"Within five years, Operation Breakthrough, the ambitious, but ultimately costly, delay-ridden and politically unpopular federal initiative that had propped up the Kalamazoo factory and eight others like it across the country, ran out of money. The dream of the factory-built house was dead - not for the first time, nor the last. By some definitions, the first prefabricated house was built, shipped and re-assembled in the 1620s. Factory-built homes made of wood and iron were a mainstay of the colonial enterprises of the 19th Century."
"Now, amid a national housing shortage, the question felt as pressing as ever: 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?"
Factory-built housing has repeatedly been proposed as a faster, cheaper solution to housing shortages, promising assembly-line speed, efficiency, quality control and cost savings. In 1971 a factory in Kalamazoo produced a model home and the HUD Secretary predicted widespread industrialization of housing within a decade. Operation Breakthrough funded multiple factories but encountered delays, high costs and political backlash, and ran out of money within five years. Prefabricated homes have roots going back centuries and reappeared during wartime and postwar efforts. Historical attempts have often failed to scale despite recurring optimism and federal support.
Read at The Mercury News
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