The potential of prefabricated housing is in outsourcing. What will be the price per square foot when they are made in in China, Africa or South America -- or any other place where monetary exchange rates or the availability of slave labor allows us to buy skilled labor at $1 per hour?

Though the American poor may benefit from cheap houses (at the expense of American construction workers), it won't help the middle class much. The main cost of middle-class housing is not in the structure but rather in the land/location -- and it is the very high price of the location that makes a location desirable.

To be desireable, a location must be safe and must have good schools. To be safe and have good schools, a neighborhood must exclude disadvantaged families whose children often have educational and social problems -- children who are at greatest risk of falling into gangs and street crime. To exclude such families a neighborhood must be priced beyond their reach; it must be priced even beyond the reach of disadvantaged families with Section 8 housing subsidies.

Until small communities are allowed greater control over the sort of people who are permitted to live there (e.g. by expelling single mothers whose children act out), middle class families will have little option but to continue sacrificing child-rearing so that so that both parents can dedicate themselves to lucrative but demanding careers, raising their 1.5 children in expensive, gated communities.

Unfortunately, this response will weaken our country's economic base in the long run, leaving future generations with a much smaller middle-class tax base. The effect will be as if the entire nation suffered from "white flight."

It's hard to imagine prefab houses being cheaper from China. The cost of an American worker putting the house together can't be more than the cost of shipping an entire house around the world.

A very interesting read, fsilber, thanks for posting.

I don't think the potential of prefab is outsourcing. There are too many architects who are thinking about sustainability and re-use of materials out there. Columbia architects Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano outline their work here: <link>

they use shipping containers to make really amazing stuff. it's an attitudinal change, not trailer park or cheap outsourcing.

fsilber, I'm not sure if what you're describing is how you feel based on frustration or desire.

My experience with housing in our culture is that we all lack choice, and that lack of choice is what creates the high demand and therefore high cost of ownership.

The Poor do not by definition have children that “act out” nor does everyone having their rental housing subsidized by Section Eight of the HUD code. If this were so how then do we explain Paris Hilton, Albert Gore Jr. and Martha Stewart?

If more people gave closer inspection to the idea of spreading out the geography in which anyone could live rather than cording/gating it off we could stop warehousing the poor. Perpetuating the ghetto and the trailer park is the cause of the social behavior you deplore. Apparently you feel it’s killing the middle class too.

I've never heard such an honest explanation for the way things are. fsilber, you'll never make it as a politician or ambassador, but you sure threw a bucket of ice cold water in my face this morning. Kudos for that. Others will wail & gnash their teeth at what you write, but they can't say it isn't true. Thanks again for your honesty. C-Mac

While the essay is interesting, Mr. Rybczynski's caption for slide #7 is incorrect. The so-called "insert" on the gable end of the panelized hose shown is in fact what is known as a vaulted gable truss.

The end wall of the house is built to a peak which matches the vault on the lower chord of the interior trusses, and the bottom chord of the end (gable) truss has a matching profile.

The geometry shown in the photo has nothing whatsoever to do with economizing or repitition of panels. Horizontal joints in walls must always line up with the edges of horizontal interior panels (floors or ceilings) in timber structures order to maintain the structural integrity of the building under lateral loads (wind).

If you think making houses out of shipping containers, or anything along those lines, is going to make a significant, or even detectable, impact on the mainstream home market, I've got a nice little bridge over the East River you might be interested in investing in.

And by the way, that goes for just about anything that architects think or do -- even mainstream ones. They are as a profession just about irrelevant to the housing industry.

Actually I can and I will say it isn't true. It's twaddle.

Segregation by economic class is the cause of, not the solution for, the dysfunction of the underclass. Mixed-income neighborhoods can be quite safe and can have quite good schools. The problem began with the establishment of public housing and worstened with white flight, then later the flight of middle class blacks, from urban neighborhoods.

A flaw in this article is the constant focus on square footage. The argument than none of us will ever live in a modern prefab seems almost entirely based on this.

But that argument fails to take into account that the same people who are drawn to modern prefabs are the very people who are willing to have less square footage and to streamline their lifestyle.

The likely buyer of a modern prefab is not the person who wants or needs six bedrooms and a room for a pool table and pinball machines and a media room with La-Z-Boy theater seating.

In short, if the modern prefab costs 50% more per square foot but is 50% the size of a suburban McMansion, the price winds up the same -- and is within reach.

Japan is the world leader in pre-fab housing and it's concievable we may see Chinese manufactured pre-fabs manufactured by Japanese companies become a factor since Japanese are working hard to develop chinese market in building systems and alternative energy.

I mentioned that for housing to be desirable to the middle-class, it must be expensive enough to price out disadvantaged families who children often fall into crime and force schools to lower educational standards. Quell responded to me: "Perpetuating the ghetto and the trailer park is the cause of the social behavior you deplore." Quell's statement contradicts the oft-heard dictum that economic inequality is a root cause of crime. The only way to reduce a neighborhood's economic inequality is to narrowly target the economic stratum of the people who live in it.

Maroci commented: "Mixed-income neighborhoods can be quite safe and can have quite good schools. The problem began with the establishment of public housing and worstened with white flight, then later the flight of middle class blacks, from urban neighborhoods."

Mixed-income neighborhoods _can_ be quite safe, and once were safe. They can have good schools, and once did. However, in the 1960s political authorities began sympathizing with criminals from disadvantaged homes as being victims of society, and refused to come down as hard on them as earlier. Also, the idea to keep youths in high school regardless of their lack of interest or talent resulted in lowered academic and behavior standards for high schools in mixed neighborhoods. In the lower grades, opposition to tracking into fast, medium and slow classes also degraded the educational experience for privileged children in mixed neighborhoods. Rising crime predated white flight and the flight of the black middle-class and caused the flight -- not vice-versa. (For example, my great-Aunts fled the South Bronx not when it became mixed, but only after they began to be preyed upon by purse-snatchers and burglars.)

So the fact that mixed neighborhoods _could_ be safe and have good schools becomes irrelevant -- today such neighborhoods _aren't_ safe and _don't_ have such good schools.

fsilber:

I mentioned that for housing to be desirable to the middle-class, it must be expensive enough to price out disadvantaged families who children often fall into crime and force schools to lower educational standards. Quell responded to me: "Perpetuating the ghetto and the trailer park is the cause of the social behavior you deplore." Quell's statement contradicts the oft-heard dictum that economic inequality is a root cause of crime. The only way to reduce a neighborhood's economic inequality is to narrowly target the economic stratum of the people who live in it.

Maroci commented: "Mixed-income neighborhoods can be quite safe and can have quite good schools. The problem began with the establishment of public housing and worstened with white flight, then later the flight of middle class blacks, from urban neighborhoods."

Mixed-income neighborhoods _can_ be quite safe, and once were safe. They can have good schools, and once did. However, in the 1960s political authorities began sympathizing with criminals from disadvantaged homes as being victims of society, and refused to come down as hard on them as earlier. Also, the idea to keep youths in high school regardless of their lack of interest or talent resulted in lowered academic and behavior standards for high schools in mixed neighborhoods. In the lower grades, opposition to tracking into fast, medium and slow classes also degraded the educational experience for privileged children in mixed neighborhoods. Rising crime predated white flight and the flight of the black middle-class and caused the flight -- not vice-versa. (For example, my great-Aunts fled the South Bronx not when it became mixed, but only after they began to be preyed upon by purse-snatchers and burglars.)

So the fact that mixed neighborhoods _could_ be safe and have good schools becomes irrelevant -- today such neighborhoods _aren't_ safe and _don't_ have such good schools.

Well, it is simple reality that "school district" has a huge impact on the price of otherwise completely comparable homes. In my area, the right school disctrict can literally double the price of a house compared to less desirable options.

But there is a solution. Break up the government monopoly on largly failed socialist education.

Gosh, this was about housing and now it's about the "government monopoly on largely failed socialist education." What a steaming pile of junk ideology. The cause of local school failure is local school funding and the self-segregation of the wealthy. Silber, the nitwit, thinks all this started back in the sixties because OF COURSE everything was hunky dory back when Ike was President and tee vee was still all black and white. For evidence to support his bigotry all he supplies is more of the same. The problem was never the existence of public housing: it was that public housing was used to reduce the footprint of poverty by reducing the size of the ghetto and increasing the density of its population. Then a bunch of other stuff happened, but we aren't discussing american history here are we? MOSTLY it's infuriatingly stupid of you mopes to write that all the middle class needs to do to have better schools is to get away from that darned Underclass. It is not that easy.