Tell your state leaders to accelerate modular housing projects!

In Somerville, Massachusetts, modular housing startup Reframe Systems recently installed a three-family “triplex” residential building in just four days! This historically rapid housing construction project was possible because standardized factory-made pieces were assembled on site, with the triplex made from 24 modular sections (including toilets and everything!) brought in via flatbed truck.

Current home-building rates generally require around 150 minutes of human labor per square foot. Reframe claims that they’re already at 64 minutes per square foot, and hope to reach as low as 6 minutes per square foot! Furthermore, their flexible “microfactory” model, with every piece of the factory transportable on wheels and adding up to less than 20,000 square feet could allow them to scale up quickly across the nation.

Innovations like this are exactly what we need right now! Modular housing is a fast-growing new field. Reframe is just one of many new modular construction startups and designers across with amazing potential to help solve the grave American housing crisis. Making more housing available has a wide range of positive societal effects, including family formation and pollution reduction through enabling denser neighborhood construction.

In the U.S. housing field, state and local laws and regulations are generally the thorniest barrier to deploying new technologies. Building codes were generally written with the unspoken basic assumption that all construction would take place on-site, making it extremely difficult to legally build modular housing in many jurisdictions. Reframe’s recent Somerville triplex was built in four days, after waiting ten months (around 300 days!) for the town to approve building permits!

Artificial limits on housing, often at the town “zoning” level, are a major contributor to a host of societal ills including homelessness and inflation. It’s critical for state leaders to proactively work to ensure that modular homes can be rapidly deployed to provide affordable homes in their communities. Policy makers should actively work to remove bottlenecks and accelerate this win-win innovation with a supportive legal, regulatory, and permitting structure!

Tell your state leaders to accelerate modular housing projects!