The five-member board that regulates manufactured homes in Texas meets Oct. 15 for the first time since Nov. 10, and will be asked to approve an operating budget with seven fewer positions than the division was funded for in 2025.
The Manufactured Housing Division is an odd creature. It sits inside the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs but answers to its own governor-appointed board, hires its own executive director, and receives its own separate line of appropriated money, nearly all of it license and inspection fees rather than general revenue. Because it shares the department’s building and back office, state law requires it to buy those services under a contract the board renews each year. That contract is on the agenda beside the budget and the division’s spending request for 2028 and 2029.
The numbers run against the workload. The board approved $8.1 million and 64 positions for fiscal 2025 and $7.5 million and 59 positions for 2026; the proposal for 2027 is $7.5 million and 57. Over the same stretch the division reported 19,270 home installations and opened 785 complaints in fiscal 2025, a 23% increase, and issued 56,254 statements of ownership — the single document that establishes who owns a manufactured home in Texas. The two-year request then asks for 64 positions on slightly less money than the 57-position budget, which the draft does not explain.
The gap between meetings is not new, and the board is not breaking a rule by it. Its enabling statute says only that the board shall meet as a majority of members specify, and sets no minimum. It met twice in 2020, twice in 2021, twice in 2022, once in 2023, three times in 2024 and twice in 2025. More than twelve months separated its September 2022 and September 2023 meetings.
Two smaller items carry weight. The board will consider opening the four-year review of its rules, a procedural step that invites public comment on whether the reasons for them still hold. And it takes up revisions to the statement of ownership form, including a space for the beneficiary a homeowner may now name to inherit the home under a 2025 law. One change to watch: the current form sells five-working-day processing for an extra $55, and the draft appears to drop that option.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10:00 AM, Thursday, October 15, 2026. TRD 2026005935 was filed October 7 at 11:36 a.m. The board’s previous meeting, on November 10, 2025, began at 10:30 a.m.
- Where
- George H.W. Bush State Office Building, Boardroom 4.300, 1801 Congress Ave., Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Manufactured Housing Board — five public members appointed by the governor to six-year terms under Government Code §2306.6004. None may work in the industry. Presiding officer Ronald M. Richards of Clear Lake Shores.
- Format
- Six action items on minutes, the operating budget, the appropriations request, an administrative services contract, a rule review and a form revision, plus an executive director’s report and a possible closed session.
- Live video
- None found. The notice gives a contact number and the division’s website but no stream address, and the division posts board books rather than recordings.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · board book for the meeting
Board members
- Ronald M. Richards — presiding officer; Clear Lake Shores; term ends January 2029.
- Keith C. Thompson — Lubbock; attorney; term ends January 2029.
- James Brady — Arlington; banking executive; term ends January 2031.
- Joe Christian — San Antonio; insurance executive; term ends January 2031.
- Jose Gonzalez — Round Rock; real estate broker; term ends January 2027.
Names are from the division’s governing board page, which matches the governor’s appointment releases of March 16, 2021, February 3, 2023 and February 3, 2025, checked October 8; all five seats are filled and no term has expired. An older roster on the department’s legacy web address still lists members whose terms ended between 2015 and 2019 and was not relied on. Gonzalez’s term ends January 31, 2027, so this is likely his last scheduled meeting unless he is reappointed. The budget and position figures come from the operating budgets the board approved in October 2024 and September 2025 and from the draft in this meeting’s board book; that board book gives fiscal 2026 as 57 positions where the budget the board approved in September 2025 gives 59, and the discrepancy is unresolved here. Workload figures are the division’s own, for the year ended August 31, 2025.