Will 3D Printing Be an Answer For Building More Affordable Homes?

California’s chronic shortage of affordable housing has been well documented. Conor Dougherty, an economics reporter for the New York Times, states, in his new book “Golden Gates:

Fighting for Housing in America,” that 3.5 million housing units need to be built in California to ameliorate the state’s affordability and homelessness crises. What’s prevented that from happening so far, he points out, has been resistance among homeowners, municipalities, and environmentalists to rezoning that allows for more housing density that—the thinking goes—would devalue existing properties and/or minimize these constituencies’ political leverage.

Meanwhile, Californians and their lawmakers are finding it harder to avert their gazes from the ragged and destitute legions sleeping rough on sidewalks, in tent cities, inside cardboard boxes.Late last year California Gov. Gavin Newsom boosted funding for housing and addressing homelessness by $3 billion. Nearly three fifths of California’s estimated 108,000 homeless are located in Los Angeles County, where officials are looking at various temporary and permanent solutions that would increase the availability of affordable and low-income for-sale and rental housing.