Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (center) inside a nearly-completed prototype affordable mass timber modular home with Hacienda CDC CEO Ernesto Fonseca (left) and Hacienda CDC Mass Timber Innovation Director Leticia Cervantes (far right) at the Jan. 27 unveiling.
Hacienda CDC Mass Timber Innovation Director Leticia Cervantes points out a key feature of the prototype affordable mass timber modular homes to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley.
Barara and Scott Benedict will be the first family to receive a prototype affordable mass timber modular home. They lost their home in the wildfire that hit Otis in 2020 and attend the Jan. 27 presentation at the Portland of Portland.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (center) inside a nearly-completed prototype affordable mass timber modular home with Hacienda CDC CEO Ernesto Fonseca (left) and Hacienda CDC Mass Timber Innovation Director Leticia Cervantes (far right) at the Jan. 27 unveiling.
PMG photo: Jonathan House
Hacienda CDC Mass Timber Innovation Director Leticia Cervantes points out a key feature of the prototype affordable mass timber modular homes to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley.
PMG photo: Jonathan House
Barara and Scott Benedict will be the first family to receive a prototype affordable mass timber modular home. They lost their home in the wildfire that hit Otis in 2020 and attend the Jan. 27 presentation at the Portland of Portland.
An innovative, environmentally-friendly affordable housing pilot project was celebrated inside a sprawling warehouse at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 2 on Friday, Jan. 27.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek was among dozens of elected officials, community leaders, construction professionals and workers, reporters, and others who toured six prototype modular homes built largely with mass timber, an engineered wood product that does not require large trees to produce. They ranged from studios to three-bedroom homes.
Kotek championed the $5 million grant for the project when she House Speaker during the 2021 Oregon Legislature. According to Kotek and others who spoke at the event, the goal of the project is to prove that inexpensive and well-constructed modular homes can be quickly built and distributed throughout the state to meet Oregon’s affordable housing needs. They are also engineered to be energy efficient and conserve water.
“We need to build 36,000 homes a year. These can be part of the solution,” Kotek said. “Homebuilders need to keep building homes. This compliments that. It doesn’t compete with it.”
State economists have said that Oregon has a shortage of 110,000 housing units for current residents at all income levels. The greatest need is among residents with the lowest incomes.
The prototypes are being built by the Portland-based nonprofit Hacienda CDC affordable housing and social service agency as part of a project called Mass Casitas, which translates to “more homes.” They will soon be donated to other nonprofit housing organizations, which will move and place them on sites in Portland, Otis, Madras and Talent.
“We need more homes now to address Oregon’s urgent housing crisis, and traditional systems alone will not be enough to get the job done. Mass Casitas is innovative because we’re combining mass timber with modular single-family home construction to develop a process that could help Oregon add more high-quality housing, faster,” said Ernesto Fonseca, CEO of Hacienda.
It is not yet known how much the homes will cost once they are mass produced because the project is still in the pilot phase. They will be monitored after the are installed and their designs could be changed, depending on how they perform.
Among those joining Kotek and Fonseca was Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, who served as director of Habitat for Humanity in Portland thirty years ago before being elected to the Oregon Legislature.
“When I was with Habitat for Humanity, we used to dream about being able to built module housing. Now, thirty years later, it’s being done,” Merkley said.
The homes are an example of other projects that are expected to take place in the warehouse. Hacienda is a member of the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition, which won a $41 million federal economic development grant last year to develop new uses for the product. A port spokesman said the Northwest Portland warehouse was largely obsolete and was only being used for storage before the homes were built there.
"Mass Casitas is helping transform Terminal 2 into a site for innovation, mass timber industry transformation, and opportunity for Oregon families," said Keith Leavitt, chief trade & equitable development officer at the Port of Portland. "This project is even more evidence that mass timber can be transformative for Oregon, and it's full of opportunity for those who have been left behind, from new housing options to the creation of good-paying jobs along the timber and housing construction supply chain."
They mass timber plywood is supplied by Freres Engineered Wood. The wood comes from Mill City and is processed into the mass timber product in Lyons. Other key team members are: Salazar Architect Inc. (design); general Walsh Construction Co. (general contractor).
The organizations receiving the homes have already identified families to live in them. They are: Community Vision in Multnomah County; Cascade Relief Team in Lincoln County; and Casa of Oregon in Jackson and Jefferson counties.
