California Lawmakers Aim to Boost Factory-Built Housing
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks is leading an effort to streamline regulations and funding for factory-built housing construction as a way to address the state’s housing shortage. While past attempts to industrialize home-building have failed, proponents believe the time may be right to give it another try, with the state potentially playing a role in ensuring a steady pipeline of projects, insuring factories against risk and standardizing building code requirements.
California’s housing crisis has persisted for years, with high construction costs and slow building timelines contributing to the shortage. Factory-built housing offers the potential to reduce costs by 10-25% and speed up construction by 10-30%.
“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.”
