Cherise Jones is so excited to be buying a home - a new home - that she drops by the site two or three times a week just to look.
This morning, it's only a foundation, one of nine on a vacant East Baltimore block. Next month, Jones' home will be complete.
Tonight, Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake is trucking in modular houses to set on the foundations, a first for the nonprofit and an emerging trend in affordable-housing efforts. Factory-built houses aren't just quick to put up, they're cheaper than homes constructed on-site. Advocates for lower-income residents are realizing that, done right, there's nothing of the much-maligned trailer park about houses coming off today's assembly lines.
Habitat's incoming modular units, which will be set over basements, are two-story rowhouses with brick facades. They're also designed to be energy-efficient and have cleaner indoor air than many homeowners breathe.
"I think it's really innovative," said Mike Mitchell, chief executive of the nonprofit, an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International.
Matt Metzger, the local group's director of construction, sees in modular housing the potential for "a model that makes a lot of sense for Baltimore."
"The city has vacant lots all around, this size or larger," Metzger said.
Most factory-built housing is placed in rural settings, but the Manufactured Housing Institute is seeing more urban examples. "They can go in tight spaces; they can be designed for narrow lots," said Thayer Long, executive vice president of the trade group, which also represents the modular-housing industry.
Modular housing is engineered to meet local building codes. Manufactured housing, its bigger cousin, follows federal building codes and accounts for about 1.7 million of the homes added to the U.S. landscape in the past decade.
"Manufactured housing is the major source of unsubsidized affordable housing in America," said Andrea Levere, president of CFED, a Washington nonprofit that works to increase economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income Americans.
But until recently, affordable-housing groups have not worked to get people into factory-built homes; if anything, they have done the reverse. That's because many owners of manufactured homes lease the land, which means they can end up with nowhere to put the house if the landowner decides to redevelop. Homebuyers using rented land also do not have the same mortgage options available to someone getting a traditional "stick-built" house.
