HUD is fast-tracking ICC/NIBS/MODX dominance with millions in taxpayer-funded reports —Offsite Construction for Housing: Research Roadmap. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research , 2023, and HUD’s Past, Present, and Future Role in Accelerating U.S. Offsite Construction for Housing: A Comparative Study and Action Plan. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, 2024–2025.2024–2025 Action Plan. These documents, managed by NIBS and authored by MOD X, recommend a new federally sanctioned housing system certification program that expands ICC-ES evaluation services and routes approvals through ICC/MBI 1200 and 1205 standards.
Sit back, grab your sweet tea — or better yet, pour yourself some straight whiskey — and get comfortable in that chair.
Because what you’re about to read is HUD, the very agency charged with regulating manufactured housing, essentially writing the instructions for how to hand the keys of the industry over to the ICC/NIBS machine. In it’s own words.
No conspiracy theories. No smoke and mirrors. Just HUD’s own Research Roadmap spelling out a vertical integration plan that funnels manufacturers, developers, and everyone else into a hub-and-spoke structure with ICC at the center — all while HUD holds the federal steering wheel.
They didn’t call it a hub-and-spoke. They didn’t have to. The pattern is so blatant it screams from the page.
This isn’t innovation. This is regulatory capture in plain English, dressed up as “efficiency” and “progress.”
Now keep reading…. and let their own words expose themselves.
ICC is vying to regulate manufactured homes with I-Codes as an alternative to the HUD Code. Through ICC/MBI 1200 and 1205 standards, ICC-ES evaluation services, and its control of ICC-NTA as DAPIA/IPIA, the network is actively blurring the line between manufactured and modular construction. This closed-loop approach expands ICC’s proprietary certification monopoly while eroding chassis requirements, federal preemption, and consumer choice for independent manufacturers.
After gathering all this information, and if you combine that with the chassis removal of manufactured homes and the passage of the 21st Road To Housing Bill that is heading the industry to a National Modular Code, everything makes sense now, and why ICC ignores preemption and explains the creation of the Small Residential Unit to reset the tiny house industry under their umbrella for market control.
What is disturbing is that HUD is assisting ICC in a plan to capture off-site construction where all their services are front and center eliminating competition and lessening consumer choice.
Millions of dollars have been distributed to progress off-site construction, and there is nothing set aside for tiny houses.
Smaller homes are being suppressed by design in favor of BIG INDUSTRY.
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Janet Thome President
Tiny House Alliance USA