Giving Compass' Take:

• Fast Company reports on companies building off-site and trucking fully constructed apartments in from the suburbs to help offset rising construction costs.

• Will this really help lower the prices of housing in urban markets? In what ways can foundations and funders partner with private companies to address affordability?

• Here's how community organizations are investing in affordable housing solutions for DC residents.

Inside a sprawling former submarine factory in Vallejo, California, workers are building individual apartments that will soon be delivered to a building site in West Oakland and stacked, Lego-like, into a new 110-unit complex next to a BART station.

The startup, called FactoryOS, is one example of a growing number of companies that are trying to tackle the affordable housing crisis by fundamentally changing how we construct buildings.

“I decided about four years ago the only way we could really break this cost spiral up was to try to build as much of the house as possible in an industrialized fashion in an off-site situation,” says Rick Holliday, who opened the factory earlier this year after nearly 40 years in real estate development. Holliday, like other developers, had seen costs rise sharply in part because of a shortage of construction labor. The construction cost on a single affordable apartment in San Francisco reached around $800,000 last year. “This is insanity,” he says.

Read the full article about new home building tech and affordability by Adele Peters at fastcompany.com.