Tourists taking in the nation’s capital witnessed a peculiar sight this week: about eight manufactured houses on the National Mall.
This wasn’t a protest, nor the start of what could be D.C.’s most exclusive neighborhood. It was the sixth annual Innovative Housing Showcase, a collection of some of the newest ideas reshaping construction and tackling issues like affordability and durability.
“Every year we have brought homes to the Mall that challenge long held assumptions about what manufactured housing can be, and this year is truly a game changer for the industry thanks to the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” said Lesli Gooch, CEO of Manufactured Housing Institute.
The event was hosted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and MHI was one of the sponsors, together with the International Code Council, Structural Building Components Association, the National Association of Home Builders and Rocket.
The landmark ROAD to Housing law passed this summer eliminated the requirement for a manufactured home to be built on a permanent “chassis,” or base.
Cavco, one of the largest names in manufactured homes, presented the first such home at the showcase.
“I am more than pleased to be able to show the public the very first HUD-coded home that is being built without a chassis,” said Colleen Rogers, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Cavco Home, Inc. “... Now that that steel frame, wheels and axels can be pulled away, this home can be lowered down to 18 inches—six inches above the ground giving it a much more residential look at an affordable price point for so many Americans.”
The event brought together affordable homes of all sizes—from a two-story, three-bedroom 1,700 square foot build with a balcony, to a compact, 90-square-foot abode with a Murphy-style bed.
“We’re making it specifically for temporary and transitional homes,” said Charlie Nitschelm of his 90-square-foot design, which will retail for $35,000.
Think workforce housing in rural environments, disaster relief or affordable housing villages, Nitschelm, the co-founder and CEO of Uplift, explained. The off-grid, self-leveling pod is an impressive product, considering the prototype came together in just four months.
“Four months ago, we pitched this idea for Uplift at the MIT $100,000 entrepreneurship competition. We won. We took that tailwind [and] we raised $7 million with venture capital. We quit grad school. We moved to Austin, Texas. We hired 17 engineers. We have designed and built this in two months to deploy here today,” said Nitschelm, who has an engineering background.
Humidity-Absorbing Paint, Concrete-Leveling Lasers
Creative materials and technologies were also on full display. Like a paint and primer duo that markets itself as a solution to combat humidity in steamy bathrooms.
“Our paint at that point will start pulling that humidity in, store it in the paint, and the overall humidity in the room will drop,” said Evita Willems, material scientist at Adept Materials. “... Our primer can breathe and allows humidity that is stuck in the wall to slowly be released out.”
The technology was invented by a Brown University physics and engineering professor, who founded the company and serves as the CEO.
Across the Mall, Nolan Hayes from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was presenting a new tool that uses lasers to create a heat-map to spread foundations evenly.
“We can show, basically as concrete is being poured, where the high spots are and the low spots are,” said Hayes, a research and development associate at the Department of Energy–funded institute.
That’s important because if there’s more than two inches of variation in parts of the foundation, that leads to expensive and difficult errors to fix, Hayes explained. The lab plans to work with industry partners to sell the technology to the public.
Meanwhile, Godfrey Riddle, founder and president of Civic Saint, was proving that what’s old is new again. He manufactures compressed earthen blocks using sandy clay, soil, water and stabilizer, the same tech that’s been around for thousands of years and is behind the Great Wall of China.
“My family lost their home to foreclosure twice [when I was] growing up, and then I’m from Kansas City and seeing all of the vacant lots and opportunity for wealth creation and job creation, I just looked for a model that was proven,” Riddle said. He considered affordability in his design. Civic Saint’s first-sold two-bed, two-bath house, now under construction in Kansas City, was priced at $195,000.
“It has great climate resilience against tornadic winds, hurricane winds, it’s fireproof, it doesn’t mold—so if your home ever floods the water recedes and your wall is dry,” he added.
Together, the exhibits showed how housing is evolving to meet buyers, from regulatory changes to new tools and materials intended to make construction more precise, resilient and affordable.
