Tonight, in the second of two reports, we focus again on low-income housing in Maine, in particular those Mainers living in mobile homes built before 1976, the year when new federal standards were introduced. There are more than 7,500 of these homes in the state, and as we reported last night, they are difficult to weatherize and repair; and they're often damp, dangerous and drafty, typically costing over $4,000 a year to heat, which is approaching half the value of many of them. This year however, there are renewed efforts, both at the state and federal level, to help more people move out of these homes and into safer and more energy efficient accommodations -- welcome news for at least two manufacturing companies in western Maine.

Modular housing units manufactured at KBS Homes in South Paris await shipment.

Here on the shop floor at KBS Homes in South Paris, dozens of employees are hard at work churning out modular housing units. It's an impressive production line making mostly multi-family homes, with two rows of units in various stages of assembly inside the 90,000 feet square foot facility.

Sales manager Mike Hamm describes the system as a "side-saddle factory." "Real simply, the left side of the factory feeds the horse, so side-saddle. All my roof components, my A-dormers, shed dormers are coming from this end, my roof's coming from that end, you'll see the floor system comes from that end. And then, it's pushed right down the line -- a very simply process."

This factory, says Hamm, comfortably produces about 16 modular units per week, most of which are headed out of state.

Mike Hamm: "Right now, 90 percent of our products go to Massachusetts."

Tom Porter: "And it's mostly multi-family homes."

Mike Hamm: "Mostly multi-family, working with a lot of housing authorities out of Massachusetts, we've done very well in the past two years."

Hamm would like to provide more housing in Maine, both to help his business and the local community. Currently only about 10 percent of KBS buildings stay in-state.

MH: "We love Maine, it's easier to be shipping to Maine, closer to home, easier to service."

TP: "Less far to drive them."

MH: "Yes, exactly."

KBS employs around 100 people in South Paris, and another 50 at a facility in nearby Waterford. Business is starting to pick up again, says Hamm, but it's been a tough few years, with the workforce downsizing by nearly 50 percent since the company was at peak production two years ago, when it produced around 24 units a week.

A modular home under construction at Keiser Homes in Oxford.

Meanwhile a few miles away in Oxford, Josh Saunders faces the same issues. "Certainly our hopes are that we see a whole bunch of orders for pre-1976 mobile home replacements and that we can put some people back to work."

Saunders is with Keiser Homes, which now employs around 100 people at its 100,000 square foot facility. The recession, he says, has taken a severe toll on the company. "Three or four years ago at the height we were probably between 200 and 250 employees total, so we've pretty much halved."

Modular homes, says Saunders, have many of the features of site-built houses, but are typically about 10 percent cheaper, with a single-unit home costing as little as $40,000. Keiser now produces around 15 units a week, says Saunders, but if demand increases, he says they'd have no trouble making twice that number in the existing facility.

Josh Saunders and Mike Hamm's ambitions to supply more modular homes to Mainers may be realized this year, as an expanded program to replace old pre-1976 mobile homes with these much more efficient Energy Star certfied modular units gathers momentum.

This summer, $3 million in new state bond money should become available to help people get access to loans that would enable them to upgade their housing. Meanwhile in Washington, Congress is currently debating the federal Home Star weatherization program, which contains an amendment that would provide a $10,000 rebate to families to help them dispose of their old mobile, or manufactured -- home, as they're now called, and replace it with a modular.

This amendment was added by Maine Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. "This is good for Maine, we have two modular home manufaturers. It's good for the home owner because they'll have tremendous energy cost savings by upgrading their residence, and it's good for all of us in the long run because it reduces our dependence on oil," Pingree says.

The Home Star bill was passed recently by the House and is now awaiting the scrutiny of the Senate. Maine's Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, however, have not yet committed to supporting the rebate provision, and Collins has expressed some concern regarding the cost of funding a new permanent government program.

Meanwhile, MaineHousing -- formerly known as the Maine State Housing Authority -- has been running a small pilot program to replace older mobile homes with new ones -- which, incidentally, were built out of state, because no one builds them in Maine, says Peter Merrill, director of communications at MaineHousing.

Merrill says the agency will soon be inviting homebuilders to bid on the expanded replacement program, and he's excited by the prospect of being able to work with Keiser and KBS. "We very much hope that both of the companies in Maine will be responding. We've worked with them, we've visited with them a number of times, so we're very interested in those companies and what they can do," Merrill says.

"Over 1,000 jobs in the manufactured housing industry have been lost over the last several years, just in this area," says Linda Walbridge, director of the Western Maine Economic Development Council, which represents the region where Keiser and KBS are located and which has unemployment approaching 10.5 percent, well over the national average.

The creation of just a few dozen extra jobs in the region, she says, would have a welcome ripple effect. "Any time you have 50 people who out of work and are struggling to pay their bills and putting them back to work, that impacts your local grocery stores, your convenience stores, your gas stations, their ability to own their own homes, so this is very exciting."

It's also exciting, she adds, for some Mainers to get the opportunity to swap an old leaky trailer or mobile home, for a modular home -- something which may be little more expensive than a mobile home, but is also a better investment as it's more likely to appreciate in value.