The future of housing

By Lee Burnett

PRACTITIONERS IN THE FIELDS of subsidized housing, super-energy-efficient housing and innovative forestry have traditionally operated in separate worlds. Today, they are moving in increasingly overlapping ways as they grapple with the lack of affordable housing and dangerous buildup of carbon in the atmosphere—two of the thorniest challenges Maine faces today. For example:

High performance builders are following the lead of manufactured housing developers by prefabricating all or part of construction off-site. This trend toward more efficient use of scarce labor may get an additional boost from recent state investments in workforce development programs.

Affordable housing developers have become leaders in the construction of high-performance (super energy-efficient) housing, even as a new state law raises still higher the energy efficiency bar on anyone receiving state housing construction subsidies.

New England Forestry Foundation a regional woodland conservation organization that models innovative forestry, recently received a federal grant to demonstrate that sustainably managed New England forests can meet a rising demand for new lumber products while also cycling more carbon out of the atmosphere.

MORE OFFSITE-BUILT HOUSING

At least a dozen Maine companies are now selling tiny homes, accessory dwelling units, modular homes and wall panels, all of which are built offsite in factory conditions.

The biggest producer is KBS Builders, located in a football field–sized building on Route 26 in South Paris. Here, stacks of lumber are transformed into nearly complete housing units at the rate of a half dozen per week, producing about 300 modular units a year.

Today, Maine is but a small player in the modular industry, having lost four manufacturers as a result of the 2007-2008 housing crash and other factors. Maine’s modular industry had traditionally focused on the lower-end of the residential market. Today, KBS competes against bigger companies centered in Pennsylvania by streamlining their process and diversifying into commercial construction and the higher-end of the residential market (namely high-performance homes).

KBS is considering adding a second production line which could double production and enable them to produce more homes at the affordable end of the market. The move comes at a time when the government is seeking to invest in trade-training programs, partly as an indirect strategy to boost the supply of affordable housing. Maine put $20 million from the American Rescue Plan into expanding programs at career and technical schools, and another $20 million is anticipated.

“That’s the first significant investment in career technical education since 1998,” says Ryan Fecteau, senior advisor for community development and strategic initiatives in the Office of Policy Innovation and the Future. “It’s long overdue. Hopefully that will build a bridge, and places like KBS will get plumbers, electricians and laborers.”

That would certainly be welcome news to KBS, where the expansion decision rests in part on the availability of labor.

KBS President Thatcher Butcher says the state could go even further to spur housing construction without any state subsidies by removing the requirement that modular housing developers sell only to licensed dealers. “That would certainly be a boon,” he says.

Butcher says he isn’t anti-regulation but that the restriction stands in contrast to the absence of licensure for construction contractors. “It’s hard to justify,” he says. “We’ve taken a lot of the risk out of construction. We do the plumbing and electrical. There’s a lot less risk than a site-built home, where no license is required.”

CROSS-LAMINATED TIMBER FOR HOUSING

Innovative offsite builder OPAL Build in Belfast is pioneering the construction of compact, energy-efficient homes using cross-laminated-timber (CLT), a climatefriendly building product technology. Adapting CLT for residential construction could expand the market for CLT and improve the economics of operating a manufacturing plant in Maine. Because CLT is expensive to produce, it was once assumed to be economical only for large buildings.

But the folks at OPAL Build have streamlined the construction process, employing more pre-engineering, using thinner CLT panels and dropping in bathroom-kitchen pods fully assembled. The pre-engineering and bathroom-kitchen pod units reduce the need for highly skilled, onsite carpenters so much so that assembling panels into a house on site can be done in a few days.

“We’re thinking differently about the system of construction,” said Matt O’Malia, principal at OPAL Build.

OPAL Build’s process evolved from insights gained in building Maine’s first CLT project on Vinalhaven in 2016. The island’s very high labor and shipping costs—burdensome for that project—forced new thinking, which O’Malia says he is now grateful for. “Islands have all these restrictions you have to work with,” he says. The units don’t yet pencil out for the affordable housing market, but that’s not for lack of trying, O’Malia says.

OPAL Build is pushing for further efficiencies both onsite—with more powerful cranes—and offsite. One idea being explored is having CLT panels shipped directly from the manufacturing plant to a local assembly site, without an intermediate stop in Belfast. The goal is to double production to 40 homes a year. “That’s one-tenth the labor required of stick-built homes,” Malia says.

The residential market is larger than the institutional and multi-family market, so stimulating demand from this sector could improve prospects for siting a CLT plant in Maine, which has been held back by insufficient demand. Local production of CLT could shave $18,000 in shipping costs per unit, O’Malia says.

NEW AFFORDABLE HOUSING MUST MEET PASSIVE HOUSE STANDARDS

People who associate high-performance construction with prestige institutional buildings and high-end residential homes might be surprised to learn that some of Maine’s most energy-efficient housing is now being built as affordable housing. In the last half dozen years or so, affordable housing developers Avesta Housing, Community Housing of Maine, Portland Housing Authority and others have embraced Passive House and other building rating systems in a big way. Since 2019, multi-family housing has accounted for 26% of the square footage of construction that has achieved Passive House certification in Maine, according to passivhausMAINE data. A big driver of this push is Maine Housing, the self-funded, quasi–state agency that funds just about all the subsidized housing in Maine.

“Our standards are significantly stricter than state standards,” said Mark Wiesendanger, director of development for Maine Housing. These stricter standards may include wrapping buildings with continuous exterior insulation, tight air sealing and the installation of energy recovery ventilation systems and electric heating, cooling and ventilation systems. That stands in contrast to the vast majority of privately built housing in Maine that meets the 2015 Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code but goes no further. (Maine has traditionally lagged in adoption of the latest energy code, but there are signs the state is getting more ambitious. Maine is rising in state scorecards of energy efficiency codes, thanks to our aggressive, high-efficiency heat pump program, and many are looking for similar ambition in adoption of more ambitious standards for code-built housing.)

Some affordable housing developers, such as Raise-Op Housing Cooperative in Lewiston, are combining high-performance construction, cooperative ownership, neighborhood childcare and health care in a wholistic way. Craig Settlemire, development organizer for Raise-Op, says locally driven solutions that put residents in the driver’s seat are key to overcoming the entrenched stigma associated with affordable housing as segregated and poorly managed. Raise-Op and many other partners were instrumental in Lewiston being awarded a $30 million federal Choice Neighborhood grant to expand the model to the Tree Street neighborhood.

Few have done more than Avesta Housing to model and advocate for the multiple benefits of building to a very high standard. Back in 2016, Avesta Housing’s Bayside Anchor was the first apartment building in Maine to pass Passive House certification requirements. (Read more about this project in “Multi-family housing addresses housing shortage.”) Avesta construction director Todd Rothstein, a regular presenter at housing conferences, shared spreadsheets from a comparable apartment building to highlight the development and operating costs of different energy standards, such as code-compliant, LEED, high performance and Passive House. Rothstein’s bottom line: A high-performance building is 5% more expensive to build but reduces operating expenses by 50% and reduces carbon emissions by 100%.

“For the last five years, I have shown high-quality building pays off,” Rothstein says. “That’s clear from the evidence.”

That said, Rothstein is a critic of a 2022 law that requires affordable housing projects to achieve Passive House certification or a comparable rating in 2024. The law also mandates electrification of heating, cooling and ventilation systems. Rothstein says the mandate will reduce the money available for housing for the sake of a certification. He also wonders if developers will be penalized for housing that fails to meet a performance test that is administered only after the housing is built and occupied.

Bill sponsor Rebecca Millett (D-South Portland) characterized the higher standard to be a prudent use of state resources, particularly in light of the enormity of climate challenge. “We’re all witnessing some catastrophic climate events around the state, the nation and world,” she says. “What we are doing is but a drop compared to what we need to be doing.”

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FROM MAINE MATERIALS

The developers mentioned previously have aspirations to source locally and often do with competitively priced Maine building materials. But lumber is a commodity, and if it exists for a cheaper price elsewhere, it will typically be sourced from outside of Maine. Jason Brochu, president of Pleasant River Lumber, says builders should look beyond bottom-line sourcing and consider the wider community benefits of local sourcing, which include tax revenue, jobs and economic multipliers. The savings from bottom-line sourcing are “miniscule” considering how competitively priced Maine lumber is, says Brochu, whose company sells lumber through Pleasant River–owned Ware-Butler Building Supply stores.

If there is a company doing it all, it may be new-to-the-scene Zero Energy Homes in Millinocket, which is attempting a trifecta: modular construction, net-zero energy in design and lumber that is 80–90% locally sourced. The prototype home under construction is being built for Wabanaki Health & Wellness.

“It is attainable,” said company founder Caroline Pryor, whose professional background includes research into toxic supply chains. “We don’t have to bring vinyl-clad homes in from Pennsylvania.… It’s exciting to source local and regional materials that are better for the customer, worker, communities and the planet.” She has identified housing authorities across Maine as a potential market.

Pryor intends to source at least the framing lumber, siding, trim and sheathing from Maine, which is not unusual for Maine builders. It may be more of a challenge to source wood flooring, cabinetry, windows and doors from Maine. But she’s up for the challenge.

“It’s important to finally do it and replicate it, so our model is not [just a] projection,” she says.

CLIMATE-SMART COMMODITIES

From deep in the woods, New England Forestry Foundation is challenging the region to source more lumber from local sources. As it turns out, even though New England is 80% forested, only 60% of the wood consumed in New England is grown in the region. (If that doesn’t quite compute, consider that most of the region’s timber harvesting is concentrated in Maine, while most consumption originates in southern New England.)

Importing so much wood regionally is environmentally harmful in two ways, according to NEFF, which owns or supervises forest management on more than 1 million acres. The reliance on distant sources increases logging pressure in environmentally sensitive regions where regulations are lax, while contributing to big carbon footprints of long supply chains. NEFF has long practiced a brand of forestry that enhances forests’ capacity to cycle carbon out of the atmosphere while also maintaining lumber production. Now, the forestry organization has a chance to demonstrate it on a larger scale. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently awarded NEFF a $30 million Climate Smart Commodities grant to improve forest management practices on 80,000 acres of privately owned land in a way that builds the carbon sink capacity of the forest, while also sustaining timber harvest levels.

“The audience is probably thinking, ‘how can we do both?’” says Jen Shakun, director of the bioeconomy initiative for NEFF.

The oversimplified answer, she says, has three parts: growing trees bigger and longer, using judicious tree thinning, and tapping carbon offset markets and other innovative finance mechanisms.

“We can store more carbon, even as we continue to produce forest products for housing and other things,” Shakun says.

Big problems like lack of affordable housing and even bigger problems like climate change call for collaborative solutions from a variety of agents, such as Maine’s affordable housing developers, high-performance builders and climate-smart forestry advocates.

All of which points to a question raised by Maine’s Climate Council: Can Maine build housing that is affordable, climate smart, and locally sourced? Soon, perhaps.

This article appeared in the Fall 2023 edition of Green & Healthy Maine HOMES. Subscribe today!

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