DENVER (news agencies) — As Americans struggle under backbreaking rental prices, builders are turning to innovative ways to churn out more housing, from 3D printing to assembling homes in an indoor factory to using hemp — yes, the marijuana cousin — to make building blocks for walls.
It’s a response to the country’s shortfall of millions of homes that has led to skyrocketing prices, plunging millions into poverty.
“There’s not enough homes to purchase and there’s not enough places to rent. Period,” said Adrianne Todman, the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under former President Joe Biden.
One way to quickly build more is embrace these types of innovations, Todman said. “I can only imagine what our housing situation would be like now if we could have made a decision to be more aggressive in adopting this type of housing.”
So what are these new ways of building homes? And can they help reduce the cost of new housing, leading to lower rents?
In a cavernous, metal hall, Eric Schaefer stood in front of a long row of modular homes that moved through the plant, similar to a car on an assembly line.
At a series of stations, workers lay flooring, erected framing, added roofs and screwed on drywall. Everything from electrical wiring to plumbing to kitchen countertops were in place before the homes were shrink-wrapped and ready to be shipped.
The business in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Fading West, has pumped out more than 500 homes in its just over three years of operation, each taking just five to seven days to build, even in the coldest winter months, Schaefer said.
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