The Triple-Bottom-Line Impacts of Choosing Modular: Introduction

Market-rate housing developers are increasingly gravitating to modular (aka off-site) construction as a strategy to improve building quality and lower development costs, and affordable housing providers are starting to follow. But if you’re a nonprofit affordable housing provider looking for practical answers about whether, why, and under what circumstances it makes sense to make the shift to modular, you may feel like the kid in the back of the classroom who never gets called on.

Granted, there is a large universe of published resources devoted to the subject of using modular construction to build housing more affordably. But as someone who has searched the keywords “affordable + modular” more than a few times since I started investigating whether modular construction can help affordable housing owners do more with scarce resources, I’ve found that lion’s share of these resources focus on spotting trends in the market-rate housing industry.

That leaves nonprofit owners to seek the advice of consultants such as, well, me. As a construction management consultant to affordable housing providers, I help my clients make informed development decisions about just such matters as choosing what construction methods to use. And since I joined the development team of Argyle Gardens, a modular cohousing community for formerly homeless adults soon to break ground in North Portland, I’ve been answering a lot of questions from industry colleagues about the broader applications of modular construction in the development of affordable multifamily housing. In an effort to share what I’ve learned more widely, I’m writing this guide.

As its title suggests, the purpose of this series is to address the information needs of the types of organizations I work with: mission-driven nonprofits that own and operate rent-restricted affordable housing serving low-income and very-low-income residents. Based on values and priorities that many of my clients share, I’ll be focusing on the costs and benefits of using modular construction across both development and operational phases—and through a lens that filters for environmental and social impacts, as well as financial ones (aka the triple bottom line).

Specifically, this guide will focus on the needs of owners who haven’t previously used modular and want to clearly understand its costs and benefits before committing to use it and making contingent investments that can’t be recouped. In other words, this guide addresses the issue of whether and why to build a modular project, not how to build one. I’ll do my best to provide reliable, evidence-based information, and to present it in a way that is as clear and concise as possible. I’ll answer questions I commonly hear from nonprofit owners, as well as questions they don’t always think to ask. 

I hope you’ll find these articles useful and pass them along, so that more affordable housing providers can stop waving their hands in the air—and can start having informed discussion about whether and why to make the shift to modular.

First up: How will using modular construction affect my project’s hard costs?

Jenn Sharp is a former senior construction project manager at Housing Development Center.