While prefabricated buildings continue to pop up in Washington and Northern California, they aren’t catching on in Oregon.

“Construction costs are the biggest part of it,” said Nathan Young, owner of MODS PDX Inc. in Portland. “The labor shortage is also a part of it. We haven’t seen the kind of labor shortages they have in the Bay Area.”

Prefabricated building techniques can save developers time and money. But the conditions have to be right, according to industry professionals.

“People aren’t committed to it to the point of this is a way they are going to do things going forward,” said Derrick Aragon, principal at Northwest Ventures Group Inc. “They are comparing (prices), and if (a modular price) comes in in the same ballpark, they say they want do it the way they always have.”

Northwest Ventures Group is one of the few companies that has successfully developed a prefab project in Portland. The firm was the principal developer of the Dekum 13 project in Portland; it also has two other prefab projects in the development stage.

Improvements in design and quality have made the structures more attractive across the country.

“The designs have come a long way,” Young said. “You have seen them in high-end magazines. They’re in all sorts of different styles. They don’t look like or have a module feeling.”

Modular buildings have improved since the days of mobile homes. Today, everything from 300-square-foot temporary lodgings to 4,000-square-foot luxury structures can be built on a factory assembly line hundreds of miles from their final destinations.

Still, the industry largely serves a niche market. While Kiplinger and similar websites offer slide shows featuring million-dollar, 4,400-square-foot modular mansions, the average prefabricated structure tends to be geared for the small single-family or multifamily markets.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the national average cost per square foot for a typical modular home is $76.80. The average stick-built home costs $94.34 per square foot. However, regional disparities can have dramatic impacts on those costs.

According to Young, in the San Francisco Bay Area, residential construction is running $400 to $500 per square foot. Modular construction varies more by producer, but averages approximately $160 per square foot.

In Portland, the disparities are much closer and in some cases, modular homes cost the same as traditionally built ones. In a report on housing released in 2016, the city of Portland estimated stick-built construction costs at $207 per square foot.

“Our push has been on energy efficiency,” he said. “More millennials … are keen on getting smaller, 2,000-square-foot homes that are energy efficient.”

Another big selling point for prefab structures is the time savings they can offer a developer. Every month that can be saved on construction means less financing costs carried out of the developers’ pocket.

“The big driver is time and quality,” said Aaron Holm, CEO of Blokable.

Holm’s company focuses on building affordable homes in markets where many people are priced out of housing. The company is headquartered in Seattle and has a 30,000-square-foot facility in Vancouver. He said that in some areas his modular construction method can build housing up to 50 percent faster than traditional stick-built methods.

“In this industry, the idea you have to custom-build every structure seemed kind of crazy,” he said. “I just thought here was a huge opportunity to build a product that could fill a need.”

Holm entered the industry after serving as a product manager at Amazon. He was involved with overseeing the company’s brick-and-mortar bookstores and Amazon Go grocery endeavor.

His new company’s niche is small “plug and play” housing that runs between $135 and $350 per square foot. Like most modular designs, the structures are built in a company factory, and then shipped to the site. Currently, the company has projects in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Auburn, Washington.

What each market has in common is a labor shortage and skyrocketing property prices, forcing people out of the market. Things have gotten so expensive in the Bay Area that Google recently announced that it would purchase 300 prefabricated homes to serve as temporary housing for its workforce.

“Our mission is to make housing affordable to everyone,” Holm said. “As we ramp up, we can really drive down cost and time. There is certainly room to expand. I think the key thing is delivering value.”

Affordable housing is a key market for the industry, which could make it a viable option for dealing with the housing crisis in Portland.

Stuart Emmons, a housing advocate and modular housing specialist, believes prefabrication can help address homelessness.

“Modular/prefab is still feeling its way,” he said. “The solution (to homelessness) is there is a series of solutions. Prefab is part of it.”

One issue limiting the use of prefabricated homes, Emmons said, is a lack of builders. While there are more builders on the East Coast and Midwest, most builders try to stay within 1,000 miles of their primary market.

“The problem is that there aren’t that many manufacturers on the West Coast,” he said. “It’s a wide open field.”

While, in theory, prefabricated structures could be shipped across the country, transit regulations can make shipping the structures across multiple states a challenge.

“In California and Canada they allow wider shipping,” Aragon said. “In Oregon, (the limit) is 16 feet wide. You have to pay for extra permits, but you can’t go past 20 feet.”

A recent change to Oregon law added four feet to the maximum length of items that can travel on state highways.

“Four feet doesn’t sound like much, but when we are looking at small places, every foot counts,” Aragon said.

Another issue has to do with finding general contractors that have dealt with using a modular format. Contractors still have to prepare the site, perform foundation work and put the new structure in place.

“Weather is my biggest concern regarding modular delivery in the cooler, damper Northwest climate,” said Robert Lecher, project manager at Ankrom Moisan Architects. “The factory can do a good job preparing boxes for shipment, but general contractors have a big learning curve to keep the project dry while being erected.”

Lecher teamed with Bridge Housing to construct the Marea Alta development in San Leandro, California. The two-phase project will provide 285 units when it is completed in 2018. He said that finding builders capable of handling projects that size is a big problem.

As housing prices continue to soar, quick inexpensive ways to build houses will look more attractive, Lecher said.

“I believe we’re about to see a large increase of modular housing in Portland and Seattle,” he said.

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As Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design (CPID) seeks to help alleviate the city’s housing crisis, it has garnered contributions from professional architects.

“Architecture and design usually only serve the wealthy,” said Todd Ferry, a research associate for the CPID. “We wanted to figure out how we can take our ideas to benefit underserved communities.”

A coalition including the CPID started the Partners On Dwelling (POD) Initiative. Fourteen teams signed on to create prototype housing pods that could help alleviate homelessness in Portland. The goal was for the pods to be able to be mass-produced easily and occupy a relatively small space.

“The idea behind them is that these would be longer-term transitional housing,” Ferry said. “So these would be somebody’s home for an extended amount of time.”

The pods are very small. The largest of the designs is just 8 feet by 12 feet while the tiniest is 6 feet by 8 feet. The tallest stands just 10 feet, 8 inches.

They lack almost all amenities. There is no electricity, heat or running water.

What the pods lack in creature comforts, they make up for in functionality. The houses are heavily insulated, and their small sizes help trap body heat. The tiny homes also have bedding and a variety of design features that help address challenges faced by the homeless. One pod includes a dry sink. Another structure features bunk beds and a second entry to allow multiple people to sleep. The pods also are designed to allow for storage and to be locked for security.

In addition, the pods’ sizes allow significant flexibility for location.

“Faith organizations were interested, and 6-by-8 (units) could fit on a parking spot and use the organizations’ infrastructure,” Ferry said.

The hope is that these structures could be used in a village setting, similar to other encampments like Right 2 Dream Too or Hazelnut Grove. One such “transitional village” for up to 14 women is already in the works at 2221 N. Argyle St. The project is currently receiving public input.

The pods were built in a fashion to require minimal, simple maintenance. Pod residents would be responsible for cleaning and maintaining the structures. In a village setting, a communal infrastructure of bathrooms, showers and sinks can be used.

A large effort was invested in making the structures aesthetically pleasing.

“Part of this is about changing perceptions,” Ferry said. “We are hoping that people would be willing to have these near where they live.”

Another big issue was keeping construction costs to a minimum. Each design team was given $2,000 through the mayor’s office to produce a prototype. Some teams invested their own money or raised additional money through GoFundMe websites to push the average amount spent to $3,000.

They were built fast. The project began with a design charette attended by nearly 100 designers, social workers, activists and houseless individuals on Oct. 1. The prototypes were on display by Dec. 5 on a parking

lot at Northwest Glisan Street and Park Avenue.

The time and design parameters posed a variety of challenges for project teams.

“We usually do these enormous projects with unlimited budgets (in class),” fourth-year architecture student Heather Peterson said. “This was the first time we have been pulled down to earth. It was a great dose of reality.”

One of the biggest challenges Peterson’s team faced was bringing light into the structure and giving the occupant a sense of separate living and sleeping spaces.

“We used a strip of polycarbonate to allow in filtered light,” she said. “We wanted to make something that had elements of luxury that you wouldn’t normally see in a structure like this.”

Each team used different features like small porches to maximize the space they had to work with and make the structure more than just a place to stay for the night.

“For our team, we thought it was important to give the people enough space that they could make it their own,” said Reid Weber, a project assistant on SERA Architects‘ team.

The teams also spoke to homeless individuals to see what elements they wanted in the structure.

“They said they tend to have a huge rat problem,” Weber said. “We made the floor as durable as possible. We used a wire mesh to stop rats from getting in.”

Even items such as insulation had to considered carefully with potential residents in mind.

“They said that staying dry was a big concern,” Weber said. “We used a rigid insulation to (keep the unit) drier.”

Heat was a big focus of LRS Architects‘ pod. Team members focused on the idea that it would be maintained with almost no resources from the person living in it.

“We wanted to make it as close to a passive house as possible,” said Kelsy Colvin, a project manager for LRS Architects’ team. “We designed it so it could be heated off of body heat.”

The architects found that many of the techniques used for their pod projects can be used elsewhere.

“I think one of the unique constraints was looking at how you move these,” said Scott Mooney, an architect with SRG Partnership. “How wide it can be and how tall can it be before you can’t get it on flat bed on a freeway. Those ideas are useful in context of prefab houses. How those elements get from A to B and how those elements are transported to another site.”

The pods nevertheless have significant drawbacks, according to Stuart Emmons, vice president of strategic development at Blokable, a company focused on modular stackable housing.

“These pods are what they are,” he said. “It’s better than staying outside. That’s fair enough; I get that. It’s dry.”

Emmons has focused on housing solutions for the homeless for much of his career. He said that the space needed for a pod could be a significant hurdle for use in Portland’s core, where property is so valuable. However, he acknowledged that the pods can be a part of the overall solution.

“These aren’t the only solution, but it is one solution,” Ferry said. “There are going to be many solutions to solve this problem.”

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