What is a CrossMod home?

That is a great question. Because I don’t know. The idea of a Cross Mod home was presented to the JC City Council in the summer of 2021, by a developer/manufactured home builder.

According to the developer, the idea was simple and brilliant. You build manufactured homes, but they look like site built homes. They have concrete “foundations” that they are attached to. The homes have porches and gables and no skirting because they sit on the ground like a stick and brick home. There was only one problem, since they were manufactured homes, they were built to the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Code. In Johnson City, as in most cities in the United States, homes built to HUD code are only allowed in Manufactured/Mobile Home zoning. Homes in all other zones must be built to the city’s accepted building code, the International Residential Code (IRC). The development sat in a Mixed Use Zone, meaning it allowed for denser residential, such as small apartments and duplexes. But, the lot was 92 acres, and the developer knew that our city council would never lose a property that large when the city is in desperate need of multifamily and workforce housing options. He told us these homes would be affordable and that the HUD code would actually open up more financing options for first time buyers.

I had huge reservations and concerns about this development, so I asked a lot of questions during the council meeting. I asked so many questions that the developer became flustered and frustrated with me. He finally invited me and others to visit their factory and see what they would be building. We called his bluff. And, on a 300 mile round trip, we visited his factory in Athens, Texas. There we found out that the company in no way built the homes that the developer was presenting. A few days later, I found a development that this gentleman had already worked on. It was a community about 15 miles outside of Selma, Texas. The homes were not in any way or any form “modular”. They were simply manufactured homes that were hauled in, and had their wheels and axles removed, then the home is placed over a concrete lined hole. In that hole are cinder blocks which have been stacked up. The home is then tied with metal ties to the cinder blocks.

The developer had done nothing more than create a word that would convolute his product and make it possible for him to increase the price.

Make no mistake. These were not and would never be workforce or attainable housing for first time buyers. The starting price for one of these manufactured homes that sat on 1/8 of an acre (the smallest lot allowed in the city limits), would be $380,000 and go up to over $450,000.

I want to explain that I had no problem with the manufactured home part of this deal. If the gentleman had been honest with us from the get go, things may have ended differently for him. But, any person who comes into Johnson City, and stands before me in City Hall and blatantly lies to my face so that he can deceive the citizens of this city will NEVER win.

This developer lost, too.