With millions of people lacking access to affordable and safehomes, the United States housing market is in crisis. Currently,there are 13 severely unaffordable major housing markets in theU.S. and only 10 affordable markets, according to the 14th Annual DemographiaInternational Housing Affordability Survey: 2018. Housingunaffordability in some major markets, including San Jose, Denver,and Portland even exceeds the previously unprecedented level ofunaffordability during the housing bubble that precipitated theGreat Recession. For many macro- and microeconomic reasons, housingaffordability has been and likely will continue to a major issuefor many Americans.

Housing costs and the net cost of purchasing a home [upfrontcosts – or the cost associated with the initial cash outlay tosecure a home], which are typically a consumer's largest monthlyand yearly expense when broken out into a long-term mortgage, arelargely driven by the costs and time associated with traditionalconstruction; a seemingly obvious “functional input” but one whichis often disregarded as a “headline” item when discussing thesubject of housing affordability. Often, the housing affordabilitynarrative is entirely focused on market and auction-based dynamics,or, put another way, on the localized “market” pricing of housing.The actual “cost of goods” – or the literal bottom line costs ofconstructing a home – are frequently completely disregarded bythose tasked with addressing this consistent issue. SGBlocks,  a firm in which I am CEO, is attempting todirectly attack and solve this “bottom line,” “cost of goods”function.

In 2008, I co-founded SG Blocks, a leading innovator, designerand fabricator of container-based structures. While we partner withindustrial and commercial entities and while we have a meaningfulenterprise footprint across our customer count, we are also asolution for making housing affordable and sustainable on animmediate, midterm and long-term basis. We recently launched a newsubsidiary, SG Residential, which focuses on the sales andfinancing of single-family container-based modular homes.