BoulderMod, Boulder’s innovative modular home factory run by Flatirons Habitat for Humanity, is taking on its next big project: building 10 affordable homes for the Marshall Fire burn area.
The factory is part of a first-of-its-kind partnership between the City of Boulder, which built the factory; Habitat for Humanity, which manages it; and Boulder Valley School District, whose CTE students build the homes alongside subcontractors. City and nonprofit leaders have pointed to the model as a promising way to expand local affordable housing.
Kurt Firnhaber, the city’s housing and human services director, said there’s little to no profit for local developers to build homes that are priced affordably for people earning at or below the area median income, about $100,000. Habitat for Humanity doesn’t have that problem.
“Factories, typically they’re there to make money,” he said. “Because this is nonprofit-driven with the school district, the houses are being built with very low labor costs. It’s really the most cost-effective way to build.”
The project in the Marshall Fire burn area is being undertaken with a $3 million grant from Community Foundation Boulder County, $1 million in community matching funds and $2 million from Habitat for Humanity in donations, mortgage payments and volunteer labor.
The homes are being built on two parcels: Four will go in at 520 South Boulder Road, on land provided by the City of Louisville, and six more will be built on a lot just north of South Boulder Road on Courtesy Road. The latter is owned by Thistle Development, which is building out the rest of that plot, according to Habitat’s resource development director, Danielle Hermon. She expects homes to be under construction within 12 months.
Homes will be about 1,150 square feet, with three bedrooms and 1.5 baths, and will be priced to be affordable for a family earning 80% of area median income, about $100,000 a year.
Habitat expects high demand, since median home prices in Louisville remain “far beyond” what many families at 80% AMI can reasonably afford. The homes will also be deed-restricted to remain affordable to families earning 80% of AMI in perpetuity.
To be eligible to buy a home, families must also commit to provide 200 hours of “sweat equity” per adult in the household. Habitat is planning to give some preference to families who were displaced by the fire.
As of this month, local recovery dashboards showed about 780 homes rebuilt out of roughly 1,100 destroyed in the Marshall Fire. Many residents, particularly homeowners who bought decades ago and were underinsured, have struggled to return as construction costs and property values surged. In some neighborhoods, larger and more expensive houses are replacing the modest homes that once stood there, reshaping both the landscape and who can afford to live in it.
“These homes will serve teachers, healthcare workers, and service employees, the very people who keep this community running,” Dan McColley, executive director of Flatirons Habitat for Humanity, said in a statement. “Through strong public-private partnerships and climate-resilient design, we’re showing that affordability and resilience can go hand in hand.”
The homes
BoulderMod opened last February, and Firnhaber estimates it will be able to produce 20 homes this year. Eventually, partners expect it to produce 50 a year, nearly one a week.
At that pace, the challenge becomes finding a place to put them.
“It revolutionizes how we will do business,” McColley told neighbors and volunteers in December, as the group watched a BoulderMod unit being lowered into place in Ponderosa Mobile Home Park. The park, which the city purchased in 2017, was the first to receive BoulderMod homes.
In 2022, the city began buying mobile homes from interested residents and replacing them with affordable duplexes and triplexes that the city sells for about half of what they cost to build, about $180,000. The pace of installation has increased significantly since BoulderMod opened, while the impact of construction on the community is expected to decline, since most of the work is done offsite at BoulderMod.
Ponderosa residents have first dibs on the homes and are not obligated to relocate if they are unable or unwilling. But the city is encouraging as many people as possible to make the switch.
“Some of the residents of Ponderosa, their heating systems went out years ago and they use electric heat,” Firnhaber said. “They can spend $300 a month on electric bills in the wintertime trying to keep these homes heated.”
By contrast, BoulderMod homes are insulated with a foam seal that makes the building more airtight and efficient to heat and cool. While construction usually works from the outside in to protect a new building from the elements, factory homes are built from the inside out, allowing for more complete foam installation.
“We’re really building so the residents will have next to zero cost for utilities,” Firnhaber said.
Beyond Ponderosa and the Marshall Fire project, he sees partnerships with Habitat as an opportunity for developers to meet their affordable housing requirements.
Hands-on experience for students
The factory also offers a unique learning opportunity for BVSD students, who come from different high schools to work and learn in the factory. Subcontractors who provide plumbing, electrical, HVAC and heating services to the factory are required in their contracts to also provide training to the students.
“It’s hands-on real-life work experience,” construction trade student Sophia McPhee said in a BVSD video. “We’ll have an opportunity to work on everything that’s happening in the house.”
The factory’s first class had 12 students. By the next semester, the class size had doubled, according to Firnhaber.
At a September 2025 BVSD meeting, student presenters said the project provided leadership opportunities, OSHA safety training, nationally recognized certificates and hands-on opportunities to problem solve.
“Some of last year’s class went right into jobs,” Firnhaber said.
The ‘only net-zero factory in the country’
The city’s plan for BoulderMod began taking shape about five years ago, after Firnhaber toured a modular factory in Vermont and “got excited.”
Finding land to install a factory on was a challenge — but then city staff noticed the site where BVSD had formerly stored buses had essentially become an empty parking lot after the district built a new bus facility. The city approached BVSD and began the largest recent annexation effort outside of CU South.
While inspired by other modular home factories, BoulderMod stands out: Partners believe it is the only net-zero factory in the country, and the only one building net-zero homes. The factory’s entire roof is covered with solar panels, which run its electric forklift and tools.
BoulderMod has been covered by the American Planning Association, Modular Building Institute, a national modular magazine and NPR. Representatives from Boulder’s sister city in Japan have come to visit BoulderMod, according to Firnhaber.
“We are the very first-of-its-kind training facility for modular homes,” Daniel Sissom, modular factory manager at BoulderMOD, told Modular Building Institute. “We want to spread the word and help anybody else who wants to start a training facility — other manufacturers, construction companies, subcontractors. Anybody can do what we’re doing.”