HUD Rule Will Outlaw RV Living
HUD Wants to Make Living in a Tiny House or RV Illegal
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wants to change the regulations for Tiny Houses and Recreational Vehicles (RV). They have opened for public comment, but only until April 11, 2016.
The tiny house movement has taken America by storm, in part because our economy is in the toilet. People are striving to reduce their expenses by embracing minimalism. They’re breaking free from the corporate grind because, as I’ve always advised, they are learning to live with less and radically reducing their expenses.
But, these days in America, you are sharply admonished when you try to live your life outside of the strictures of the 9-5 world. Is it any surprise that the government is now taking steps to limit our ability to drastically reduce our expenses? They always seem to make illegal anything we try to do to be more independent and moving into a tiny house appears to be the next on their list.
HUD has proposed the following law:
This proposed rule would modify the current exemption for recreational vehicles in the Manufactured Home Procedural and Enforcement Regulations. Under the current exemption, questions have arisen regarding whether park model recreational vehicles are regulated by HUD’s manufactured home program. These park models are being produced with patio roofs, screened in porches, and other extensions that exceed the 400 square foot maximum exemption in the current regulations. Additionally, some of these models are being marketed as suitable for year round living. HUD’s proposed rule would permit recreational vehicle manufactures to certify that a unit is exempted from HUD’s regulations. Specifically, HUD’s proposed rule would define a recreational vehicle as a factory build vehicular structure, not certified as a manufactured home, designed only for recreational use and not as a primary residence or for permanent occupancy, and built and certified in accordance with either the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1192-2015, Standard for Recreational Vehicles, or the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) A119.5-15, Recreational Park Trailer Standard. In addition, to provide consumers notice regarding the manufacturing standards used to construct the unit, HUD’s rule would require that units claiming the exemption display a notice that identifies the standards used to construct the unit and states that the unit is designed only for recreational use, and not as a primary residence or permanent dwelling.
That’s right – if this law is passed, living in a tiny house or an RV may become illegal in April of this year.
We would like to thank the Organic Prepper for bringing this to our attention.
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April 4, 2016
HERE WE GO AGAIN. I am in my 60’s now and have been in and around the real estate & building field my entire adult life. I have seen and had to deal with rule after stupid rule, time and time again from so called public servants who continue to step way over the line of what is fair, decent and moral, or frankly any of their damn business.
It doesn’t just make me sad or annoyed anymore, it now p***** me off. I use to think about a particular rule or law that I had to comply with and actually tried to defend it in my mind with my own logic, maybe so I wouldn’t’ feel so bad about having to follow it. Not anymore, because many rules turned out to be just so stupid and ridicules that everybody required to follow them and pay for them would just shake their heads in disgust and disbelief. It was clear that the rules were being made by some a****** who didn’t give a s*** about what people want or need, even if what they wanted was reasonable.
I will give you some examples on home construction, that have nothing to do with zoning or special subdivision covenants or the like, but are simply laws that you must follow when you build any house, anywhere.
There are rules governing the minimum size of a house; the room dimensions and their shapes and where they are placed in the house; where the bathroom is or isn’t; the height of the ceilings; the size of your garage; the number of electrical outlets and even how far apart they are and how far they are from a window or door; the number of lights and where they are; the location and sizes of windows and doors and even what kind of glass you can put in them and the way they open; the quality and thickness of the carpet or other flooring; the size of your land and where you can and cannot put the house on your own property; the number of cabinets in your kitchen, which by the way you must have; and even the height the countertop has to be.
I could go on and on. These kinds of rules have no business what so ever being in any sort of laws or rules that we must follow. They have not a damn thing to do with things like safety or something everyone might consider imperative to regulate. The regulators don’t allow you to save money and instead force you to spend money on things you don’t need or want. These self-righteous regulatory idiots say things like, “Well, it doesn’t matter what you want or like, you can’t build to just suit your own needs. We want to protect the next person who buys it from you and make sure the house meets certain minimum standards. And also we are trying to make sure everything looks nice”.
WHAT? Where the hell does any government agency come off telling us we have to meet standards like that? If I spend my money to build a house laid out so stupid & crappy that almost no one else will like it, that’s my problem, and no one else’s d*** business but mine.
To add injury to insult, I can tell you from many years in the business, that ridicules and sometimes costly rules and requirements like these and many others I haven’t even mentioned, by the housing regulatory agencies are a very, very big reason why it costs much more than it should to build a house, even a starter home, and as a result many people now can no longer afford one. How stupid is that? That sure as hell isn’t in the public good. I don’t see anything wrong with building standards truly relating to safety. Who would? But the stuff they try to regulate now is just asinine. And they’re not done; it gets worse every year, if we let them.
People who couldn’t afford a house started buying and living in trailer homes. The regulatory people said, “We can’t let people do this too much. The poor b******* need us to regulate those too”. All it took was a few people getting hurt on safety issues, which is important and should be fixed, and the regulators then had a field day. They started doing their thing with other silly standards on those, which again had nothing to do with safety, and now a trailer house is so expensive, many people can’t afford those either.
Now comes the RV’s, which has probably been bugging the regulators for a long time now, because they were not considered homes. They love to have their power over us and tell us what to do, because they know better than us poor dumb b*******. “What? live in them all the time and not have to worry about the cost and regulations of the houses? How dare people do this!”
Ironically many RV’s cost more than a trailer house and some even more than a house, and the regulators have already managed to put so many restrictions on the trailer and RV parks, that they have become hard to find sometimes and are much more expensive than they use to be.
Now the vast, vast majority of us simply have an RV for recreation. But if someone really wants to live in one full time, because they like it, or maybe they have to, or possibly it helps them in their work. SO WHAT? Leave them the hell alone. Haven’t you done enough damage to housing already?
There seems to be no end to people out there who seem to think we need them to be our extended mommy and daddy. To tell us what we can build or buy because we are too d*** stupid and naive to think for ourselves. To make sure we live our lives in a way that they think we should, maybe because that’s what they do.
These regulatory jerks have carried these rules way, way past what is reasonable and necessary, and excuse me, but we are letting them get away with it. When are enough of us going to get smart enough and gutsy enough to tell these people to just go f*** off with their asinine over the top rules?
Just my never-to-be humble opinion!
Ridiculous!
I know some families that couldn’t afford to live anywhere but in ask rv. Especially in certain areas. Housing in pays of Nevada is $2000 a month for a small 3 bedroom apartment. How is a family of 4 supposed to afford that if they don’t have a high paying job making over $30 an hour? As long as each kid has a bed of their own it’s fine. And of course boys and girls don’t change in front of each other. My family of 7 lived in one for a year. Each of our kids had their own bed and we got along fine. It was a lil harder to keep clean, but we did it with few problems. This is supposed to be a free country. So why not? As long as boys and girls dont share beds or see each other naked, it’s no big deal. It was also easier to keep an eye on what my children were doing. If the government is that concerned about how everything is set up, go pay a visit to these families and see what it’s about.
You keep referring to HUD’s rule as a law. First, HUD doesn’t make laws…they don’t have that capacity. Second, this is a change in regulation as it pertains to the loan requirements for a so designated park model manufactured home. I was a residential loan processor for many years prior to the subprime loan industry, (which was what turned all lives upside down with loans a person couldn’t possibly afford), and I was privy to numerous housing rule changes. This is only one of them, so your comments regarding illegalities is fearmongering at best.
This is a TERRIBLE problem and the “government” has way too much power if they can swing this.
OK, what I read isn’t what everyone is talking about….HUD is saying many of these units are OVER 400 square feet and should not be exempt from construction codes one would expect for full time living. That isn’t trying to control people, that is trying to PROTECT people. Right now the tiny house industry is rather unregulated, if it is to code it will still be legal to live in one. Read the actual proposal…
sure lets regulate everything—lets make a code on how to wipe our a**—our government is protecting us? horse s***—they are extracting as much energy in the form of money as they can from the cradle to the grave with their outrageous codes and rules.
I don’t need the government to “protect” me. Their job is to protect our borders. That’s it. The rest they can just butt out!
No you cannot live under this bridge, no you cannot live in a tent, no you cannot live in a tiny house or RV….. We, as your government, say you are not allowed to live like this because we won’t be able to collect enough taxes from you.
That’s the bottom line isn’t the d*** greedy b******s we put into office are telling us what we can and can’t do—it’s way past time to take back control of our government from the 1%
It’s not the government’s business how large or what your house does. They need to mind the house they were elected in to and stop harassing Americans.
Amen, Kathy! I agree 100%
Do that count for boats too? See, once you pull that thread……..
Anyone should be allowed to live in their RV/Tiny House on their own land outside of the city limits and it should not be against the law. There are many places around the country like the San Luis Valley area of Colorado that forced people off their own land if they were living in their self-contained RV for more than two weeks. The local government there refused to give out anymore long term use permits for RV’s for use on their own land and started threating to arrest people who didn’t leave their own land after the two week period was up.
Local governments already consider it illegal to live full time in an RV on your own property. It is “law” in Kootenaifornia and many other counties. We did it any way for 4 years.