RAYNE — The city of Rayne approved changes to Appendix A-Zoning of Ordinance No. 2058-2026 to address regulations for manufactured homes.
Rodney Richard, a certified building official, brought the council examples from neighboring cities to help guide many of the changes.
“Other cities have stricter setbacks on mobile homes than Rayne. Rayne didn’t have any setbacks other than what was in their ordinances pertaining to any other type of structure,” Richard said.
The changes address safety regulations.
He said, “It was people buying what I want to call storage buildings on the side of the road and trying to make them into a small house, and they would move them, and then we have to go in there and shut them down because it doesn’t meet the standards of the residential codebook and so I was asked how to prohibit that? How do we stop that from happening?”
To stop the practice, Richard recommended a simple fix.
“I recommended, let’s just put a square footage limit on your homes,” he said.
Under the new ordinance, homes must be at least 1,000 square feet. However, neighbors can apply for variances.
He said, “There’s variations on all the stuff that we’re talking about. A committee set up to hear these variances and make the recommendations to the city council for approval."
The ordinance requires owners to live in the home, meaning they cannot rent them out. There are age restrictions, too.
“I don’t think it’s in this particular ordinance, dealing with the age of a mobile home, it has to be 10 years or younger to be able to move into town. And there are steps to get a variance for whatever reason it may be,” Richard said.
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