected by many
things, things as simple as standards written for lenders for particular loan types.
Ben Navarro manages Fannie Mae's activities related to their single-family
manufactured housing "Duty to Serve" plan.
Ben received his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and a Master
of Public Policy from Georgetown. He has been in the financial services industry since
2006, working for various organizations including Capital One and the FDIC.
Ben has been in his current role at Fannie Mae since 2018, working on things like
the launch of the MH Advantage loan product, and the modification of several of
Fannie Mae's manufactured home (MH) policies along with the necessary research and
outreach about Fannie Mae’s programs for manufactured homes.
Helpful Links:

Find out more information about Fannie Mae's "Duty to Serve": https://www.fanniemae.com/about-us/what-we-do/homeownership/duty-serve

Find out more information about Fannie Mae's appraisal guidelines for MH Advantage qualified homes here: https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/appraisers/appraising-manufactured-homes

Find more information about titling manufactured homes as "real property" here: https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/originating-underwriting/titling-manufactured-homes-real-property

While the affordable housing crisis is thought to be a big city problem, it is actually a problem just
about everywhere. Today’s guest, Stacey Epperson, has been working to provide affordable housing
to rural America for decades, and we were lucky enough to have her as a guest on our podcast.
Stacey Epperson has 30 years of experience in affordable housing development. She is the
founder of Next Step Network, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing affordable housing to those who
need it. Next Step’s mission is to help people achieve home ownership through factory-built housing.
Over these last three decades, she has built national networks and mission-driven nonprofits
working with leaders in the manufactured housing industry, lending institutions, working to provide
energy efficient homes and better loans to support home buyers.
You can learn about Next Step at:
https://nextstepus.org/

This week we met with Rick Jacobus about Inclusionary Housing. Inclusionary housing is a way
to work with developers to create affordable housing alongside of market rate housing in a way
where ideally the neighbors, the community, and the developer all “win.”

Mr. Jacobus has a broad background perfect for helping us explore inclusionary housing. He is
the principal of Street Level Advisors, a consulting firm specializing in inclusionary housing strategies. Mr. Jacobus has a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a Master of City Planning degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He also has decades of experience working with cities on affordable housing and other community issues.

Mr. Jacobus is founder of Cornerstone Partnership, a national initiative focused on building more inclusive communities, served as a fellow at CoMetrics and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and is a partner in Burlington Associates in Community Development. He is a lecturer at UC Berkeley and is Senior Program Officer for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation.

Street Level Advisors: http://streetleveladvisors.com/
Cornerstone Partnership: https://groundedsolutions.org/

This week we talk to John Weldy about energy efficiency and home affordability. We learn
how smaller homes tend to be more energy efficient, but they are penalized by current
energy efficiency measuring systems, which make it hard to compare energy use from home
to home.
The good news is, there are a couple of easy ways to know whether or not a new home will
be more energy efficient than similar models, and we talk about how consumers can protect
themselves as well as how local governments can adjust their building codes to put smaller
homes on equal footing as larger homes when energy efficiency requirements
Mr. Weldy is a Purdue graduate and has been in the factory-built housing industry for 26
years now. He's been the Director of Engineering with Clayton Homes since 2005. {For
transparency, please note we are an independent manufactured home dealer that sells
Clayton Homes products.}
https://www.claytonhomes.com/
He's a registered professional engineer on the civil and structural side in 39 States. He holds
International Code Council Certifications for residential inspections for all disciplines. Just
finished serving on the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Manufactured
Housing Consensus Committee, where he was the chairman of the Technical System
subcommittee as well as the chair of several taskforce groups. He's an active member of the
Manufactured Housing Institute and on the board of Systems Building Research Alliance.
Relevant links to today’s conversation include:
Information about ISO 14001 registration: https://www.claytonhomes.com/studio/what-is-iso-14001/
Information on the Home Energy Score [HES] developed by the Department of Energy: https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/downloads/home-energy-score
Information on the Home Energy Rating System [HERS] developed by the Residential Energy
Service Network: https://www.hersindex.com/hers-index/what-is-the-hers-index/
Information on the Energy Star program as well as information on Clayton’s Energy Smart
Home Package: https://www.energystar.gov/
https://www.claytonhomes.com/studio/saving-big-with-green-energy-smart-home-packages/
Finally, information from CPS Energy about energy efficiency in your home: https://www.cpsenergy.com/en/my-home/savenow/energy-saving--tips.html

This week we talk to Randy Shaw about the YIMBY (Yes! In My Back Yard) movement and its necessity when it comes to sustainable affordable housing. Randy points out it is not just the poor who are negatively affected by a lack of affordable housing, but people under 30 and seniors are both having a hard time finding
affordable housing right for them.

Randy is the director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco, one of the leading providers of housing for homeless single adults.

He is the author of "Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America". He also edits for beyondchron.org and is a vocal advocate for the YIMBY movement.

Carla Potts, Deputy Director of Housing Development of Northeast Community Action Corporation (NECAC), joins us today to discuss their ASPIRE program, a joint initiative to reduce prison recidivism while increasing the available affordable housing.

We cover how ASPIRE trains people in Missouri’s correctional facilities in skilled and semi-skilled trades by building new homes inside of prison walls. These homes are later transported to a property and purchased for the cost of building and installing the home.

Hear how ASPIRE is aimed at helping people with affordable housing while at the same time helping people in prison learn skills they want to learn to enter the job force at a decent wage after release from prison.

NECAC is following the model set forth in South Dakota’s Governor’s House project.

http://necac.org/

This week we talked with Dr. Christine Drennon, housing expert and professor at
Trinity University. We discovered a lot of challenges in making housing affordable,
how the current models of affordable housing have not yet proved themselves as
successful, and some opportunities we all have to work toward sustainable affordable
housing for all.

You can learn more about Dr. Christine Drennon, today’s guest, here: https://inside.trinity.edu/directory/cdrennon

Organizations mentioned in this interview include:
Trinity University- https://new.trinity.edu/
San Antonio Mayor’s Housing Policy Task Force- https://www.sanantonio.gov/HousingTaskForce
San Antonio Heron- https://saheron.com/
Alamo Community Group- https://www.alamocommunitygroup.org/
Habitat for Humanity – San Antonio- https://www.habitatsa.org/