Modular homes are being constructed inside a warehouse at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 2. A half-dozen prototype modular homes have been designed to be efficient to build and cost-effective. Prototype modular homes are being made in part with Oregon mass timber, a high-tech strong wood laminate. Hacienda CDC is leading the project which believe that modulars will be especially useful in rural parts of Oregon.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley toured the prototype modular homes under construction at a Port of Portland facility. If the project proves successful, these homes could be mass produced in Oregon with help from a $41 million federal grant to develop and expand Oregon’s emerging mass timber industry.
Oregon’s new governor wants development to ramp up and begin building 36,000 new units of housing in the state annually. “What I love about it, it’s a homegrown product — in this case mass timber out of southern Oregon — and modular, which allows us to be more efficient, quicker to put more homes on the ground,” said Kotek.
Oregon has a shortage of 110,000 housing units for current residents at all income levels. To accommodate future growth, the state may need to build more than 580,000 homes by 2040. “We need more homes now to address Oregon’s urgent housing crisis, and traditional systems alone will not be enough to get the job done. Mass Casitas is innovative because we’re combining mass timber with modular single-family home construction to develop a process that could help Oregon add more high-quality housing, faster,” said Ernesto Fonseca, CEO of Hacienda.
The governor has goals for ending homelessness and keeping people housed. Last week she announced specifics of a $130 million plan for that. The six prototypes will be donated to nonprofit partners across the state that will select people to live in them. The governor said she thinks the modular homes, currently configured as studios, 2- and 3-bedroom units, could be great for disaster relief and as a piece of the overall housing solution. Developers don’t have a figure yet for what the units will end up costing. We should know more on that after a year of the prototypes being tested in different climates of the state and fine-tuned by developers.
