This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful
In Buena Vista, Colorado, there’s a factory that builds houses. Not double-wides or A-frame kits, but bonafide, full-size, single-family homes. The factory, home of the manufacturing company Fading West, is immense. Like a giant air hockey table, its floor is covered with air jets powerful enough to move whole rooms. And right now, the facility is churning out up to two homes per week.
Housing experts have toyed with the idea of modular housing as a solution to the affordable housing crisis for decades. In the 1970s, the federal government dumped millions of dollars in subsidies into modular home factories across the US. But the subsidies couldn’t change the fact that the technology wasn’t good enough to make or move the homes efficiently. Then there was the problem of the connotation. Prefabricated homes were often associated with mobile home parks, which many middle-class Americans considered shoddily made and visually unattractive. For decades, “prefab” was a bit of a dirty word.
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