Factory-built housing hasn’t taken off in California yet, but this year might be different

By Ben Christopher, CalMatters

As the first home rolled off the factory floor in Kalamazoo, Michigan —  “like a boxcar with picture windows,” according to a journalist on the scene — the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development proclaimed it “the coming of a real revolution in housing.”

For decades engineers, architects, futurists, industrialists, investors and politicians have been pining for a better, faster and cheaper way to build homes. Now, amid a national housing shortage...