King County is experiencing a crisis in equitable access to housing that is safe, healthy, and affordable. At first glance, the response seems simple: create more housing faster. But a response is only a true solution if it doesn’t sacrifice quality for quantity, ignore sustainability mandates, or increase the already high cost of housing in our region.
King County’s unprecedented and growing crisis calls us to bring fresh eyes and robust, current data to the inherent challenges of affordable housing development. Modular and other offsite methods are a case in point. Technological advances in those methodologies offer us the potential to deliver safe, healthy, sustainable homes with both greater efficiency and greater affordability. And unlike other delivery methods, those single-project improvements can scale, ultimately producing homes at a reduced overall cost.
Motivated by the urgency of the crisis and the possibilities of these methods, the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County (HDC) formed the Offsite Construction Task Force (OCTF). This is a powerful collaboration of both experience and passion, merging the expertise of both market-rate and affordable housing developers who, until now, have tackled these projects independently of each other. OCTF provides these collaborators with both industry and research support and equips them to address permitting and construction, financing and procurement, municipal codes, and public myths.
