Cleveland Hopes to Land Modular Home Manufacturer to Aid in Affordable Housing Crisis

Habitat For Humanity CEO John Ritten said that a nearby builder of modular homes would be more efficient than contracting with one a hundred miles away, like they currently do, in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Credit: Habitat For Humanity

In order for Alexander Kolbe to build his modular homes, like those recently installed in Shaker Heights and Beachwood, he has to orchestrate a careful, long-distance process.

Kolbe, the CEO of evoDOMUS, a luxury modular home builder in Cleveland Heights, has to send an architect’s plans to the manufacturing plant they use three hours away in Western Pennsylvania. Every client’s dream home begins here: its living room walls, its floating starcases. As do any design or build gaffes.

Which would be a different case if, say, Kolbe had access to a builder down the street from him, rather than one hundreds of miles away.

“Whatever mistake we catch in the factory,” Kolbe told Scene, “we can fix in the factory.”

This week, Cleveland City Hall released a request for proposal for exactly this: a manufacturing facility that constructs modular homes on Cleveland’s east side. The proposal, which offers tax abatements from the city’s Site Readiness Fund, is meant to attract a builder that could kickstart, in theory, an approach to home-building that’s only scratched the surface in Cleveland—come 2025, fewer than 20 modular homes will have been installed inside city limits.

Modular homes are sometimes confused with mobile homes, which are designed for portability, and often pale in size and quality compared to modular, or prefabricated, ones. And, compared to traditionally-built houses, modulars have a fleet of benefits, especially for a city looking to build en masse: they’re quicker to construct, cheaper to install and less prone to harsh weather during the build process.

Which means, in Mayor Justin Bibb’s eyes, a quicker way of handling Cleveland’s crisis of affordable housing. By fast-tracking homes to go up, in theory, on some of the city’s 25,000 vacant lots.

“By attracting a modular home manufacturer to our city, we’re not just creating jobs—we’re creating a sustainable solution to provide quality, affordable housing for our residents,” he said in a statement, referring to the Site Readiness Fund: “The comprehensive incentive package we’ve assembled together with other actions to support increased home-building demonstrates our commitment to making this vision a reality.”

John Ritten, the CEO of Habitat For Humanity who’s overseen at least half of the modular homes built in Cleveland, said he expects a nearby manufacturer to make a prong of his job a lot easier.

Typically, Habitat For Humanity contracts with Skyline Homes, a modular home builder based 89 miles south in Sugarcreek, Ohio, for the company’s two dozen pre-fabbed builds in progress. Like the four in Detroit-Shoreway, or the five that went up this year in Cudell, or the 10 in Collinwood next year.

Having a new company—Skyline goes back to 1951—with a new facility down the street would, Ritten said, be a boon, and even ramp up delivery. (Ritten said HFH’s modulars are installed in “at least a third the time” of typical builds.)

“I mean, I’m having a hard time finding the drawbacks,” he said. His mind went to Sugarcreek. “Put it this way: if you every had to drive behind a wide load on the highway—the less of that we have to do, the better.”

Pre-fabs aren’t of course without their cons, other than a lingering social stigma that suggest they’re of lower quality. Any new modulars might butt up against Cleveland’s outdated zoning code, and also may be subject to lower resale values than normal houses. Modulars also may need electrical, sewer and septic connections linked to the home’s lot, which can be pricey depending on the neighborhood.

But having a modular building in the city might change that, especially as new zoning code—form-based code—is being piloted in two of the neighborhoods that Ritten is building in.

The premise even has Kolbe excited.

Even though evoDOMUS has mainly built multi-million dollar homes, with facades of European glass, for clients in New Jersey and Colorado, Bibb’s teasing of a nearby builder has Kolbe considering entering the more affordable side of the market.

“We get approached all the time. Developers do come to us all the time and ask for it,” he said. “But the cost and the budget is so low, we just don’t know how to achieve that.”

But building 20 homes instead of one? And getting property tax abatements on top of it? And driving down the street to check on an in-progress kitchen?

Kolbe, who’s originally from Germany, said he’s inherently intrigued.

“Don’t laugh, but I was born socialist,” he said. “That was my original dream: building a house for the average Joe. I love million-dollar homes, but I’ve never forgotten about the affordable ones.”