Building a ‘Tesla house’: Could factory-built homes help Utah’s housing crisis?

This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab.

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Utahns across the state are stressed about the cost of housing. Homeownership is out of reach for average workers, and with rising rents, finding an apartment that requires just 30% of your paycheck lately is like winning the lottery.

It’s been a fierce topic of discussion during Salt Lake City’s recent mayoral debates. And on Thursday, Gov. Spencer Cox chimed in, urging cities to “find more [housing] supply, and you have to do it quicker.”

The same day, state and local leaders, academics and developers began gathering at the University of Utah for the Innovations in Housing Affordability Summit to discuss one potential solution to boost supply: factory-built housing.

Researcher Dejan Eskic presented data showing that 77.2% of Utah households cannot afford a median priced home.

A recent report from Ivory Innovations, the nonprofit arm of Ivory Homes, also noted that in 2020, the United States had a deficit of 3.8 million housing units.

Rather than building on-site, companies across the Mountain West are setting up factories that promise to quickly deliver desperately needed units. They say utilizing steel, automation and 3D printing will result in high quality, quickly built homes that create minimal waste and pollution.

Factory-built housing is also less bound to the constraints of a tight labor market, they said, as well as short building seasons dependent on weather and the need for variety.

“We’re trying to build like a car; we’re trying to build a Tesla house,” Bob Worsley, founder of ZenniHome, said during a panel discussion on factory-built housing in the Mountain West, “and we’ve gone all steel, we call it FASST housing.” (FASST is an acronym for factory-built, advanced tech, sustainable, stackable and transportable).

The modules produced by ZenniHome are small and feature beds that rise into the ceiling during the day, with walls that can move.

“People are saying they’re willing to go small,” Worsley said, “they’re calling it simple sizing; sometimes it’s downsizing. But a lot of people are saying I don’t need the McMansion anymore.”

And even if some still do want a McMansion, who can afford it in Utah?

Justin Stewart of Synergy Modular shared national examples of affordable housing projects that utilized “modular” factory-built homes and apartments, from Seattle to Mesa, Arizona.

In Salt Lake City, some homeowners have already purchased “modular homes” and placed them in their backyards to rent out.

While many touted the benefits of factory-built housing, especially when it comes to boosting the nation’s housing supply — navigating the patchwork of state and local laws is difficult and remains a major barrier for the approach to take off.

Blake Thomas, director of community and neighborhoods in Salt Lake City, noted that Salt Lake City was the first municipality to adopt off-site construction standards, which should make bringing the units into the city a more straightforward process. “We always try to be as forward-thinking as we can to help alleviate the shortage which we have right now,” Thomas said.

He noted that the proposed tiny home village on Salt Lake City’s west side will be made up of 60 modular units built in a Salt Lake County factory.

Cameron Diehl, executive director at Utah League of Cities and Towns, said mayors and councilmembers “want to do what we can on the regulatory side to facilitate this innovation going mainstream in Utah,” but they still had questions about making sure cost-savings from factory-built houses make their way to homebuyers.

New rules on factory-built homes may be in the pipeline during the upcoming legislative session in Utah.

Editor’s note • The Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation is a donor to The Salt Lake Tribune’s Innovation Lab.