Manufactured housing and the 2004 hurricane season: Assessing the effectiveness of hazard mitigation

Abstract

The vast majority of some 22-million manufactured housing residents in the United States are ethnic, elderly, low-income populations. As the fourth most populous and second fastest growing US state, Florida is home to one of the nation’s largest concentrations of manufactured homes in one of its most geographically vulnerable regions. After-action reports from Hurricanes Charley, Jeanne, Frances, and Ivan indicate that all manufactured housing units constructed after the 1994 Federal Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standard survived intact, whereas units constructed before 1994 suffered damage ranging from severe to catastrophic. This paper provides manufactured housing damage-assessment data from 60 of 67 Florida counties affected by the 2004 hurricane season according to various federal and state hazard mitigation strategies implemented from 1976 to 1999.