Denver – While the Americans are struggling under suspended rental prices, the builders resort to innovative ways to capture more housing, from 3D to collecting homes in an internal factory to the use of cannabis – yes, the cousin of marijuana – to make building blocks for walls.
It is a response to the country’s lack of millions of homes that led to high prices, which led millions to poverty.
“There is not enough homes to buy and there are not enough places for rent. The period,” Adrian Tudman, Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in the United States during the era of former President Joe Biden.
Tudman said that one of the ways to build more quickly is to embrace these types of innovations. “I can only imagine how we will be housing now if we can make a decision to be more aggressive in adopting this type of housing.”
So what are these new ways to build homes? Can they help reduce the cost of the new housing, which leads to low rents?
In a cavernous metal hall, Eric Chaifler stood in front of a long row of normative houses that moved across the factory, similar to the car on the assembly line.
In a series of stations, workers laid flooring, frame, surfaces added and installed on drywall. Everything was from the electrical wires to the plumbing to the kitchen countertop in place before the houses were reduced and ready for charging.
Chevir said that the business in Colorado Rocky Mountins, which fades West, has pumped more than 500 homes in a little more than three years of its operation, each takes only five to seven days for construction, even in the months of winter months.
Once they are collected in the factory, tight houses are carried out in the style of the town with white trim, balcony and front balcony, about 90 %. Chevir said that in their final destination, they were ready within six weeks.
The company operates with cities, provinces and non -profit housing to help treat home deficiency at reasonable prices, most of whom are workers who have been pressured at high prices in Ritzy mountain cities.
This includes Eagle and COLORADO, not far from the Vail Ski Resort, where Bading West has worked with habitat for Humanity to install normative homes on reasonable rents for teachers and other school provincial employees. Houses tend to be on the smaller side, but they can be multi -capacity or one family.
“You can build faster. The sooner you – with high quality – mean the low price,” said Chevir. “We see this as one of the pieces to the puzzle in helping to solve the housing crisis at reasonable prices.”
He said that there is a huge cost provided to build the factory, and part of the challenge is the lack of a federal investment in the states and states. Also, the mockery is one of the construction symbols that govern how to build the structure makes it difficult, which requires changes in construction depending on the city or boycott it is sent to.
Manufacturer’s housing is similar to standard housing, but units are created on a structure – such as the trailer – and are not subject to the same local construction symbols. This is part of the reason for their use more widely across the United States
Nearly 100,000 houses were shipped to the states in 2024, an increase of about 60,000 contracts, according to statistical office data. Standard houses that were built annually are often placed by less than 20,000.
Yes, there is a technique for 3D printing houses.
An automatic arm is controlled by a computer equipped with a hose, a back and forth, and concrete concrete lines, one on top of the other, because it builds the wall of the house. It can go relatively quickly and form curved walls unlike concrete blocks.
Grant Hamiel, CEO and co -founder of Verotouch, stood inside one of the houses that his company built, and the wall left him made of concrete layers, distinct for a 3D printer. Technology can eventually reduce the costs of employment and the time it takes to build a housing, but it is far from the manufactured or standard methods of the housing crisis.
It is “a long game, to start cutting these prices at every step of the construction process.”
Ali Mimari, director of the Housing Research Center in Pennsylvania, who partially focused on 3D printing, said that 3D printers are expensive, as well as engineers and other skilled employees needed to operate them. It is also not recognized by international construction symbols, which put more red tape.
Mimari said that technology is generally limited to one -storey structures, unless traditional construction methods are also used.
It is “a technique in its infancy, it has a space for growth, especially when it is recognized in the code.” “The challenges I mentioned exist, and must be addressed by the research community.”
Hemp – the factory related to marijuana – is used more and more in the construction of the walls.
Hemp is mixed with other materials, and most importantly, the metal lemon, which forms “HEPCRETE”, which is a natural insulation resistant to mold and fire and can serve as an outer wall, insulation and internal wall.
“HEPCRETE still requires wooden buttons framing the walls, but it replaces three components to build the wall with only one. Memari is now helping to oversee the research in the making of HEMPCRETE that does not need to be studded.
Up to one million hemp to use in HEMPCRETE can grow on one acre within months instead of trees, which may take years or contracts to grow.
The factory is part of the cannabis family but it has much lower than the psychological component, THC, which is located in marijuana. In 2018, Congress Production For certain types of hemp. Last year, the International City Council, which develops international construction symbols used by all fifty states, adopted HEMPCRETE as isolation.
Mimari said that the ambiguity about the legitimacy of the growing hemp and the price of the device required to process the factory, called Chicortical, are obstacles to the HEMPCRETE is more prevalent in housing building.
However, he said: “Hempcrete has a bright future.”
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The Associated Presse Thomas Bibert’s video journalist, in this report from Boya Vista, Colorado.
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Bedayn is a member of the American Press/Report for America State News. America report is a non -profit national service program that puts journalists in local news rooms to report secret issues.