Factory-Built Housing Hasn't Taken Off in California Yet, but This Year Might Be Different | KQED

"Now comes phase two. Last year's blitz of bills, capping off years of gradual legislative efforts to remove regulatory barriers to building dense housing across California, has, in Wicks' view, teed up this next big swing. "Over the last eight to 10 years or so the Legislature and the governor have really taken a bulldozer to a lot of the bureaucratic hurdles when it comes to housing," said Wicks. "But one of the issues that we haven't fundamentally tackled is the cost of construction.""

"Factory-built housing can arrive on a construction site in varying levels of completeness. There are prefabricated panels (imagine the baked slabs of a gingerbread house) and fully three-dimensional modules (think, Legos)."

"Interest in the use of both for apartment buildings has been steadily growing in California over the last decade. Investors have poured billions of dollars into the nascent sector, albeit with famously mixed results. In California's major urban areas, but especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, cranes delicately assembling factory-built modules into apartment blocks has become a more familiar feature of the skyline."

"Randall Thompson, who runs the prefabrication division of Nibbi Brothers General Contractors, said he's seen attitudes shift radically just in the last couple of years. Not long ago, pitching a developer on factory-built construction was a tough sell. But a few years ago he noted a growing number of "modular-curious" clients willing to run the numbers. Now many are coming to him committed to the idea from the get-go. Policymakers are interested too, debating whether public policy and taxpayer money should be used to propel off-site construction from niche application to a regular, if not dominant, feature of the industry. Evidence from abroad is fueling that optimism: In Sweden, where Wicks and a gaggle of other lawmakers visited last fall, nearly half of residential construction takes place in a factory."

California has removed many bureaucratic hurdles to denser housing in recent years, but construction costs remain a primary unresolved barrier. Factory-built housing includes prefabricated panels and fully three-dimensional modules that can arrive at job sites in varying states of completion. Investor capital has flowed into the nascent modular sector, producing visible modular projects in major urban skylines, especially in the Bay Area. Developer attitudes have shifted from skepticism to commitment for many projects. Policymakers are debating whether public support and funding should scale off-site construction. International examples, notably Sweden, suggest large-scale factory production is feasible.

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