"As the first home rolled off the factory floor in Kalamazoo, Mich. - "like a boxcar with picture windows," according to a journalist on the scene - the secretary of Housing and Urban Development proclaimed it "the coming of a real revolution in housing." For decades engineers, architects, futurists, industrialists, investors and politicians have been pining for a better, faster and cheaper way to build homes."
"What if construction could harness the speed, efficiency, quality control and cost-savings of the assembly line? What if, rather than building homes on-site from the ground up, they were cranked out of factories, one unit after another, shipped to where they were needed and dropped into place? What if the United States could mass-produce its way out of a housing crisis?"
Manufacturing techniques for housing have been pursued for centuries, from 17th-century prefabricated houses to 19th-century colonial factory-built homes and wartime efforts in the 1940s. The factory-built movement promised speed, efficiency, quality control and lower costs by producing units in plants and shipping them for assembly. A high-profile 1971 federal initiative, Operation Breakthrough in Kalamazoo, embraced that vision and inspired predictions of industrialized housing, but it became costly, delayed, politically unpopular and ran out of money within years. The recurring pattern shows periodic optimism and government support followed by practical, financial and political setbacks that stalled mass production of housing.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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