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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-10-19 YPC Submitted At Meetingllr MA ;4l/ '%l City of Yakima Planning Commission City Hall Council Chambers Wednesday April 10, 2019 Beginning at 3:00 p.m. Public Meeting 'PLEASE WRITE LEGIBLY' V it .mm�....._......- _.......................... .... .___ ____ .. ...... ............... ................. . Page .... .�... .. ..........._ - ..... g 1 04/10/2019 YPC Public Meeting Audience Participation Slip (PLEASE PRINT) Please complete this form for the record and submit it to the Clerk of the board prior to addressing the Committee. pp Name: ( J o � .. 1. V 0 `tel Subject/ Agenda Item Number(s): E-mail: V S GL V` o --Z -e - C' c c� �,... � " , ra Mailing Address*: C�Ca H 0) kf­ 3 -5 U H-(& ( 4 IVv3 (-f(LL ��00 *Please provide your mailing address on this form. When addressing the Commission, state your name and whether you live inside or outside the City limits. The Commission welcomes input from the public both during "Audience Participation" and during discussion of regular agenda items. Please note that the Commission meeting is being televised on Y -PAC, cable channel 194. Profanity, personal attacks, derogatory remarks or other inappropriate language or behavior are not be permitted. Thank you for your comments. Audience Participation Please complete this form for the record and submit it to the Clerk of the board prior to addressing the Commission. Name: .. �` u � A 3 c h Subject/ Agenda Item Number(s): vL E-mail:14 cvti� Mailing Address*: UT lo N V� G, r V"Ar� � \ y � . g q 03 ISY.A(.\,kkh� wf� A g 0 '7 *Please provide your mailing address on this form. When addressing the Commission, state your name and whether you live inside or outside the City limits. The Commission welcomes input from the public both during "Audience Participation" and during discussion of regular agenda items. Please note that the Commission meeting is being televised on Y -PAC, cable channel 194. Profanity, personal attacks, derogatory remarks or other inappropriate language or behavior are not be permitted. Thank you for your comments. I� HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS: Suggestions: -factory built modular homes (not mobile hones) built to the local "site built" building codes -build homes "ion frame" such that they could be easily relocated (or repurposed) if required custom flexible designs including: bunk house shared kitchens "multi" plex (multi family homes) custom support facilities — shower facilities, laundry facilities custom single family homes energy efficient construction durable construct for rugged hard commercial use site work required: utilities (power, water, sewer), foundation, skirting, steps, sidewalks, vehicle access and parking Mobile Home Specialist LLC - P.O. Box 9391 - Yakima, WA 98909. 509-966-8495 - MOBILUS853LN ""BUNK � ,} ?y«<x HOUSE"" . ,. :\%\ \` E" . �:\ \\���\ \� : « � MAN .�} ^\ » .>. : f� � � . � « � -< � �� © � .. �. � � � y, . . <�. .. . .. B1! 11, iill� llq� 11 e m impwW la Nil i g c, a �.Ho P :& Tacoma in two (kp PPO Y s 67TJ 4 MAN HOUSE, SHARED KITCHEN * WITH FULL DEPTH CROSSMEMBER * 84" SIDE WALLS 'ww'u t rwk WM 2ME I €�ts`A WWWO 20W 2..._. - fit a to WMW z NUMBER of ! *1 1 z I 2 1 2 OF� *1 _1 4 1 9 i 2 OF *t e 6 OKPHRKcu 6/19/2013 NTS WEC FLOOR PLAN LAYOUT Columwa Homes E. Cot Mbw & T=m Ift Union Gop PO ftx 9391 Y 9&19 11 Columbia Rome$ Columbus 1 EX PO Box 9391 Yakhl, WA 98< q insurance Ha air • Window Replacement Roof Repair • Insulation o Plumbing MOBILE HOME SPECIALIST LLC Since 1973 MOSILHS853LN #A Bud Nolen 1-000-266-8496 P.O. Bax MI • YW*M WA 98%* Yakima 966-8495 Pasco 545-9854 COLUMBIA HOMES Modular Homes -Manufactured Homes 8"np A Division of Mobile Home spedallst Bud Nolen owner 011100 (M 40!1-7WI Po. B" 9081 YaWma, WA OWN Marwde raw c; - - .net Ending Soon: 80% Off + One Month Free! join NRPLUS! iAaie,arasu I tern CH �, 2MI, iWJE Modular Housing Is Affordable Housing By MICHAEL HENDRIX I March 7, 2019 12:20 PM A crane places a modular house in Slidell, La., onto stilts to protect it against Floods. (Tyrone Turner/National Geographic/Getty images) How new construction techniques can bring the mortgages and rents down maglne you are building a house Carpenters will craft forms for concretefinishers to fill and thela throw up skeletal walls for electricians to wire and plumbers to pipe. Drywall installers and bricklayers will lend tine Douse its form before: painters add life. In all, an average Of 22 trades will parade through the construction of a typical single-family home, a process that has barely changed since the Industrial Revolution. If we wonder why the United States is suffering a dire housing shortage, or why real-estate prices are soaring out of reach for millions of Americans, we should also question the outdated ways we build our homes. In a long, thin warehouse on the Brooklyn side of New York's East River, the startup FullStack Modular is joining a bevy of new firms that manufacture houses much as we build cars: on an assembly line, in a factory. What's known as modular construction marries Henry Ford to LEGOs in a way that may offer hope for our housing woes. ('nng,trnrtinn nrnr nd-tivity in the Urlitpd Stntp.g, hag, hnrply hnrluPrl fnr Rn vpnrg, Fnr a -Petor that PPnpratp.g, You have 4 free articles remaining. > 4/10/2019,10:24 AM Ending Soon: 30% Off + One Month Free!J In RP I1 richer every year. Somehow we are getting worse at building new homes. America is in the midst of a historic housing shortage; the rate of new housing units being built every year is more than 20 percent below the average between 1975 and 20oo. Last year alone, the United States fell 400,0oo homes short of the total needed to keep up with population growth. As supply fails to keep up with demand, home prices nationwide are rising at twice the rate of incomes and three times the rate of inflation. In other words, the construction industry is broken, and we are paying the price. America's sweeping land -use regulations have built a wall of unaffordability around our most productive cities. But even waving away building restrictions would address neither the problem of rising construction costs nor the industry's labor shortage (which go hand-in-hand). Try building affordably in San Francisco when construction alone costs roughly $425,00o a unit plus another $Ioo,000 in fees. Construction prices have risen by nearly a third in the past three years across California's Bay Area. Nationwide, "after falling or remaining flat for three decades, real construction costs have increased sharply since the mid -2000s," according to BuildZoom's Issi Romem, with differences in cost between cities being driven by labor more than materials. There are simply not enough workers. The residential -construction labor force is down nearly a quarter since 20o6, alongside similar declines in higher -skilled trades such as plumbing and electrical work. Contractors laid off scores of construction workers during the Great Recession, many of whom never returned to the industry, and soon many firms also went out of business. The homebuilders who hired them also often filed for bankruptcy or drastically consolidated in the years after the downturn. As a result, today's rising demand for housing is being met by fewer firms using fewer contractors hiring fewer workers. So we must build differently, and this is where modular housing can help. This moment is how Ful]Stack Modular's waterfront warehouse gave to Brooklyn the company's 32 -story modular tower — the world's tallest — a reddish and gray -hued stack of residences staring down at the borough's Barclays Center. Another off-site construction company, Katerra, the IKEA of homebuilding, has been projected to be worth $4 billion by the end of the year. "If you're not increasing the productivity of the built environment, you're not getting anywhere," FullStack Modular CEO Roger Krulak tells NnTioxni. REVIEW. Modular construction is, technically, the offsite manufacturing of prefabricated units that are later assembled on-site. Boxes are built, transported, and put together. Asking how they are built, with what materials, and where quickly leads one down a rabbit hole that emerges at the realization that "modular" is a term broad enough to nearly lose meaning. Stick or steel, tower or triplex — the sheer variety in materials and housing types that can be modularized beggars the imagination. Yet every modular -housing firm can be plotted along two axes: how much is built offsite and how densely the modules are assembled — how much Henry Ford and how much LEGO. Sweep the image of a dusty construction site from your mind. Imagine instead the cooled, cavernous You have 4 free articles remaining. 4/10/2019,10:24 AM Ending Soon: 30% Off + One Month Free!1�„gh.l modules for apartments, houses, or even towers. This may all sound slightly fanciful, like a Space Age cartoon, and in a way it is. Modular housing was a favorite of the loth -century visionary Buckminster Fuller, whose futuristic "Dymaxion Houses” were to be mass-produced dwellings fit for the Baby Boom. A block along Burnham Street in Milwaukee is lined with prefabricated residences crafted by Frank Lloyd Wright in the early years of World War I, an unrealized vision by America's most famous architect to build well-designed affordable houses on a global scale. Immediately after World War II, more than 70 modular -home manufacturers were up and running, ultimately producing some 200,000 prefabricated homes for returning soldiers. But this boom was not to last. Modular construction became a plaything for architects dreaming of brutalist piles and "plug-in cities." Today, modular and prefabricated construction is used to build just 2 percent of new single-family homes and 3 percent of new multifamily housing. But changes in technologies and taste are giving modular housing a new importance. Projects are digitally designed and streamlined with exacting precision before assembly begins. Factories can now reasonably claim to cut construction time in half and reduce costs by 10 to 20 percent. A multifamily apartment building that would take 14 to 16 months to build using traditional methods goes up in seven to nine months using modular construction. Time is money, and shaving months off carrying and operating costs, along with having more -predictable timelines and budgets, helps more housing projects pencil out. Up to 8o percent of modular -construction processes can occur off-site using leaner work forces of moderately skilled, less-expensive labor. Work once done on-site by specialized labor costing upwards of $8o an hour in the Bay Area can now be done for $3o an hour in a local factory or for $15 an hour in Boise. Those in the building trades are still in demand, but now there is a larger pool of labor. And because the laborers work in a climate -controlled factory, there are no delays because of inclement weather and no hazardous operations to endure. Vertical integration makes firms such as Katerra and FullStack Modular something like one -stop -shops for housing, from design to build. Layers of architects, builders, and contractors are eliminated to streamline the building process. And large-scale manufacturers pay lower bulk prices for standard materials. These gains in efficiency free up dollars for research and development to boost productivity. As it stands, America's construction industry spends just o.5 percent of its annual value on R&D, compared with 3.7 percent for the auto industry or 8.8 percent for computing and electronics. The tech industry, often based in expensive locales, is taking notice. Google recently spent upwards of $30 million on 300 modular housing units built by the Bay Area—based Factory OS for its Silicon Valley employees. Microsoft is doling out half a billion dollars for new housing in the Seattle area. And there is a growing list of modular startups — such as Blokable in Seattle and RAD Urban in Oakland — sprouting up to disrupt the construction industry in high -flying tech hubs. The government also wants a slice of the action. In the eastward stretches of Brooklyn, a new low -income - You have 4 free articles remaining. 9 4/10/2019,10:24 AM Ending Soon: 30% Off + One Month Free! ,1011 Ngll seek to house the homeless in modular construction. But housing crises are not solved in a day. New construction technologies have long failed to be embraced by risk -averse builders, fragmented customers, and unionized or specialized laborers wary of losing their protected spot in the labor market. For modular construction, the challenges compound. Lenders are not used to providing the large upfront loans needed for a run of modules. Real-estate demand is fickle, too, and factories need continuous demand to keep the lights on. This is why modular startups such as Factory OS reuse old spaces. Being a niche player in the housing market earns you no favor from regulators. America's cities and counties use roughly 93,000 different building codes, posing a problem to mass-produced housing. Then there is the permitting process. Inspections must now occur not only at the building site but on the factory floor, which might be in a different state. And manufacturers can't forget the transportation departments: They have strong opinions on nighttime shipping and daytime assembly, which can involve holding modules on the street until they are moved into place. State regulators should simply certify a factory and its modular prototypes and write up standard procedures for moving and stacking modules. As housing prices grow farther out of reach for millions of Americans, the smaller budgets and faster building times of modular housing could be an affordability game -changer. Builders and 1 regulators are still working out the details, but modular technologies are already building every `111111111 type of living quarter imaginable. Gazing up at the Tetris-like 461 Dean on Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, the massive tower of blocks that gave birth to FullStack Modular, imagining the future of housing doesn't seem so hard anymore. This arttePe rspx,n .A L,rrw t nst L..p., O Linwe Xkcreef" iri Fhe 14lrxreP� 2, y, zn1), prdr¢k edition of NAT90NA . Rsvr M MICHAEL HENDRIX is the director of state and local polity at the Manhattan Institute. ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE I11' I!I!;(7'Orid!' The 2020 Democratic Field Is a Clown -Car Show ry JIM GERAGHTY Unique and yet similarly absurd, the presidential candidates emerge. u.nAWA tlH+r OUR1, Cohen's Congressional Testimony Portends Danger for Trump ey ANDREW C. MCCARTHY Look next to the Southern District of New York, where they don't write, they indict. You have 4 free articles remaining. > 4/10/2019,10:24 AM Can these pre -fab modular apartments help house the homeless? By Adele Peters6 minute Read In late July, trucks pulled up to a vacant lot in Berkeley, California, carrying shipping - container -sized studio apartments, each already fully built inside. It took four days to stack the Lego -like apartments into a new building. In total, preparing the site and finishing the building took four months. With traditional construction, the same project might take a year. The new 22 -unit building will be leased to the University of California and used for grad student housing rented at market rates. But the design is a variation of the type of building that the developer, P"n r lint ,sig l ;. i , thinks could be used to build housing for the homeless more affordably and quickly than standard construction. [Image: Panoramic Interests] A version of the design called the illi OP w,(l—with even smaller studio apartments, at 16o square feet versus the goo -square -foot student apartments—is "the most efficient way to provide housing for the homeless," says Patrick Kennedy, the owner of Panoramic Interests. The MicroPad, like the student apartments, is designed to come fully furnished (in the case of the student apartments, even the coffeemaker was installed in the factory, and a built-in sofa converts to a bed at night). Nine -foot ceilings, large windows, and a layout inspired by capsule hotels make the space feel bigger than it actually is. Unlike a room at a homeless shelter, someone living inside would have full privacy, soundproofing, a 4/10/2019, 9:25 AM private kitchenette, and bathroom. The steel body of the apartment is designed to provide protection from fire, flooding, and pests. The units are meant to be part of supportive housing complexes for homeless people, meaning that social services would also be available on-site. [Image: Panoramic Interests] On a construction site, the developer would prepare a conventional foundation with all of the conventional utility connections. After all of the units are stacked in place, the water and electrical systems are connected, a "skin" and roof are added to cover the building, and stairwells and hallways are completed on location. The solution has drawn interest from cities like San Francisco, which spends more than 390 Minion on homelessness a year. But it has been slow to progress. Kennedy first began pitching the design to the City of San Francisco a few years ago, suggesting that the city could lease land to keep costs low—for example, the apartments could be built on a city -owned parking lot, while keeping the parking underneath. The city considered the idea, but it faltered, Kennedy says, because unions wanted to preserve local construction labor. Right now, MicroPad units would be built in a factory in China because American factories couldn't handle the job—no American manufacturers make all -steel modules. The process uses the same technology as manufacturing shipping containers, and there are no container manufacturers in the U.S. The apartments can be stacked as many as eight stories high, with the space on single parking lot providing homes for hundreds of people. In San Francisco, where more than 7,000 people are homeless, one building wouldn't house everyone, but a network of the buildings potentially could. "Unions have fought tenaciously [against] any kind of prefab and especially prefab from China," he says. "I think that the politicians, at least in San Francisco, have been intimidated by them." (San Francisco's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing didn't respond to requests for comment.) A representative for the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council told Fast Company that the union is absolutely opposed to outsourcing work from the United States to any other country. The company is also talking with cities like Los Angeles, but it has faced other challenges common to projects for housing homeless people. "Not many people want to have a permanent homeless housing development in their district or in their neighborhood," Kennedy says. "So I think that's part of the problem as well." The first MicroPad development for homeless people may be built in Richmond, California, where the county government has federal funding for new supportive 4/10/2019, 9:25 AM housing. The county has yet to choose a developer, but sees several advantages of a design like the MicroPad. "Prefabricated small units provide a smart and efficient way to spend one-time funds from HUD for housing our homeless population with dignity," says John Gioia, vice chair of the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors. "They provide many living spaces within HUD's required timeframe for construction. Their compact footprint and stackable nature make them easier to site, and makes them flexible enough to provide on-site amenities and services that meet the needs of the residents." The design could also potentially be quickly replicated in other parts of the county. [Image: Panoramic Interests] Small units are a good solution for the many homeless people who are living individually, says Richmond Mayor Tom Butt, and the design is more economical than the type of uay__ wtis rill<� 3, that other cities have been piloting for the homeless. "It's a lot more economic to build a multi -unit building, whether it's MicroPads or something else, than it is to build little individual units," he says. "So if you have a limited amount of money to spend—which everybody does—doing these tiny home villages just makes no sense." Because of the volume of construction happening in California now, including in areas that burned in wildfires and are now rebuilding, there is a shortage of construction workers. That's another reason that prefab construction makes sense, Butt says. "It's a challenge for [developers] to find construction companies and find and put together construction crews that can work on these things on any kind of a schedule." Berkeley's new student apartment building was more expensive to build than Kennedy initially projected. Even though the apartments were finished in a factory, a large amount of work still had to happen on the site, including steps that wouldn't happen in a normal construction project, like crane operators carefully lifting each apartment into place. The site, at a busy intersection, was also a difficult space to work. But Kennedy says that he viewed the project as research and development. 4/10/2019, 9:25 AM [Image: Panoramic Interests] "The first time around is always more expensive, and we probably learned a dozen ways to do it better next time," he says. "We also got a very good idea about the economies of scale we need to realize the economies in prefab construction." Ideally, he says, a project would include a couple hundred apartments, and the site would be less constrained by heavy traffic. He believes that the method is still far less expensive than traditional construction. Compared to one building with studio apartments for the homeless currently under construction in San Francisco, he says, he expects that the MicroPad would cost less than half as much. Though the new building in Berkeley rents at market rate, the design could also be used to provide affordable housing for people who were not previously homeless. The state government is working to support prefab housing like the MicroPad. "I think it's pretty clear that factory -built housing can be produced more quickly, for sure, and often more cost-effectively than traditional stick -built housing," says Ben Metcalf, director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development. "So if you're talking about, for example, homeless populations, there's a huge desire to move quickly in terms of creating those housing opportunities, and a real impatience with the traditional process, which might take two to three years." One challenge, he says, is producing units at a large scale when the industry is new, though Panoramic Interests has gotten around this by working with the Chinese factory. The state department is responsible for inspecting and certifying factory -built housing, and is currently training local building inspectors—many of whom are unfamiliar with the permitting process—to help projects run more smoothly. Metcalf believes that factory -built housing will grow in California, though manufacturers attempting similar work have failed in the past. "I think the difference maker today is actually just the real explosion in costs of construction," he says 11r j ab ha�as�a�g msmalsq, in c si,s gly qj � q, t tang , a solution for affordable housing that is clqrc ll,,,gacsvwimlg ha Jtie,.5 ir,le I.,.o dr,c lis. In Berkeley, Kennedy is hoping that when people see the new apartment building, it will build support for the buildings he wants to create for the homeless. "We think that once people get a chance to go through the [Berkeley] project and see the high quality of construction and the speed and the cost savings that they may decide that it's worth challenging the opposition," he says. 4/10/2019,9:25 AM LATEST NEWS U.5—hearing, LC nhD—e-b@te.,ge.t5 firsthand demonstration Going modular to help the homeless orvllm� Rs(i:1 / Times Colonist SEPTEMBER 29, 2018 05:42 AM Housing modules being built at the Muchalat factory in Cumberland. Photograph By MUCHALAT Inside a former sawmill building in the village of Cumberland, workers are piecing together components of a new two-storey modular building for homeless Port Alberni citizens. Nearby, another building has more workers, who are starting to create floors for a three-storey modular facility for homeless people in Parksville. PortAlberni's housing will be in place in mid- December, with Parksville's finished in the new year, said Tania Formosa, daughter of Joe and Diane Formosa, founders of the Muchalat group of companies. The Comox Valley company is among eight firms, and the only one based on Vancouver Island, contracted so far by the province to supply modular housing under its rapid response to homelessness program. B.C. has set aside $291 million to build more than 21000 units. DONT MISS)3- DAILY)) Your dally horoscope t Dally crossword,onfint. P.9 .9,-motion-of:.f. 'r.fgft ISP 1r'h Ji,.Dllw#:4 GET THE TIMES COLONIST DAILY NEWSLETTER Get the day's top Times Colonist headlines emailed to you every morning APRIL 2019 I w il'r 1 s M T w T F s 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 113 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 26 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 5 7 88 9 10 11 Find out what's happening in your community. MOST POPULAR 4/10/2019, 10:43 AM Each furnished unit has between 300 and 450 square feet of floor space. Each has a three-piece bathroom, bed, desk, and kitchenette. Buildings have a common lounge and commercial kitchen. They are to be staffed around the clock with services that include meals, helping residents with education and job searches, and assistance for mental health and addiction issues. Culturally specific programs will be available. Staff will also help residents connect with assistance and benefit programs. Residents can learn how to maintain a home and access to laundry equipment will be free. To date, 421 units in eight modular supportive housing projects in or near Vancouver are finished and occupied, a B.C. Housing official said. Another 1,640 units of modular supportive housing are being planned or under construction. These include four on Vancouver Island: a 21 -unit building in Victoria, a 55 -unit building in Parksville, another with 46 units in Courtenay, and a 35 -unit project in Port Alberni. Modular housing built through the rapid response program "offers a fast and effective response to the growing issue of homelessness in communities throughout the province," B.C. Housing said in a statement. B.C: s manufactured housing sector is flourishing. The value of manufactured building production in Canada topped $1.6 billion in 2015, said a 2016 report from the Canadian Manufactured Housing Institute. In B.C., it accounted for 2,792 jobs and $614 Victoria named second roatot_t-city9rt_BC fir she ao ywhIArm I•II. J,.sAnsO .fpxfelt»ire t�� e:,rtl�tfl��t!�I�l..byy UMPAQ1.ire-wal bra:.d_etwrys lawyer Island Health,to_re_v_lev, case of man who st+spptad In freart of^ truck on highway � i 'GSM +�aerYdiJIt�;FlktafETs overrun B.C. communities I $ingim-farn6lgp..ha,mg �!Iyng.11ifTk+lt�g,�,n `' „„ Greater Victoria. grKA)SA A:Ise t:tram Olen r-JymYorAt hallbut ire xfr� xee�y�"er 4 pwt.WOMM + fowlsAgm rj GET A JOB DELIVERIN Cy.�rins aplle� rmoah,n V AIL Ili &. SAM P.Io i� f�OA fine The Times Colonist is w looking for people to deliver flyers every V�r�ver �l�rttft��'fh erfe,3Ce.l;�„to the Otto Group asks aatr➢t}a councll for cat- protection bylaw I•II. J,.sAnsO .fpxfelt»ire t�� e:,rtl�tfl��t!�I�l..byy UMPAQ1.ire-wal bra:.d_etwrys lawyer Island Health,to_re_v_lev, case of man who st+spptad In freart of^ truck on highway � i 'GSM +�aerYdiJIt�;FlktafETs overrun B.C. communities I $ingim-farn6lgp..ha,mg �!Iyng.11ifTk+lt�g,�,n `' „„ Greater Victoria. grKA)SA A:Ise t:tram Olen r-JymYorAt hallbut ire xfr� xee�y�"er 4 pwt.WOMM + fowlsAgm rj GET A JOB DELIVERIN 4/10/2019,10:43 AM G TC rx) WA FLYERS i� f�OA fine The Times Colonist is l IfAT TEAM looking for people to deliver flyers every Thursday ... 4/10/2019,10:43 AM million in economic activity, the report said "Since the recession, we've seen close to about a 24 per cent increase in shipments every year," said Gord Rattray, institute executive director. "We are doing very well." The popularity of modular homes has seen some developers ordering them for their housing projects, he said. Young families and retirees are among those fuelling the demand. Laneway housing provides additional homes in developed areas, and more multi -family projects are in the works. New factories and new companies are setting up in B.C. to respond to demand, Rattray said. Modular construction has little waste, so it is seen as environmentally friendly, and offers a fixed price and delivery time. Muchalat Projects has close to 70 employees concentrating on modular construction and putting in foundations, Tania Formosa said. Its B.C. contracts have them creating complete housing units with drywall, flooring, cabinets, plumbing fixtures, and closets. Muchalat is able to produce units up to 64 feet long and 14.5 feet wide, which fit on a road for shipping, Formosa said. The Port Alberni units are a few feet shorter. The Port Alberni building will take a total of eight months from start to finish and is scheduled for completion in December. Because modular construction takes place indoors, "your construction is never stopped by weather," Formosa said. Rod Graham, president and chief executive officer at Horizon North in Calgary, said his company used to manufacture workforce accommodation at its Kamloops factory. That ended in 2015 and instead of closing the facility, it now turns out modular housing. He saw an "opportunity to build a completely different product." Horizon North also bought an Aldergrove company and has expanded its workforce by 200. Horizon North's contracts with the province include an earlier contract to build 600 affordable - housing units in downtown Vancouver. That 4/10/2019,10:43 AM project is more than halfway complete, Graham said, and additional affordable housing is underway. * 2019 Copyright Thnes Colonist 4/10/2019,10:43 AM How Modular Construction Could Offer a Lasting Solution in the Affordable Housing Crisis by MattAlderton rQa0.'c This article was originally published in Autodesk"s Redslio publication as' 11� v Biji'ld11ig Q(J"lot 11011ays caln 11111' Fil11 llw ,ARI)rdablc I10Us,I:DI, t,�9i'�� "Modular" isn't a construction product; it's a construction process. This is according to Tom Hardiman, executive director of the Modular Building Institute (Ml l), whose members include more than 350 companies involved in the manufacturing and distribution of modular buildings, including multifamily homes. In partnership with 1, Redshil "Modular building is building in boxes," Hardiman says. "You put materials together at an off-site location to create volumetric boxes, then you transport those boxes to the jobsite, where you assemble them." But why modular, and why now? One pressing reason is the housing -affordability crisis. Across the United States, "Housing prices for both homeowners and renters are going up at exponential rates compared to wages," says Carol Galante, I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy at UC Berkeley's °l ca io u' (A,n((,�' 1"(ft° I1oli hig lhvwry, where she also is faculty director. The gap between wages and rents for low-income families has created a housing hardship of epic proportions, Galante says. A 2017 OPYI)>ski by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) 4/10/2019, 9:23 AM reported that the US has a shortage of 7.2 million rental homes for extremely low-income households. This means that 71 percent of those households are forced to spend more than half of their income on housing; federal guidelines recommend spending no more than 30 percent. "To make ends meet, severely mst-burdened renters make significant sacrifices on other basic necessities," including food, transportation, child care, and health care, NLIHC reports. Galante attributes rising rents to a "perfect storm" of conditions, including the subprime -mortgage crisis, which continues to flood the market with renters; the urban influx of educated millennial workers, whose high earnings relative to low-income families have driven rents upward; and high construction costs, which are swelling as materials become more expensive and land and labor more scarce. Although such a complex problem demands numerous solutions, modular construction looks promising, barreling toward a tipping point with a new generation of startups bringing a manufacturing mindset to multifamily construction. Modular Merits LEGO bricks and automobiles are common a nalogles fox, Modular construction,Like toy structures made with the former, buildings can be configured ill virttral'ly any manner; like the latter, the pieces that constitute the structures am prefabricated on an assembly line ill a factory. The benefits are manifold. Chief among them is speed. "We're, talltin,g ani Whem from 30 to 50 percent shorter, construction schedules," says Hardiman, whose company relies ort tools such as Autodesk ltl M 366 and ltevJ,,. "On a traditional site, you do all your foundation work, then you start building the first floor, then the second floor, and so on. With modular, the building is being constructed off-site while you're doing the foundation work." Faster construction means faster solvency. "There are major cash-flow advantages," Hardiman says. "If I'm a housing authority or a multifamily developer, I can get renters moved in sooner." 4/10/2019, 9:23 AM Modular building won't just fast-track revenue; overtime, it might also cut costs. "Whenever you repeat a manufacturing process, you improve it," says Roger Krulak, CEO off i 1.1 9 a(I lay l.a� lan g , a New York—based manufacturer of high- and mid -rise modular buildings. "Although they don't all look alike or even have the same program, all modular buildings have the same general makeup. Because you're repeating the same processes over and over again, you gain efficiencies, and that can drive costs down." Finally, there are labor advantages. "Contractors can't find skilled labor anymore—especially in urban areas," Hardiman says. Many construction workers left the industry during the Great Recession and never returned; those who stayed are aging rapidly and aren't being replaced, as younger workers are averse to the physical and logistical demands of traditional construction. "If you industrialize construction, you really open up who can work in the industry," says Galante, who also serves as director of the Housing Innovation Lab at Face ory 01S, a Vallejo, California—based manufacturer of modular multifamily housing. "It's much easier to take unskilled labor and train people inside a factory, and it's better working conditions for the workforce—you can commute to and from the same location, close to your home, every day, and factories are ergonomically structured on the factory floor to avoid creating a burden on the body." 4/10/2019, 9:23 AM Manufacturing Affordability The things that make modular building attractive to developers also make it an ideal solution for affordable housing. The speed at which structures can be erected, for instance, means modular buildings can increase housing supply quickly, which has a moderating effect on rents. "We're already seeing this in San Francisco, where rents are plateauing at the upper end of the market thanks to some new buildings that have come online in the past year," Galante says. She adds that modular buildings can have a ripple effect throughout the market; when supply pushes luxury rents down, more people can afford them, which reduces housing competition and cost for middle-income housing, and so on. "When more folks can afford to go into the newly built housing, that takes pressure off the rest of the residential market." At the low end of the market, meanwhile, increased efficiencies can help public -housing authorities build more homes with fewer dollars. For that reason, many cities are bullish on modular's prospects. Among them are crowded, high -demand locales such as New York and Seattle. In New York, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) launched a modular -construction pilot program in spring 2018. It subsequently released a competitive request for proposal (RFP) for the design, construction, and management of a mixed -income and mixed-use affordable -housing development in Brooklyn, marking the first time in history that the city has required modular construction for a public -housing project. "New York deserves a tremendous amount of kudos because they have leaned in and said that they believe in modular as a solution to the affordable -housing crisis," Krulak says. 4/10/2019,9:23 AM In Seattle, the King County Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) likewise launched a modular pilot, comprising three separate affordable -housing projects. The first, a partnership with the city of Shoreline, Washington, will comprise 8o to loo housing units that will be constructed off- site and craned onto a concrete podium built on-site. The second will consist of 20 single -room occupancy (SRO) "micro -dwellings" that will be stackable and portable, occupying small parcels of land on which traditional housing projects would not fit. Each unit will cost an estimated $150,000 compared to $350,000 for a typical unit in King County. The final project will be a campus -like homeless shelter in Seattle, featuring 72 beds across nine dorms, distributed around a central courtyard along with hygiene facilities, laundry, a kitchen, and case - management offices. "Our shortage of affordable housing in King County is around 9o,000 units—and that's in a county that has about 370,000 housing units," says Housing Program Manager Mark Ellerbrook. "So we are dramatically short on what we need to have available. I think it's incumbent on all entities to evaluate all options to address the problem we're facing. And if you look at time as a cost driver for housing, as well as actual construction costs, we see modular housing as a potential place to force down costs or reduce their rise over time." Whether modular will succeed remains to be seen. For the sake of low-income families, however, Hardiman says governments and developers must give it a chance. "We're not a silver bullet," he concludes, "but I'd like to be at the table saying, 'We can help."' Feature GIF courtesy of FXCollaboratiue. Cite: MattAlderton. "How Modular Construction Could Offer a Lasting Solution in the Affordable Housing Crisis" 15Mar 2019. ArchDaily. Accessed 1oApr 2019. <https://www.archdaily.com ISSN o719-8884 4/10/2019,9:23 AM l � ; $ightline Menti ;, f SUBSCRIBE DONATE INSTITUTE MODULAR CONSTRUCTION: A HOUSING AFFORDABILITY GAME - CHANGER? Mass production could make apartments radically cheaper and faster to build. Author: Erica Barnett On August 2, 2018 at 5:30 am Is the future of apartment construction indoors? That's the bet a number of modular construction companies in the Pacific Northwest are making. Building in Cascadia is expensive. Labor is scarce, and rents have surged since the last recession. Firms like Hlokk+ e, �), and ()i ie[;`ull(I say that by moving much of the process off building sites and onto factory floors, they can cut the cost of constructing multifamily housing by over half. They also The costs of physical construction— the "hard costs'=are the single biggest determinant of the selling price or rent of a new home. say they can finish projects in half the time. If these claims prove true, these companies and other like them could shake up the housing industry in cities like Seattle, where the total cost to produce a single apartment home can surpass $300,000. The costs of physical construction—the "hard costs"—are the single biggest determinant of the selling price or rent of a new home. If modular construction slashes hard costs, home -builders will make more homes—precisely what's needed to control rising rents in cities facing housing shortages. Cutting hard costs also makes it possible to stretch public funds further, yielding more subsidized homes for low-income families as well. So modular construction could be a housing affordability game - changer. 4/10/2019,9:40 AM SI$111tl1f1@ MenuSUBSCRIBE DONATE INSTITUTE tordecades, and ,,Inylr IoiniIy IIM( ,flmrs, have become a relatively cheap option for first-time homeowners and empty nesters who don't need lots of space. What is new is the idea that modular construction methods can be used to i evolrau�)i,i/& t[w Iv�[ii o (o t v,f 1 m I io n i i i(kj,;�ry. This could be especially true for apartments and condos—the productivity of which has barely increased since 1945, according to the r,yl,�r F>yr,Io[mIl[7 ti(mc—bringing down the cost of housing in the process. To understand why multifamily housing construction is so expensive, it helps to know how it's usually built. The conductor of the whole process is the developer—the business person who puts the deals together, securing funds from a bank or investors (or government or charitable agencies, for subsidized housing), and hiring professionals to design and construct the building. Typically, the developer selects a general contractor and that contractor, in turn, hires subcontractors who then often hire sub -subcontractors, and so on. Eventually, the contractor at the bottom of this chain actually does the work. Every layer of subs takes on some of the huge risk of a giant construction project but also drives up costs. Meanwhile, construction labor is at a i H In )� l pi e� i iiuiI i in the United States, and even more so in Cascadia's booming major cities. According to a i i , i iAlyJ,, of affordable and market -rate multifamily construction costs in Portland, "a severe shortage of both skilled and unskilled labor in the PDX construction market" has led to cost escalation greater than the rest of the country. Modular housing minimizes the layers of contractors, Putting most or all of the construction processes under the control of one company. to This shortage boosts construction wages and the cost of housing. On top of that, many construction workers cannot afford to live in the expensive cities that need more housing the most, creating v/kim.�� t�11,dc G.af r i i i g i e,a i i t sa exacerbated by a lack of a local workforce to build homes, and so on. Modular housing minimizes the layers of contractors, putting most or all of the construction processes under the control of one company. It also standardizes everything it can, making home construction 4/10/2019, 9:40 AM Menu S i g ht Z i n e' INSTITUTE Some modular companies, like Katerra, build prefabricated components that can be put together quickly at a building site; others, like Blokable, manufacture entire apartments that just need to be stacked into place like Legos. But all have essentially the same mission statement: By eliminating some of the players and processes that make traditional housing expensive, modular boosters say, they can build more housing, faster, for less. In any growing city's housing market dance, home -builders pause when the stockpile of new homes pushes down rents to a level where Ws no longer profitable to build. But when costs can be cut— through cheaper construction methods like modular building or other cost -reducing measures—the no -build tipping point occurs at a lower rent. The result is more new homes get built, and i {>I t , dmi � iliac Ilalu h fulfl ei h k)1'e IImI)�° I,oiWin�r ,Ir,dds do,"/I). If modular construction can deliver anything like the savings its proponents project, it could take a giant bite out of rents and prices. The same goes for the production of subsidized affordable housing, increasingly threatened across the US by the ongoing Io> ferl(,ml Dai id ,r ��i e h)i i dii iF , A big reduction in construction costs could enable non-profit developers to move projects forward with less public subsidy. Located in Tacoma, Katerra's 207 Meridian development consists of 24 units across eight different three-story buildings, rendering used with permission. Image by Katerra Katerra: The Ikeaization of home- building One company that hopes to take all the guesswork out of modular construction—by controlling every aspect of the process—is Katerra, a Menlo Park, CA -based startup. It was founded on the idea that vertical integration is the best way to cut costs and eliminate surprises during design and construction. Katerra, which declined SUBSCRIBE DONATE 4/10/2019, 9:40 AM /11 1 1 „ � n $ightfiil@ Menti ^,;;;;; 10 Wrl SUBSCRIBE DONATE INSTITUT[ scraps of wood and glue, and are strong enough to substitute for steel in high-rise buildings, allowing taller wood -framed buildings than can be built with ordinary lumber. Rendering of Katerra's 150 -unit five -story Revel Kirkland Senior Lfving facility that Is currently under construction, used with permission. Image by Katerra Once the factory is up and running, Katerra will be able to build CLT panels to order and snap them together on site, like flat -pack Ikea furniture panels that can be fitted together in a number of different configurations, allowing what the company calls "mass customization" using a predetermined, but customizable, kit of parts. Developers can specify everything from the size and configuration of the units to the finishes, and Katerra will build semi -custom components to order. Katerra was founded just three years ago—by Michael Marks, the former CEO of electronics manufacturer Flextronics and interim CEO of Tesla; Jim Davidson, the founder of a private -equity firm; and Fritz Wolff, founder of national multifamily housing developer The Wolff Company. Now, it already has more than 1,300 employees in five states and four countries, and it recently i, a sed 1,8(55 rriilR(tari from investors including SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate. Katerra has also acquired a number of high-profile architecture and design firms, including Nystrom Olson in Spokane and Michael Green Architecture in Vancouver, BC. 4/10/2019, 9:40 AM $ i$ h t I i n e Menu ��'�°��III" �� IN®TITUTC Katerra has $1.3 billion in outstanding orders for new construction projects, including a handful of apartment buildings at various stages of design and construction in Oregon and Washington. (None have been completed so far.) Most of Katerra's planned projects in Cascadia are located in suburban areas such as Kirkland oust east of Seattle) and Spokane Valley (to the east of Spokane, and close to Katerra's planned CLT factory). Katerra plans to provide a range of services on each project. This includes architecture and engineering using Katerra's standardized components (a 360 -unit affordable housing complex in Snohomish County) to a full-service package that includes standardized CLT components (a 400 -unit, under -construction market -rate project in Kirkland). Blokable factory Vancouver, Washington, used with permission. Image by Blokable Blokable: A Lego approach to home- building Aaron Holm, a former Amazon product manager and founder of the Vancouver, Washington -based modular builder Blokable, says the problem his company is trying to solve "is not to make more margin for general contractors or developers. It's to make a dent in the housing problem." In fact, Blokable is focusing on subsidized affordable housing, which the company says it can build at prices that are substantially lower than the $300,0()o ��erri[ri : that is often cited as the average cost of building affordable housing in Seattle. Nelson Del Rio, Holm's co -CEO, likens the layers of contractors on a conventional building project to hogs at a trough. "Every time we extract something out of that trough for [the hogs], ... the end users, the working class, the people who can't afford to live in SUBSCRIBE DONATE 4/10/2019,9:40 AM $Ightline Menti SUBSCRIBE DONATE INSTITUTE Rendering of Blokable multi -family project Seattle, Washington, used with permission. Image by Blokable If Katerra is like Ikea, Blokable is like Lego. Blokable's steel -framed stackable apartments, fabricated at the company's factory in Vancouver, WA, are standardized -35 feet by 9 feet on the outside, creating 260 square feet inside—making it easy for the company to truck them to a site, stack them, and connect them to the electrical and water grids. Unlike Katerra, which produces customized buildings composed of a standardized kit of parts manufactured off site, Blokable replicates largely identical units in its factory and pops the completed units into place on-site. The resulting homes are much cheaper than traditional apartments—about 1125,000 a door instead of $300,000 or $350,000," Holm says. First Blokable unit delivered to construction site at Edmonds Lutheran Church, used with permission. Image by The Daily Herald/Lizz Giordano Like most of the new modular companies, Blokable's potential is still untested by the rigors of the real world. You cannot yet order a Blokable apartment building and have it show up at your building site, ready to snap together. But starting in July, visitors will be able to see a demonstration unit on land donated by the Edmonds Lutheran Church in a suburb near Seattle. The unit is part of a 4/10/2019,9:40 AM �y �4 Sightline Menti f 7 SUBSCRIBE DONATE MN'�4'7i T'yJi 7'C' bedroom units for people graduating from programs at Valley Cities Behavioral Health who would otherwise be at risk of homelessness. Modular is no cure-all One Cascadian modular company that has completed home- building is Seattle -based Oi ¢(,i� lk.i. OneBuild has developed a half- dozen market -rate and affordable modular apartment buildings across western Washington. One example is the 49-unit'N' P labk tat �1un building in downtown Seattle. Slipped into a 60 -foot wide lot, the seven -story stack of modules was r i (;"e �, d (h ii .wo v//eekend i (,arl ( Io,ifI' Others include I\1 c)d 19, with eight apartments in two buildings, located in a Seattle residential neighborhood; and the Vancouver, Washington 11�dv,a1) I, `,c'ilo. I ivu7 ( cmc, i, providing residential suites in four, three-story houses. The company manufactured the wood -framed modules for all of these projects at its factory in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Finding this article interesting? da,ry lat^sui.... 416¢6 lft,ll!ry,rtl;Fl,C�la'f (� Y{e ,V ,'rf S }y1 OneBuild provides a proof by existence that modular construction can work. OneBuild's most recent experiences, however, also show that homebuilding is still a tough, complicated, and risky business. To lower costs below what its Klamath Falls plant could do, OneBuild has sought to build its modular apartments in China, framed in steel instead of wood. Using a million -dollar gift from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2016, it launched a pilot project that would have housed 13 homeless families in steel units in south Seattle. But the project—which, like Blokable's planned development in Edmonds, was a collaboration with Compass Housing—never got built. In an interview with' ,ailk,, 1"iirir columnist Danny Westneat earlier this year, OneBuild founder and CEO Dale Sperling said overreaching inspectors forced expensive changes—like requiring larger water heaters—that made the project impossible. "These were to be temporary units, a three-year demonstration project," Sperling told Westneat. "But there was one code hurdle after another. Finally, I had to pull the plug." (Neither OneBuild nor Compass responded to requests for comment.) 4/10/2019, 9:40 AM Sightline INSTITUTE Department of Labor and Industries—which got involved because OneBuild wanted to use prefabricated modular units from China—say Sperling's plans simply violated their rules. Overseas (and even out-of-state) modular construction can lead to permitting problems when units do not conform with local regulatory requirements, such as minimum water Menu V IIGYNIIV J IIIVJ� recent experiences, however, also show that homebuilding is still a tough, complicated, and risky business. heater sizes, fire and safety standards, and environmental requirements. qU VV SUBSCRIBE DONATE Meanwhile, foreign manufacturing may also stoke political pushback. Seattle City Council member Sally Bagshaw, who often mentions Blokable when the cost of building affordable housing comes up at council meetings, says she met with Sperling a few years ago, when he was just beginning to explore the idea of housing formerly homeless people in modular units. Bagshaw says she told Sperling, "'I love the concept, I love what you're doing, I've seen it done in other cities; but I said, 'I can't support you if you're building in China. We need to be building them here."' As the Pacific Northwest faces a housing shortage of epic proportions, concerns about the origin of modular units could be another roadblock to building the tens of thousands of affordable units the region needs. OneBuild is proceeding with its Chinese steel modules for a planned 56 -unit development in Bremerton, Washington, called Ii it ah h Bu� v,lf! I I. A spokeswoman with the city of Bremerton's planning department says the project has received its site development permit and should be getting its building permit in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, modular units in BC Modular construction is also starting to take off in greater Vancouver, BC. The city of Vancouver is f m >>_ ,, of building 600 temporary, low-cost, modular homes for homeless individuals and families. These include kitchenettes, private bathrooms, and rent for BC's standard social assistance shelter rate of $375 a month. Unlike standard affordable housing, which may take two to three years to build, though, these modular units can 4/10/2019, 9:40 AM Slgfltllil@ Menu N„ f ��jrP SUBSCRIBE DONATE INSTITUTE [Viy I Home,which specializes in accessory dwelling units (or "laneway housing'); Mora'i Hi w V I> me,, which builds more traditional single-family modular units; and Men,!( Modl,ii, which focuses on Blokable-style off-site construction of stackable multifamily units, have contributed to a in modular construction across British Columbia. Shoreline's test run Mark Ellerbrook, the regional housing and community development manager for King County, which includes Seattle, says he's eager to see how some of the modular projects that are in development across the region pan out. "Can we really use this to deliver units at a lower cost, and/or in a quicker way, to begin to address the housing shortage? The short answer is that we don't know, but we are going to pilot some options to see if in fact it does hold promise:" King County just issued a request for qualifications for modular housing companies to build approximately 65 affordable housing units on land owned by the city of Shoreline. III One of those projects will be on land owned by the city of Shoreline, just north of Seattle; King County just issued a rquf,sl fol (RFQ) for modular housing companies to build approximately 65 affordable housing units on the site. Other than the modular component, the RFQ is for a traditional construction project, with a separate builder, architect, and general contractor, so it won't be a test of the vertically integrated business model piloted by companies like Blokable and Katerra. Still, it could provide a glimpse into the future of modular construction, and a reality check on what's possible in the short term. "while the very first project we do this way may not ultimately deliver on all the promises, in terms of cost, speed, and replicability, we will learn some things, and we will be able to do it more affordably in the future," Ellerbrook says. 4/10/2019,9:40 AM r �.. $Ightllfil@ Menti SUBSCRIBE DONATE INSTITUTE throughout North America. The acceleration of home-building it would catalyze would pull down rents and prices, benefiting all residents who buy or rent market -rate homes. And it would be a major boost to non-profit affordable housing developers as well, helping them get more out of limited public funds to create more subsidized homes for people who can't afford what the market can provide. Moving most of the home manufacturing process to remote factory sites outside of expensive cities also has the potential to fix the cwt( ked flei n of construction workers not being able to afford to live where they work, which squeezes the availability of labor, which raises construction costs, which in turn makes those cities even less affordable to workers. The full potential for modular home construction is massive, so it's worth keeping an eye on pioneers like Katera, Blokable, and OneBuild. You can power us forward on sustainable solutions. !\U�w a do ii, iu a t i°i o n t i� S ii g[u1fl i� lll Tagged in: hJIoY da,,.) le huts„liq,., l uI'ahk” f l"dI VodOar (onti OnePullid © 2019 Sightline Institute, All Rights Reserved. 4/10/2019,9:40 AM Seattle commits to $12 million i modular housing :dor the homeless Matt Hickman September 6,2o18, 8:23 a.m. The factory -built dwellings will house 200 homeless individuals. llonieless encampments like the Ones pictured above are a common sight in Seattle. A new initiative aims to Douse at -risk individuals in factory -built modular shelters and permanent homes. (Photo David t. ee/Flickr) . Green prefab construction has long found a welcome home in Seattle. But will the Emerald City also embrace modular housing that's specifically designed for those with nowhere else to turn? The top brass in King County — Washington state's most populous county with over 2 million residents and a homeless population that stretches north Of 12,000 on any given night — is confident that modular housing of the emergency and transitional variety can be embraced .., and make a significant positive impact on the lives of hundreds of people. As the Seattle.....71,°i des reports, it's been nearly two years since officials first entertained the idea of using modular building as a method of alleviating a 4/10/2019, 9:37 AM mounting homelessness crisis that's been in sell dad, Jar �J "ei 0I niode since"pof5. Now, the county is ready to move forward with a $12 million pilot progrant that will eventually yield three housing projects for individuals experiencing and transitioning out of homelessness. Although two of the projects have secured build sites and are anticipated to be ready by next surnmer, there's still plenty of bureaucratic red tape, zoning squabbles and local pushback to wade through yet. The first project, a pet -friendly 24/7 shelter located on a county -owned parcel in Seattle's industrial Interbay neighborhood and operated by Catholic Community Services, will ])cast nine modular dorm, units and a "campus -like layout." As the Tiones details, this particular project has been in the works for a while now but hasn't benefitted from all"Wormally. ,I)JI"11 in the mayor's office. The second, a permanent supportive housing hub with 80 to 100 studio and one -bedroom apartments and around -'tile-, clock on-site care, is planned for Shoreline, a small city just north of Seattle. Collectively, these two sites will house an estimated 170 People!. A new start, modular -style: An illustration of a pet -friendly prefal) homeless shelter planned for Seattle's Interbay neighborhood. (Image courtesy King Couqy) Asmaller third site,which will feature fully ermittedand self-contained 11 p modular micro dwelling units" clustered around a central courtyard, will house another 25 residents in a yet -to -be -determined locale. Emphasizing long-term living arrangements and behavioral health, this facility will be operated by the Downtown Emergency Services Center (DE,SC.) Funding for all three facilities is coming from county coffers along with a 4/10/2019,9:37 AM mix of other sources. Supportive housing for 200 people n,iay not seeps like a lot when considering how prevalent homelessness in affordable housing -strapped Seattle really is. It's a full -on epidemic. These three modular projects, however, serve as more or less a test -ruse — once they"re up and running and shown to be viable, it's reasonable to think that additional similar housing could come soon thereafter ... and post haste. And that's the beauty of factory -built housing. Modular construction offers greater speed, efficiency and, in many cases, affordability,, compared to traditional stick -built construction. Prefab honses are also inherently versatile: they can be stacked, moved, rearranged and repositioned as need be. In a it,r (q&stele ase, King County Executive Dow Constantine emphasizes the speed factor as well as the need for open minds: "To tackle the housing crisis, we need to explore different options to get people housed quickly," lye says. "Mo(Hular housing has shown great proronise, and may play a key part in our regional response„ To be successful, we will need. everyone — local jurisdictions, neighbors, and community partners to help us take this approach to scale and give people secure and stable places to live." 4/10/2019, 9:37 AM Locally built mod Oar rntcm-dvcllings for individuals 'transitioning out of homeless can be stacked, rearranged or, moved entirkly. (Image courtesy King County) Keeping things local Despite the delay in getting things off the ground, Seattle, as mentioned, is a ]tall; lu tt�t t l X t ty;n, even though this is the city's inaugural foray into affordable modular building by order of the King County Department of Community and Human Services. In other words, this is the first time in Seattle that modular homes will be used directly to combat homelessness. (The city has implemented several other housing ideas, including iucz easingly popular litr,N� , �;r ttt �l l l i g , which lave been found to be ]gable tit,,itr,� in tet ins of maintaining federal funding for homelessness.) "We're looking at every smart opportunity there is, but we have got to make 4/10/2019,9:37 AM some decisions and move faster," City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw explains to the Seattle Times. "Modular housing may not be a silver bullet, but if we couple it with other solutions, it could make for some silver buckshot." Because of prefab's proliferation across the Seattle area and the Pacific Northwest in general, it was easy for Ding County to keels things local -isle. The builder contracted for the r�nngnry g".�trW kyr! shelter in Seattle and the currently site -less cluster of micro -dwellings to the tune of $4.5 million is Whitley Evergreen, an established modular construction firm based in neighboring Snohomish County. The designer of these two projects comes from a bit further afield: Portland, Oregon. In fact, architect Stuart Emmons is also a former city council candidate in Portland who made alleviating homelessness a top priority in his 2016 and 2018 primary campaigns. As the ,PQ11J,_i,rl 1 n. l -line explains, Emmons has worked with Whitley Evergreen on previous projects and believes that building locally is key for time -sensitive modular housing projects like the ones in the works for King County. He points out that the mann reason another modular homeless housing project to be fronded in part by Seattle billionaire Paul Allen was ultimately scrapped was because the units were to be built in a Chinese factory and then shipped to Seattle. "It was tabled due to cost overruns," he tells the Tribune. "They were flying regulators from Olympia to Shanghai to inspect the modules, it wasn't working." The Emmons -designed units are designed to be moveable with the potential to be "popped apart like Ugos and moved to another part of the city" explains tine Tribune. Owned and operated by the Community Psychiatric Clinic, the transitional housing units at the much larger project in Shoreline, which does riot involve Einnions or Whitley Evergreen and will be built on land donated by the city, will be fixed to a concrete foundation and therefore be a permanent facility that cannot be disassembled and relocated. Shoreline is doing its part to tackle the regional housing crisis," says Mayor Will Hall. "We continue to work with our partners on better and cheaper ways to provide housing for those in our community and in our region who are most in need." Can prefab save the day? Outside of Seattle, cities including Um4on, Ilonolulu and Vancouver, B.C., have turned to modular building when tackling homelessness while other cities such as Sari Francisco and ins Angeles mull the possibilities of prefab. Earlier this summer, the�, kv Ott k _l ,ties published an extensive article detailing how prefab building, an industry once dominated by hi h,vrnd ittglr,_' ndlyj cgnes bedecked out in high-tech bells and whistles, is now 4/10/2019, 9:37 AM focused more and more on taking on denser, bigger, taller and, most importantly, more affordable project in cities where reasonably priced apartment units are far and few between. As is the case with the projects underway in Seattle, housing schemes in which funding is limited and the timeline is urgent further expand the quick 'n' cheap potential of multi -unit modular construction. Seattle City Council Member Jeanne Kohl -Welles calls it an "innovative, cost effective and timely solution" to the city's affordable housing crisis. But as County Executive Constantine elaborates to the Seattle'nmes, local municipalities need to "be sold" on the idea that modular housing for the homeless is the most effective approach before they commit to anything that could potentially involve zoning tweaks and drawn-out permitting headaches. "We have to show that the strategy can work," he explains. "If we're able to do that, we're ready to beg, rent or borrow a site even for three to five years to help fill the need." Seattle commits to $12 million in modular housing for the homeless Assembled as a local factory, the prefab housing units will house over 200 people at 3 different sites. 4/10/2019,9:37 AM Mayor wants to lure modular blousing factory to SF to provide both homes, jobs By Kevin Fagan As San Francisco officials continue to scout:_la,t lrt_cs,, for a factory that can churn out modular housing units, Mayor London Breed is lining up the city to be the first customer. Breed is expected to announce Monday that the city is prepared to spend $loo million on hundreds of modular apartments that would grow the city's stock of affordable housing. Who will run the modular~ housing factory won't be known for some time, though the. leading plan is to seek a private operator on city -owned or city -leased property. And even after a site is selected, it will take years to get a factory up and running. • Unlimited Digital Access for 95t • Read more articles like this by subscribing to the San Francisco Chronicle U11, 1, 113,1° But Breed and other officials hope the early — and sizable — promise to buy will entice interested operators to set tip shop in San Francisco. "We are in a crisis. We need more housing in San Francisco, iso we have to be open, to exploring every opportunity to produce more, and produce more faster," Breed said. "We're going to use every opportunity to find creative solutions to build more housing in San Francisco. Everything is on the, table." Modular housing is widely seen as a potential breakthrough in San Francisco's protracted struggle to combat its dual housing shortage and affordability crisis by swiftly building more below -market -rate units, marry of which would, be reserved for formerly homeless people. With, modular construction, the components of a housing development .are built in one place, shipped to a construction site and then assembled. Using the efficiencies of a factory assembly line, the individual parts can be built more quickly — and cheaply. "Right now (modular construction) for sure delivers speed. It's very efficient in terms of getting materials in place with design certainty," said Kate Hartley, director of the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, the agency expected to put up the money for the modular units. Over time, Hartley said, modular construction could also bring construction costs down by as much as io percent "as the industry grows and as technology improves." Today,, it usually costs $750,000 to $Soo,,000 to build a single affordable ttnit within a housing development in Saar Francisco, including the Cost of buying land. Funding frorn federal and state housing programs, fees from developers, and other sources typically pay for just over half of'thrat cost. The city generally picks Ula the remaining $,300,00o to $350,000 for each runt, Hartley said. With modular construction, she thinks the city can shave around $50,000 off the cost of 4/10/2019,9:36 AM each unit. Modular, stacked housing in Oakland Volume go Now Playing: "If we can achieve those kinds of savings — even $So,000 per unit — that makes a huge difference over time as we strive to build more affordable housing," she said. "Any savings we can achieve with modular development is more money we would reinvest right back into more affordable housing." Hartley estimates that the city's initial $ioo million purchase could help build around qoo affordable apartment units. Once the factory is operational, she said tlae city would look to deploy that money over "a short time frame," probably one or two years. The city wouldn't be the factory's only client, Hartley said. Other cities in the Bay Area facing their own punishing housing shortages could buy modular units, as could market -rate developers, Modular units are already being built in San Francisco, but they use components trucked in from other parts of the country. Because a substantial portion of the work needed to build modular apartments happens in factories, not on construction sites, the advent of more modular housing in Sara Francisco initially met stiff resistance from the city's powerful building trades unions, who feared their membe=rs would lose out on job opportunities. But modular supporters cleared a big hurdle in Januaay, when Breed, then serving as acting mayor, announced that the unions were on board and willing to partner with the city in the plan to bring the factory to San Francisco. In return for the unions' support, the city provided assurances that workers would participate in planning, developing and, eventually, operating the factory. "If we decided to do this on our own„ without (the building trades), most likely it would. fail because they wouldn"t be included," Breed said. "So instead of bringing theirs along on the back end,, we're bringing them along on the front egad to get their support and work with then so we do it right." Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, said the prospect of adding to the city's affordable housing stock while creating unionized jobs locally was "really exciting." "If they produce the modular units in San Francisco, it's a win-win for everyone," she said. An ongoing study by the design firm Nelson Worldwide exploring what it will take to bring the modular factory to San Francisco its expected to wrap up by the end of the year. That study is looking into everything from the cost of building the factory to potential locations to how supplies could be efficiently moved in and out. "We have not done what I believe is enough housing production in San Francisco as a whole," Breed said. "This could be an incredible opportunity for the city and for housing production in the future." Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eta errcts c iii°iaacsrtrc1 ;..r9 it, Twitter: ,tr�rdrrrvin q i"er , s�c,x: 4/10/2019, 9:36 AM