“So far, most solutions to this housing crisis have focused on subsidizing prospective buyers. But what if there were a way to make housing cheaper at every step of the process: cheaper to build, cheaper to buy, and still affordable for the next resident?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In San Bernardino, a sunny California city located about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, a first-of-its-kind experiment is underway to test these ideas on a single plot of land. Think of it as an affordable housing policy trifecta: three different strategies to bring down housing costs \u2014 all at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first innovation is to streamline manufacturing. About 90 percent of homes<\/a> are built on the land they rest on, but in San Bernardino, manufacturers assembled a modest house \u2014 1,462 square feet, three bedrooms \u2014 in a factory before transporting it to its final destination on Ramona Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The existence of a new moderately sized single-family house is itself a coup when most new homes far exceed 2,000 square feet. Back in the 1940s, nearly 70 percent<\/a> of new homes were 1,400 square feet or less. Today, that number hovers around 10 percent<\/a> because rising land and construction costs \u2014 along with arduous permitting regulations and a preference for larger projects from lenders and investors \u2014 have made smaller homes nearly impossible to build using traditional production techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the case of San Bernardino, not only are smaller houses less expensive for residents, but factory manufacturing further lowers the price by allowing developers to complete projects more quickly. Manufactured homes cost 45 percent less<\/a> per square foot than their \u201csite-built\u201d counterparts, according to Freddie Mac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second innovation is an 800-square-foot accessory dwelling unit (ADU) located on the same plot of land, about 20 feet away from the house. The matching cream-colored unit provides two more bedrooms and bathrooms to another family, below market rate. In other words, the ADU increases affordable housing without requiring additional land, making more efficient use of the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third innovation: the land itself is owned by a local affordable housing development group<\/a>, which is using a community land trust<\/a> to ensure that both the manufactured house and the ADU remain reasonably priced for generations. The community land trust, in effect, limits how much the homeowners could ever resell the property for when they\u2019re ready to move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dora Davila, a 42-year-old medical lab technician born and raised in San Bernardino, recently moved with her three children to the new manufactured home on Ramona Avenue. Her family had been living in an apartment, and despite months of searching, could find no houses available that were affordable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were looking at mobile home parks but, the thing is, none of them had a yard and I wanted space for my kids,\u201d she said.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n