Two modules were recently delivered to a property in Otis to form a new home for a couple whose previous home was destroyed in a fire. (Joshua Huff, courtesy of Hacienda CDC)
A mass-timber prototype home was delivered last week to a site in Otis, in Lincoln County, for a couple who lost their home in the Echo Mountain Fire in 2020.
The 1,136-square-foot, three-bedroom structure is one of six homes being built as part of the Mass Casitas project. It was designed and developed by Hacienda CDC to demonstrate how modular housing built with mass timber could ease Oregon’s housing shortage faster and more efficiently than traditional construction.
“Oregon urgently needs more homes, not only for families displaced by disasters like wildfires, but for our many rural and urban communities that simply don’t have enough housing,” Hacienda CDC CEO Ernesto Fonseca stated. “With Mass Casitas, we’re developing a process that could add many more homes throughout the state, at a faster pace than traditional construction.”
Oregon is short 110,000 homes for people at all income levels, according to state economists. To accommodate future growth, the state may need more than 580,000 new homes over the next 20 years, state economists have said. Gov. Tina Kotek, at the start of her term, signed an executive order setting a new housing construction target of 36,000 units per year – an 80 percent increase over current production – to address Oregon’s housing shortage.
The six Mass Casitas prototype homes were designed and developed at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 2. So far, three of the six have been delivered. In addition to the home that arrived in Otis, two were delivered to properties in Talent, in Jackson County. Two others will be delivered to properties in Portland and another to a site in Madras.
Large, blank mass-plywood panels arrived at Terminal 2 and were then assembled in modules. Studios (426 square feet) are one module and both two-bedroom (852 square feet) and three-bedroom (1,136 square feet) models are two modules. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing elements were then installed, followed by windows, insulation and roof structures.
The prototypes are designed to be predominantly plug-in ready when they arrive on-site. Once there, each module is lifted by a crane from a flatbed truck and placed on a concrete foundation. For the home in Otis, two modules were placed side by side. Over the next four to six weeks, crews will affix the two modules to the foundation, join them together and complete final work – such as insulating the crawl space, hooking up utilities, and completing interior doors and trim.
The Mass Casitas team will monitor the homes over the next year to see how they perform in different Oregon climates and then use the information to improve the design and production process.
The project is a part of a plan to build an innovation hub on the 53-acre Terminal 2 site. The facility would be used for assembly of mass-timber, modular homes that would be dispersed from the terminal to communities in Oregon. The Oregon Mass Timber Coalition, of which the Port of Portland is a member, last year received a $41 million federal grant to help finance construction of the housing factory.
(Joshua Huff, courtesy of Hacienda CDC)