SEATTLE -- Every time a 120-ton hydraulic crane hoists and stacks the second floor on yet another two-story home in the Noji Gardens affordable housing development, the manufactured housing industry and residents looking for affordable housing heave a collective sigh of relief.

On 6.5 acres of what was largely a garden nursery of historic note, state-of-the-art homes are sprouting to herald the beginning of a new era for a much-maligned industry. As a result, needy area residents, who couldn't otherwise afford it, are finding shelter they can call their own.

Noji Gardens, an in-fill project that includes two- to six-unit affordable homes in Seattle's urban Raineir Valley, is a story with national implications that's going largely unnoticed, except perhaps by the local media.

Some 60 of the homes are either two-story, single-family detached manufactured homes -- the first in the Pacific Northwest -- or two-story manufactured row townhomes, perhaps the first in the nation.

You'd never know the porched Craftsman-style homes with pitched roofs and energy-efficient windows were factory produced unless you witnessed the crane settling the sections into place. But it's the factory-built efficiency of modular construction that makes them so affordable -- about half the price of the going rate for similar frame homes constructed from the ground up.

The townhomes range in price from $130,000 to $177,000 and the single-family models sell for $143,000 to about $210,000. Eligible buyers include a family of four earning no more than $45,300, or less than 80 percent of the area's median income.

Offering a lesson for the nation's high-priced housing areas with little land to build affordable housing, Noji Gardens is largely the ground breaking efforts of HomeSight, a Seattle-based non-profit community development corporation and Marlette Homes, a manufactured housing firm in Hermiston, OR.

Since 1990, HomeSight has helped house 165 Seattle-area families who otherwise couldn't afford a home. The community non-profit agency offers low- to middle-income people who qualify, a complete housing package -- free personal finance classes, home loan assistance, subsidized down payments and newly constructed homes.

HomeSight uses city, state and federal funds for down-payment assistance, and usually negotiates below-market rates on construction loans from banks and private foundations. In addition to providing homes for the needy, HomeSight helps improve blighted areas by building only where there's a need for economic rejuvenation.

Such urban infill areas are a tight fit for traditional home builders, but HomeSight is making it look easy with Marlette, a manufactured housing firm that crane-trucks in modular components, hoists them together and locks them in place.

Manufactured housing comprises 20 percent of the new single-family homes in Washington State. They are most often constructed in rural areas, but thanks to Marlette's pioneer work at Noji Gardens that could be changing.

Virtually indistinguishable from frame or "stick" homes, Marlette's product comes with floor plans much like any other new home and the modular units are built to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-standards and that often exceed Uniform Building Code guidelines.

That's a far cry from what most Americans expect, often because of images ingrained by television news broadcasts showing the tinny remains of older mobile homes strewn across the landscape after a Midwestern tornado or Gulf Coast hurricane.

"Building" today's manufactured home is an eye-opener as many witnessed Dec. 8 when a media briefing at Noji Gardens included stacking the second story on one of the manufactured homes "under construction."

"They are stacked and then married, or hooked together and the finishing touches added. It's complete. Everything is included except the furniture. The light fixtures, baseboards, stairway, tub shower, faucets, stove, dishwasher, counter top, cabinets, everything. It's like puzzle pieces," says Tanesha Van Leuven, HomeSight's community development planner.

In a fitting twist to this story, HomeSight is breaking ground on historic land.

The Noji Gardens site is named in honor of the Noji family. They built the gardening nursery in 1918. As were many other American-Japanese, Noji family members were plucked from the nursery and interned in detention camps during World War II.

"The community didn't want the family to lose the land, many did who were interned. While they were interned in California, the community and friends watched the land for them. It was still theirs when they returned," said Van Leuven.

Published: December 10, 1999

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.