Lauren Albano’s article “From teardown to dream home: Build in N.H., assemble in Mass., pocket the savings” (Metro, May 4) highlights an encouraging path toward lower-carbon housing. Beyond custom builds, the real promise of prefab homes lies in scaling production to address our severe housing shortage and the homelessness crisis.
Factory-built housing can reduce construction time by as much as 50 percent, enhance quality control, and lower costs by as much as 35 percent. Massachusetts is 45th in the nation in modular construction, an approach popular throughout Europe for decades. The few modular housing projects built here are manufactured mostly in neighboring states.
How can we turn this problem around? Massachusetts needs clear, consistent policies that promote standardization, streamline approvals, and incentivize modular construction, particularly for multifamily and affordable housing. These efforts should also prioritize partnerships that accelerate the creation of new housing for people experiencing homelessness. The same efficiencies that allowed the couple in Somerville featured in the article to build quickly and sustainably could help municipalities produce high-quality housing for all.
Prefabrication offers the only real opportunity to create affordable housing at scale; we must create the conditions for it to succeed across the Commonwealth.
Marc Margulies
Volunteer housing adviser
Joyce Tavon
Chief executive
Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance
Boston
Margulies, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, is principal emeritus of Margulies Perruzzi Architects.