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Imagine if we built cars the same way we build houses. First, a typical buyer would meet with a car designer and tell them what kind of car they want. The designer would then create a plan for the car. The buyer would call different car manufacturers in their town and show them the blueprints. The manufacturer might say, “Yeah, I can build that car for you based on this blueprint. It’ll cost $1 million and it’ll be ready in a year and a half.”
Alexis Rivas stands in front of one of Cover’s prefabricated homes in Los Angeles, Calif. It takes them about a month to build one of these homes, but they hope to make the process more efficient and, more importantly, cheaper.
Nick Fontaine/NPR
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Nick Fontaine/NPR
Alexis Rivas stands in front of one of Cover’s prefabricated homes in Los Angeles, Calif. It takes them about a month to build one of these homes, but they hope to make the process more efficient and, more importantly, cheaper.
Nick Fontaine/NPR
There are many reasons why housing in the United States is so expensive, including zoning and land prices. Also, the way we build houses is very slow and inefficient. So why don’t we mass-produce houses in factories like we build everything else?
This episode explores the century-old dream of factory-built homes and the possibilities of the future of prefabricated housing.
This episode was produced by Emma Peaslee. Molly Messick edited and Sierra Juarez fact-checked. Brian Jarboe produced this episode. Jess Jiang serves as our acting executive producer.
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music: “Collections“”Spaghetti Western,” and Extremely sharp“
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