America’s housing shortage isn’t just a local market hiccup. It’s a systems failure, driven by interconnected constraints in zoning, capital, delivery, and construction productivity. As outlined by Tyson Dirksen in his essay, The Housing Shortage Is a Systems Failure — A Developer’s Perspective, piecemeal solutions — building more homes here, relaxing a code there — fail to move the needle.
At Evolve Development Group, we approach housing as an industrialized system: from design to financing to execution. We operationalize the insights from Tyson Dirksen’s work into how housing can actually scale, focusing on construction systems, capital alignment, and industrial execution.
1. Restrictive Zoning & Land Use — The Structural Constraint
Zoning controls what can be built, where, and at what scale. Restrictions favoring single-family homes or fragmented developments inflate land costs and limit mid-rise, modular, or retrofit housing — key tools to meet demand.
Evolve’s solution: We design by-right typologies that maximize permitted density and mesh seamlessly with local regulations, creating units that can actually be delivered — fast.
2. Inefficient Delivery Mechanisms — Turning Permits into Units
Even when land is available, approvals and permitting are fragmented and discretionary, stretching schedules and driving up risk.
Evolve’s approach: By pairing predictable regulatory pathways with standardized building systems, we turn regulatory friction into predictable schedules — aligning execution with underwriting requirements.
3. Misaligned Capital Flows — Financing Real Supply
Capital today favors predictable luxury or large-scale projects. Mid-rise, prefab, or retrofit supply often struggles for funding. Tyson Dirksen emphasizes that misaligned capital is a core systemic bottleneck in housing production.
Evolve’s strategy: Industrialized construction and standardized project types reduce risk, making these essential housing projects bankable — and unleashing the flow of capital where it’s needed most.
4. Low Construction Productivity — Industrializing Housing
Traditional site-built construction is slow, labor-intensive, and volatile. Productivity lags behind other sectors, creating delays and cost overruns.
Evolve’s edge: We leverage mass timber, prefabrication, and modular execution, applying factory logic to construction. By industrializing the process, we accelerate timelines, reduce labor dependency, and deliver predictable, high-quality units.
5. Underutilized Existing Stock — Expanding Supply Without Greenfield Land
Millions of homes already exist, yet many are inefficient, underused, or structurally adaptable. Tyson Dirksen highlights that leveraging existing assets is often overlooked in housing strategy.
Evolve’s approach: We apply modular retrofit systems to unlock latent capacity, transforming underutilized stock into modern, scalable housing — faster and more cost-effectively than greenfield projects.
Industrialized Systems Solve Systemic Failures
The key takeaway from Tyson Dirksen’s analysis is that housing scarcity is a multi-lever problem. Fixing one lever alone doesn’t fix the system. At Evolve, we operationalize this systems thinking by integrating:
-
Construction systems: Industrialized, modular, mass timber approaches.
-
Execution logic: Predictable schedules, cost-driven planning, and factory-like processes.
-
Capital alignment: Standardized, underwriter-ready project types.
-
Retrofit and new development: Maximizing both new and existing stock.
This end-to-end system orientation ensures housing is deliverable, durable, and scalable, turning systemic scarcity into real, long-duration supply.
Align the System, Unlock Housing Supply
Solving America’s housing crisis requires:
-
Designing by-right, standardized building typologies.
-
Streamlining regulatory approvals to match production reality.
-
Industrializing construction to boost productivity and reduce costs.
-
Aligning capital with low-risk, high-impact housing types.
-
Leveraging existing structures to expand supply faster.
Tyson Dirksen’s insights guide us: systemic solutions demand systemic thinking. At Evolve, we’ve turned that philosophy into practice — delivering housing at scale through industrialized systems, predictable execution, and capital-aligned projects.
For the original analysis, see Tyson Dirksen’s essay.