In the post-World War II period, the great American middle class worked hard to support affordable mortgage payments on a comfortable home and ultimately realized their dream of burning that mortgage with it fully repaid. Home was an appreciating asset and store of wealth, while also the place for family gatherings, homework with the kids and some time in front of the TV at the end of a long day. Home made the American dream a reality.

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Today, those same Americans are known as the “missing middle,” unable to afford newly built “luxury” housing and ineligible for subsidized “Affordable Housing.” Instead, they see ever more of their disposable income diverted to the high cost of “trickle down” housing, which were the dream homes of their parents’ generation and are now aged, deteriorated, and attainably priced. Home is no longer a place of sanctuary and opportunity but of insurmountable burden. The American dream is at risk of becoming a nightmare. 

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While the problem is profound, the solution is obvious; we need to dramatically increase the supply of housing and deliver it at a price working people can comfortably afford. We can do this in two simple steps. First, we need to dramatically increase the supply of land available for development. While the old saying about land, that “they aren’t making any more of it,” is certainly true, what’s also true is that we have way more land than we need to put the housing market into equilibrium. According to federal research statistics, just 2% of the roughly 3.8 million square miles making up the U.S. is dedicated to urban areas and is home to over 82% of its 330 million inhabitants. So, the problem isn’t having enough land, but putting more of it to use.  

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And to do that, all we need to do is make buildings smaller. During the past 100 years, housing developers have tacked to larger and larger projects, which means that there are literally millions of smaller sites that are passed over as too small and lay fallow. So, a simple solution is to get back into the business of developing smaller sites, which means developing smaller apartment buildings.

This can be achieved by increasing our productivity. According to global management consultants at McKinsey & Company, construction is the only major U.S. industry to have lost productivity during the last 50 years. This is why developers favor ever larger projects and why smaller buildings are deemed uneconomical. But technological advances, some not that new, have the power to reverse skyrocketing building costs and make the construction of small buildings financially feasible.  

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At Vessel Technologies, we’ve reimagined every aspect of how buildings are designed and constructed. First, we’ve standardized our design so that its maximally efficient and can be replicated over a massive number of smaller sites (think of an iPhone). Second, we’ve replaced traditional construction practices with industrial manufacturing processes (think of a Tesla Gigafactory) to bring down unit costs.  

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The result is that Vessel Technologies is now in a position to activate millions of smaller, unused development sites by delivering efficient 30-60 unit buildings that would never make sense economically to a conventional developer. We expect to deliver lots and lots of these, and to chip away at the affordable housing crisis until every American has the chance their parents had at a dignified home and an equal opportunity for an extraordinary life.  

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