A Quandary for California
California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, has come out of the gate with some very ambitious plans for housing. In a public announcement on Medium.com, he proposed that the state develop 3.5 million new housing units by 2025 to alleviate its glaringly bad housing problem. In his statement, he laid out several approaches to the goal, but there’s one big barrier that wasn’t mentioned: a shortage of construction laborers. In the early 2000s, the housing market was booming and housing construction was on a high wave mark. During that time, the construction industry depended on young, unskilled workers and on immigrants to fulfill labor demands. However, both populations are in decline due to poor pay, dangerous conditions, and lack of steady work or job security. From 2006 to 2017, California lost about 200,000 construction workers, which will make the annual goal of 500,000 new houses a very difficult one to achieve.
Thinking Inside the Container
The construction labor shortage problem sounds very daunting for the state planners, but Adaptive Shelters has some elegant solutions to keep California’s housing creation timeline on track. When you don’t have enough builders, don’t build, assemble! Prefabricated modular housing and storage container housing is quickly becoming a popular alternative to on-premise construction. Ranging from a petite 8x26ft studio to a roomy 16x40ft one bedroom apartment, Adaptive Shelters’ modular homes offer the epitome of affordable, comfortable, and configurable. Custom modular home solutions are also available. The modular units are stackable, easy to move, stylish, and are excellent for large-scale residential communities. The steel container homes’ walls are weatherproof, fireproof and pest-proof.
More Modular for the Money
Governor Newsom’s plan calls for a $4 billion statewide housing fund and an increase in tax credits for $500 million. These taxpayer funded dollars will be strictly controlled and spending highly monitored. It will be extremely important for developers to use the most efficient methods for creating 3.5 million units of affordable, quality housing. Utilizing modular and container housing from Adaptive Shelters can save up to 30% on development costs over traditional on-premise construction since there are no weather or labor considerations, or site preparation delays. Prefabricated modular housing also drastically cuts down on time to project completion, which is huge for being able to build those millions of new homes by 2025.