Raising concerns
Local builder raises issues with allowing HUD-code housing in residential areas
Provisions to potentially increase the flexibility of housing options in the city of Medford met with pushback from a local builder concerned with reducing standards and potentially negatively impacting property values.
John Mueller spoke with members of the city’s planning commission on Monday about his concern with the potential of the city to allow manufactured housing to be placed in general residential districts.
Currently, manufactured homes in the city are restricted to being placed in either in Mink Capital Terrace or Riverview mobile home communities.
With the change in style and manufacturing techniques for these types of homes, the city is considering loosening the restrictions to provide an opportunity for lower-cost housing options for entry level homeowners as well as those looking to downsize later in life.
Mueller said he became aware of the city’s discussions through coverage in The Star News and given his background in building wanted to share his insight into the issue. He said the median in-
See CITY on page 3 come is Wisconsin is $64,000 which working through standard housing formulas, would make homes in the $200,000 range affordable with mortgage payments of about $1,600 per month. According to federal statistics, the median household income in the city of Medford is $53,173 per year and the median individual income is $35,29, which impacts affordability formulas.
According to Mueller, Medford is poised for the same potential of explosive growth that has been seen in places like Eau Claire and Wausau. He said with remote work not going away people whose jobs are in the Twin Cities are willing to make a long commute once or twice a week in exchange for affordability and quality of life. Mueller explained that he reached out to zoning and planning offices in those areas and others to determine how they have handled the need for different types of housing. He also noted that in his research he found that fewer than 20% of households have children while 50% of all households have one to two people in them. He said they need to focus on the 50%.
Mueller raised concern about manufactured homes which are built to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) federal standards as opposed to the Uniform Dwelling Code (UDC) standards.
According to city coordinator Joe Harris, one consideration was to create subdivisions or planned unit developments where manufactured homes could be located on residential lots, the intent would be that these would be new constructed homes and be double or triple-wide construction.
Mayor Mike Wellner said that they did not anticipate allowing manufactured homes to be placed next to site-built homes.
Mueller raised concern about allowing HUD standard homes in the community stating that those types of homes do not have the same projected lifespan as traditional stick-built homes giving the example of 35 to 55 years for a manufactured home and 100 plus years for a traditional stick built home. He also expressed concern that the HUD homes would decrease in value and not allow homeowners to build equity which would hamper their ability to move into other housing in the future.
“It may not be us, but it will be our children or grandchildren dealing with endof- life scattered homes,” Mueller said. He said he was concerned that foreclosure rates would skyrocket if the conditions of homes deteriorate.
He also raised concern about potentially opening the door to people bringing highly used older manufactured homes into the community showing examples of pictures of older double wide units. He said he was concerned about what impact this would have on the value of existing properties and the potential for it to reduce overall property values.
Harris noted that the city would look to put restrictive covenants in place if an area was developed as a manufactured housing community to restrict people from bringing in older used units.
“We are in the beginning stages,” he said.
Mueller suggested that in place of allowing HUD-standard homes, the city could instead accomplish the same goal of opening up lower-cost housing by looking into using tax incremental districts to provide development incentives in the form of rebates to the future homeowners to help bring the cost of UDC site-built homes to the price point of HUD-standard homes. He said this would have the benefit of the homeowners building equity.
Harris said that he, city planner Bob Christensen and Mayor Mike Wellner have been working on ideas. “We don’t want to bring something half-baked,” Harris said.
The city will continue to look at options as part of its overall housing goals.
Minimum size rules In a related move, efforts to establish minimum residential building sizes hit an impasse, with committee members tabling the issue for another month after a lengthy discussion.
According to Christensen, the city currently has no rules regarding the minimum size of residences. To address this the city has looked to other communities such as Thorp, which have minimum rules in place.
The proposal brought for planning commission review was to require a minimum width of 26 feet for new homes being built in the city and that the main floor be at least 500 square feet.
Christensen noted that the 26-foot minimum just happened to be approximately the size of a double-width manufactured home built by Mid Country Homes in Dorchester which measure 26 feet, eight inches wide for their smallest model.
Mueller questioned what a 26-foot minimum width would mean for people who own corner lots that are 50 feet wide. He said there would be no way to build a home that size with the setback requirements in place. Christensen said there are provisions in the city’s zoning codes for the existing 50-foot lots.
One of the intents of the minimum sizes would be to prevent someone from putting a 16 foot by 70 foot single wide manufactured home on a lot.
Mueller noted that the city would not have that issue at all if it did not open the door to having HUD code standard homes.
“It seems like a really arbitrary number you are using,” Mueller said.
Christensen said the issue is that right now the city has nothing in place which could mean someone could build a 320 square foot house. “We have to have someplace to begin,” he said.
Commission member Dave Zimmerman questioned the width and how it would be measured, asking if the back of the house would have to match the front of the house.
Christensen said it would be based on the front wall of the foundation. This raised questions on if it would restrict houses to being regular rectangles.
Mueller gave the example of homes in the city that are cross-shaped. The city also has homes that are round. As it was written the proposed ordinance would require the homes to be 26 feet wide and at least 500 square feet on the first floor.
While on the agenda for the commission to recommend sending it to public hearing, members instead voted to table the proposal to do more research in how other communities are handling minimum residential building sizes.
In other business commission members approved sending to public hearing a proposed zoning code change to regulate the use of storage containers in the city. These large metal shipping containers are used during construction, and for longerterm temporary storage for businesses and industry. The proposed rules would limit their use in residential areas to 30 days with the idea of them being used to hold household items and furniture while moving or during renovation projects. For any construction site work, the storage containers would be able to stay on site for 30 days after the project is done. In non residential areas, property owners would be able to have them in use for up to 90 days with the potential of it being extended with a conditional use permit which would require a public notice to be published and a public hearing to determine if there were concerns with neighbors.
