We don't have enough houses for everyone. And the available houses are too expensive.
It makes sense to consider that the United States build more apartments than ever before. Unfortunately, these apartments are almost exclusively for the rich.
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Some (the rich) want to get rid of the environmental and safety regulations to remove some of the regulatory hurdles that prevent houses from being built faster. Others suggest more new ideas, such as 3D printed houses, factory-built houses and houses made of robust, affordable materials such as hemp.
Are 3D printed houses the future?
The Associated Press reports on the rise of houses that from nothing to a family in a fraction of the time it takes to build a traditional home under their roof.
If you want to know how long it takes to build some of these houses, take a look at the houses built by a company called Fading West in Colorado. You can build a whole home in about a week.
These smaller, nimble house builders still have to deal with the laws and regulations of the city or the district, in which they build what requires adapting the construction process for every new project. But that's just a small hurdle that was not set in the way of the construction of around 100,000 houses produced in the United States in 2024.
If you are not interested in a manufactured house and would rather feel in the Star Trek universe in which you can ask a computer to print everything you want, you can get a 3D printed house.
The technology is still at an early stage, but promises much more cheaply than a traditional home because the labor costs are lower. Robot arms that form concrete into walls are relatively inexpensive compared to the costs of human work. Things are cheaper if you don't pay people. What a new concept.
The disadvantage is that the technology, since the technology is still in its infancy, gives an inexpensive entry barrier. The equipment is expensive, the human work that is necessary to ensure that the machines run smoothly is also quite expensive, and there are many practical and regulatory problems before the 3D print is really removed.
After all, there is a hemp, a mixture of hemp and lime, which is a relatively cheap and surprisingly robust homework material of the future, which delivers natural insulation, is mold and fire -resistant, and can be used as any layer required for the construction of a robust home wall. This includes the outer wall, insulation and the inner wall, so that house builders can use a material instead of three.
The best thing about hemp fragments? Hemp is inexpensive to grow and grows very fast. Plant some hemp in a single hectare country, and in about a month you have a million hemp plants ready to be transformed into versatile home building material.
Hanfreton does not replace every part of a house. You still need wooden tunnels to frame the walls – for the time being. Engineering experts are already working on opportunities to use Hanfcrete as a stud.