The city of Shawano plans to bump up its requirements for manufactured homes in the hopes that mobile homes don’t continue to come into areas where mobile homes are not designated.
The matter was discussed June 25 by the Shawano Plan Commission, and formal approval is expected to come later this summer for the commission to give its recommendation and then give to the Shawano Common Council for final approval.
The city consulted with Vandewalle and Associates Inc., and Jackie Mich and Evan Hoier sent the commission a memo on its recommendations. A manufactured home is allowed in zoning districts wherever single-family and two-family homes are allowed, often looking like conventional stick-built homes. Mobile homes, which are more transportable on city streets, are only allowed in one zoning district, currently at The Village along Teddington Lane.
The memo recommended the city look at additional standards, such as requiring basements, orientation toward the street and adopting a minimum floor area.
According to David Moesch, zoning administrator, a mobile home managed to make it through the city’s process of regulating manufactured homes. Current policies allow for homes to have a minimum width of 22 feet. The mobile home in question was 18 feet wide and 26 feet long but had a vehicle port that added four more feet to meet the 22-foot minimum.
That’s when officials decided the regulations needed more scrutiny.
Moesch said he spoke with representatives with from North Country Homes, the manufactured home company in Bonduel, to look at their policies when building such homes. He said those homes are generally 864 square feet with a 24-foot width, which is slightly above both the current and proposed regulations.
“The cleanest way to deal with this is to change the manufactured home definition to come up with a way that this doesn’t happen again,” Moesch said.
The plan is to require manufactured homes to be at least 23 feet wide with a minimum square footage of 860 square feet, according to Moesch. He noted that the original plan was to require a minimum of 960 square feet, but after speaking with North Country Homes, that was changed.
City Administrator Eddie Sheppard said that the new regulations would stop trailers from coming into undesignated areas, a concern he expects to increase due to the rising demand for affordable housing.
“You can build them, but you can’t move them that way,” Sheppard said. “If it’s on a trailer, it’s not a manufactured home.”
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
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