If you've ever lived in a mobile home, a rental where the furnace rattles like an angry chainsaw, or an older rental with a furnace that never quite keeps up, you've probably opened an electric bill that made you wince despite keeping the thermostat low. That experience lines up with the record: according to a 2010 Demand-Side Management report filed with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC), Idaho Power gave 40 low-income households free energy-efficiency upgrades, including 20 manufactured homes, and those households went on to use an average of 6,477 kilowatt-hours less electricity per year. That's roughly six to seven months of electricity for an average American household. Nothing fancy, just standard weatherization, done free of charge for some of the most overlooked housing in the state.
The housing type no one wants to discuss
More than 20 million Americans currently call manufactured homes their primary place of residence, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data from research firm Construction Coverage. This type of housing consists of some of the most affordability-oriented options available in the U.S., but they come with a caveat: they were generally built decades ago, with thin walls, a lack of insulation, and heating systems that seem to have been designed to lose energy as fast as possible.
