Schult Homes: a pioneer in Elkhart County's RV and manufactured-housing industry.

• Author: Kurowski, Jeff
• Position: Schult Homes Corp.; Elkhart County, Indiana; recreational vehicle - Company Profile

Americans have a love-hate relationship with affordable housing. They would love to reduce their housing costs, but they hate the idea of lower-cost housing being built in their neighborhood.

One Indiana company, Schult Homes Corp., is trying to counteract the so-called NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude people have toward some types of affordable housing.

Schult Homes, a 59-year-old company based in the largely Amish village of Middlebury in Elkhart County, plans to triple its output of "modular" homes, the units that are built in sections in a factory and then attached on site to make a home that looks exactly like a site-built unit.

"A modular home is a site-built home built in a factory," says Walter E. Wells, president and chief executive officer. "We hope to triple our modular sales to $45 million in three years."

Still, the 53-year-old Wells, a son of a co-founder of the company, says Schult Homes will not abandon its core business of "manufactured" housing, the single- and double-section units most often seen in mobile-home parks. "We don't look to replace our manufactured-homes business," Wells says. "We look to grow profitability through modular homes."

Schult Homes, a company named for co-founder Wilbur Schult, has a history of bold moves. The Great Depression forced Schult, a clothing store operator, to look for other opportunities. He found his inspiration in the covered wagons displayed at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933. He decided, then, to start a company making portable homes for the families moving cross-country in search of a better life.

After months of planning, Schult and a partner, Walter O. Wells, father of the current president and CEO, rented a garage in Elkhart where their firm, originally called Sportsman Trailer Co., built "house trailers."

Most of their early trailers were small and compact, offering little in the way of luxury. But the company built products for other market segments too, including the lavish, 50-foot Continental Clipper portable house trailer. It was custom-built for a U.S. publishing magnate, who later sold it to King Farouk of Egypt, who eventually sold it to the Maharaja of India.

So Schult Homes' current strategy of building units positioned at the economy end of the price spectrum, while trying to service the higher end of the market at the same time, is not unprecedented.

Schult and Walter O. Wells, 82, a director emeritus of the corporation, also deserve credit for creating...