News
Carson, Ivy tour Clayton Homes as part of HUD initiative
Posted on February 2, 2020
Originally published in the Times Daily.
Clayton Homes received high praise Thursday afternoon as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey toured the plant as part of HUD’s “Driving Affordable Housing Across America” multi-city tour.
Carson is traveling the country as he talks to Americans about his plans for eliminating regulatory barriers in order to make owning a house more attainable for all Americans.
“The real focus of the travels has been to meet with local government officials, and looking at how we can work together to reduce a lot of the regulatory barriers that are driving up the cost of housing,” Carson said.
While visiting the Clayton Homes facility, Carson and Ivey met with plant workers for a town hall meeting to discuss how the proposed regulation changes will affect their work.
“What we noticed was instead of replacing the old regulations with new ones, the new one was just added on to essentially create an unnecessary maze in the process,” Carson said.
While in the town hall meeting, the HUD secretary made two announcements involving manufactured home regulations.
The first regulation change will remove a regulatory requirement for approval when certain safety features are built with the home.
The second will finalize a rule passed in 2019 to eliminate the requirement of a formaldehyde emission health notice in every manufactured home. This is possible because a federal building code that regulates manufactured home construction has been updated to meet current Environmental Protection Agency standards.
“MHI commends Secretary Carson for his leadership in updating the HUD Code, aligning HUD formaldehyde regulations with EPA guidelines and working to alleviate regulatory barriers to manufactured housing at all levels of government,” said Manufactured Housing Institute CEA Lesli Gooch.
David Brewer, plant manager of Clayton Homes Russellville, said the company employs 324 team members at the Russellville facility, which is expected to produce 2,250 homes this year alone. That would out to about $92 million worth of homes produced at that one facility.
Statewide, Clayton’s eight facilities will produce a total of about 10,000 homes in a year, he said.
Formerly located in Double Springs, Brewer said the Russellville facility began production in 2014 under the Southern Homes brand. Southern Homes has produced more than 77,000 homes since it was started in 1989 in Double Springs.
Brewer said the average hourly pay at the Russellville facility including bonuses is more than $20 per hour. He said employees come from not only Franklin County, but Colbert and Lauderdale counties.
He said the company wants to be a part of Gov. Kay Ivey’s vision of adding 500,000 skilled workers to the state’s workforce by 2025.
“It fits in nicely with our vision,” Brewer said
He said Clayton Homes is working closely with Bevill State Community College in Jasper and Northwest-Shoals Community College in Phil Campbell on workforce skills specific to the manufactured home industry.
“They’re working with us to try to bring her vision into reality,” Brewer said.
In addition to the eight manufactured home building facilities in the state, Brewer said Clayton operates nine supply facilities and has 16 retail locations that sell their manufactured homes. Clayton also has two on-site home building companies.
“We employ almost 3,000 people statewide,” Brewer said.
Nationally, Clayton Homes has 40 manufacturing facilities, more than 20 supply facilities, 325 retail sales locations and nine on-site home buildings. The company is expected to produce 55,000 homes nationally this year.
Those in attendance for Thursday’s event included CEO of Clayton Homes Kevin Clayton, various HUD representatives, Congressman Robert Aderholt, Russellville Mayor David Grissom, Russellville city and Franklin County officials, and representatives from Northwest-Shoals and Bevill State community colleges.