The sense of loss Sue Labella feels after the Pacific Palisades home she’d lived in for almost 50 years burned down in January’s wildfire is only matched by her desire to return.
To come back as fast as possible, the 83-year-old widow has decided on a home radically different from the 1939 Tudor where she and her husband raised their two daughters. Rather than competing with thousands of other displaced homeowners for a contractor, building materials and a team of construction workers, Labella ordered her new house from a factory.
“I want something that’s streamlined, that’s easy, that’s safe,” Labella said.
With her permit application already submitted to the city, Labella hopes to move into a 570-square-foot accessory dwelling unit built by Cover, a Gardena-based modular company, by the end of the summer. Soon after, she plans to add a larger, Cover-built single-family home so her grandchildren can visit once again.
A similar eagerness to return is leading many survivors from the Eaton and Palisades fires to consider modular or prefabricated construction for their new homes. Besides potential advantages in speed, modular construction promises greater affordability and an off-the-shelf solution simpler to manage than designing a custom home.
These assurances aren’t new. For years, modular companies have vowed to revolutionize the homebuilding industry only to fail spectacularly or plod along amid technological problems and skepticism about limited designs and quality. Those unconvinced by modular construction fear that fire victims may turn to a lesser and riskier product because they’re overwhelmed by the alternatives.
“You have 8,000 residents, some of whom have never had to change a tire, all of a sudden thrown into this,” said Freddy Sayegh, an Altadena resident whose family lost homes in the Eaton fire and leads an advocacy group for survivors. “It’s not that they want a modular home. They want easy homebuilding.”
Sayegh said the process might work for some people, but too many modular homes would erase Altadena’s rich architectural past. “If Altadena turns to this fast form of building, it would be an injustice to such a historic and beautiful town,” Sayegh said.
Mass-produced homes have built and rebuilt California. Los Angeles’ mid-20th century subdivision boom was predicated on lot-by-lot replication of model ranch houses. In response to widespread homelessness following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the federal government built 5,300 identical tiny cottages, some of which remain today. A refurbished and combined pair of cottages in the Bernal Heights neighborhood sold last year for $1.2 million.
Everyone understands the benefits of mass production in cost and speed, especially after disasters. Numerous community groups, architects, builders and others are trying to jointly purchase materials and develop shared designs for new houses, including ones that fire survivors could select from a brochure, similar to the century-old Sears catalogs.
But unlike builders preparing blocks of tract homes on undeveloped land, individual property owners have specific circumstances and desires. Varying insurance payouts and design preferences make it harder to act collectively.
Modular construction provides one pathway. Some companies build a whole house in a factory, truck and crane it onto a property and then bolt to the foundation. Cover, the company building Labella’s ADU, makes pieces for its homes in its 80,000-square-foot factory and then snaps them together on site.
“Like Legos,” said Alexis Rivas, the co-founder and chief executive.
Cover started a decade ago and has been based in Gardena since 2017. Last year, it took the company less than four months to build an ADU the same style as Labella’s in the city of Los Angeles, including time for site demolition, permitting and inspections. Rivas said he’s spoken with more than 300 fire-affected homeowners considering the company.
“They really just want to get back on their properties quickly,” he said. “I don’t blame them. These are beautiful neighborhoods.”
Rivas contends that even without the fires, the trend is moving toward modular construction. Productivity in the industry has been stalled for decades and an existing shortage of labor could be exacerbated by the prospect of the Trump administration’s mass deportations.
“There’s no alternative to solving this problem other than to innovate,” Rivas said. “We’re doing that.”
Modular businesses and advocates have long promised widespread adoption of the technology without it coming to fruition. Silicon Valley startup Katerra attracted nearly $3 billion from investors before declaring bankruptcy in 2021, six years after it was founded. A 2022 report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found few low-income housing developments in Southern California had tried modular construction, with the first project experiencing delays and cost increases due to inexperience and unclear division of work between the manufacturer and general contractor.
Ben Metcalf, the Terner Center’s managing director, recognized that he’s been wrong about modular’s rise before. But he said the factors that he and other proponents have highlighted when predicting the industry’s growth are only more evident now: labor shortages, increasing costs of materials, advances in automation technology and better environmental sustainability.
“Probably none of us should have been saying it five or 10 years ago,” Metcalf said. “All of it comes down to these same damn things. We see the ability of factories to deliver faster, cheaper.”
While still early in the rebuilding process, modular construction appears assured to have a substantial presence. Last month, Steadfast LA, a wildfire recovery nonprofit founded by developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, announced it will provide as many as 100 free modular homes to victims. The two-bedroom homes, built by Redwood City-based Samara, will go to residents of low to moderate incomes who are uninsured, underinsured or elderly and otherwise lack the money to rebuild on their land.
The homes are 950 square feet and cost roughly $500,000 including site preparation and permitting, said Mike McNamara, the company’s CEO. McNamara touted Samara’s fire-safe design, such as metal roofs and double-pane windows.
“It’s brand new, all modern materials,” McNamara said. “Everything about it is probably significantly superior to what burnt down.”
McNamara acknowledged that a stigma of modular as low quality holds back an embrace of the model. Some on social media site Nextdoor greeted the Steadfast LA announcement with derision.
“Why would anyone want a prefabbed home?” one user wrote. “They want their home back not some cookie cutter home that will devalue the neighborhood.”
McNamara said he tells prospective customers that Samara’s products are built to current residential building code standards and regulated by the state authorities, unlike traditional mobile homes, which face less stringent regulations and are overseen by the federal government.
Still he understands there’s limits to his advocacy in the minds of the general public.
“We have these conversations like, ‘Can we change the image of modular housing to be more successful at Samara?’” McNamara said. “The answer is probably not.”
McNamara and other modular builders said the best way to convince people of the quality of their products is to see them.
Last week, Rivas welcomed eight modular-curious Palisades property owners in for a factory tour, one of roughly 30 he’s held for fire victims. Over the zaps of workers’ welding and beeps of a forklift, Cover representatives answered questions about the homes. Nearly all of them were about fire safety.
The tour ended inside a Cover model, a version of the ADU Labella is buying. Cover’s homes are styled in updated mid-century modern architecture. The model had fire-resilient accented pine and large sliding glass doors on the exterior. Rivas explained that over time the wood weathered from brown to gray and was termite resistant.
“After everything we’ve seen and been through, I totally forgot about termites,” replied Mychal Wilson, who had organized the tour for his neighbors.
Afterward, Wilson said he was impressed with Cover’s design and the possibility of returning more quickly so his teenage son could end his high school years in the Palisades. He believes modular construction is the “way of the future, especially with disaster rebuilds.”
Still, Wilson and his wife are taking their time.
“Part of the process is making an informed decision so there’s no regrets in 10 years,” said Wilson, an attorney. “Can’t have buyer’s remorse.”
Prices and sizes for Cover’s homes differ. The company’s panelized construction allows for multiple combinations that can be tailored to individual properties and preferences, Rivas said, part of how Cover fights the perception that all modular looks the same. Costs for the 570-square-foot ADU range from $350,000 to $430,000 plus permitting fees. The price tag for a larger offering, a three-bedroom, two-story 2,680-square-foot home with a 440-square-foot attached garage, is between $1.5 million to $1.9 million.
Labella is most looking forward to returning to the routine she adored. Living in Palisades Village allowed her to walk to the grocery store and the YMCA and gather with friends along the bluffs to watch the sunset.
“It’s going to be a while before that happens again,” she said. “But I like to think that maybe I’m ahead of the game.”
