Nominee at Senate Banking hearing pledges community visits, supports HUD code update for manufactured homes

At a U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing, a nominee pledged to visit diverse communities including North Charleston and Detroit in their early months on the job and said they would review Department of Housing and Urban Development rules to reduce barriers to manufactured-home construction.

The pledge came during questioning by Miss Turner, a committee member, who said the committee is bipartisan and asked whether the nominee would “commit to visiting communities as diverse as North Charleston and as different as Detroit, in your first several months on the job?” The nominee replied, “that is a commitment from you, from me to you and this committee that I will go to the people of America, visit the neighborhoods, visit the leaders, the servant leaders in our country to see, you know, what is the problem that you're having and how can we work together to come up with sustainable solutions.”

The nominee also expressed support for reviewing HUD standards for manufactured homes, saying they would take inventory of HUD codes “and how we can reduce the burden and make it less cumbersome to build these houses, including manufactured housing.” Miss Turner had noted the country needs “over 7,000,000 needed units” and asked specifically whether the nominee supported updating the HUD code to remove a permanent-chassis requirement in the manufactured-home definition; the nominee answered in the affirmative.

On homelessness, Miss Turner observed that homelessness has risen about 30% since 2020 and asked for a quick response. The nominee said federal action should emphasize partnership with local communities, faith-based organizations and institutions that have demonstrated results, describing a role for federal support that defers to successful local approaches.

The nominee discussed Opportunity Zones, citing their prior work with the Opportunity Zone Council and saying, “you'll see a million people were lifted out of poverty,” and that housing and salaries rose for minority families in areas that saw investment. The nominee argued Opportunity Zones helped bring investment to places that had not seen it in decades.

No formal votes or committee actions were recorded in the provided transcript segments. The hearing segment focused on the nominee’s commitments to outreach, regulatory review at HUD related to manufactured housing, and collaboration with local partners on homelessness. The nominee’s claims about Opportunity Zones were presented as their summary of reports from their time leading the Opportunity Zone Council and were stated on the record at the hearing.

Miss Turner and the nominee also discussed examples of prior community visits the nominee said they undertook while leading Opportunity Zone efforts, including trips to “Tomaquah, Pennsylvania, Birmingham, Alabama, Dallas, Texas, Liberty City, Miami” and more than 70 cities overall, which the nominee offered as background for their commitment to continued community engagement.

Next steps referenced in the exchange were limited to the nominee’s stated commitments; the transcript does not record any formal committee vote, staff direction, or statutory changes occurring during the session.