When the Station Fire raced through the Angeles National Forest in 2009, Colleen and Jason Warnesky watched smoke from their front porch in Altadena, Calif. Eleven years later they watched the Bobcat Fire. Their post‑World War II house survived both. So when the Eaton Fire ignited more than three miles away in January 2025 they assumed they would be spared again. They were wrong.
Fifteen months after the blaze the Warneskys walk a fenced dirt lot where their 1,400‑square‑foot home once stood. Crews have cleared toxins from the site and the family is waiting for city drainage permits before pouring a new foundation. Like dozens of neighbors, they have chosen a manufactured home to rebuild. A local program run by city‑LAB UCLA helped: it showcased six prefab options and offered financing and guidance through the process.
Climate‑driven disasters — wildfires, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes — are changing how people rebuild. Survivors increasingly want homes made from materials and systems designed to resist extreme weather and fire, and they want faster, less stressful routes back to occupancy. Prefabricated and modular homes meet many of those needs: they can be customized, are being engineered to be more resilient, and often cost less than traditional on‑site construction. Depending on finishes and systems, prices generally range from under $100 to over $500 per square foot, excluding land.
Manufacturers are designing units to withstand category‑5 hurricane winds, earthquakes, hail, heavy snow and fire. Some companies build with composite structural insulated panels, fiberglass exteriors and cement‑board overlays to increase fire resistance. Harrison Langley, CEO of MDLR Brands, says their panels have a 30‑minute fire rating and can be hardened to roughly an hour — potentially valuable evacuation time. Those panels are also more elastic than conventional wood framing, which can improve earthquake performance. Independent tests recreate extreme impacts too, including firing a two‑by‑four at high speed to simulate windborne debris.
The Manufactured Housing Institute reports that by 2024 nearly 21 million Americans lived in manufactured or mobile homes, and that manufactured units accounted for more than 9% of new‑home starts that year. Three U.S. companies control roughly 83% of the market, and much of the demand is concentrated in disaster‑prone states such as Texas, Florida and California. Builders also point to the rising visibility of accessory dwelling units as evidence that consumers are growing more comfortable with factory‑built housing.
For the Warneskys the choice blended practicality and safety. After losing possessions and navigating insurance claims, the simplicity of ordering a largely finished package appealed. Safety was paramount: their planned home will use steel, glass and concrete and be configured to meet wildland‑urban interface (WUI) standards where homes edge wild vegetation and fire risk is high. “If there was a way to make it so that we had less to worry about if another fire happened in the future, we’d go with that,” Colleen said.
Not all manufactured homes resemble the stereotypical box. Some firms focus on customized modular builds that translate unique architectural plans into factory‑produced modules. Neighbors Linda and Liam Mennis, who lost their 1940s, 1,600‑square‑foot home in the Eaton Fire, rejected a catalog design and worked with Bevy House. Bevy converts bespoke designs into modular components fabricated in controlled facilities and assembled on site. Its portfolio includes Southern California projects such as a partial rebuild after the 2018 Woolsey Fire: a nearly 8,000‑square‑foot Spanish‑revival house that blended reclaimed materials and custom detailing and was among the first post‑fire reoccupancies in that area.
Companies like Bevy aim to rebut the idea that modular equals cookie‑cutter. Using 3‑D digital planning, they divide architectural designs into modules, fabricate them, and coordinate on‑site assembly to shorten timelines, improve quality control and preserve bespoke aesthetics.
The appeal of attractive, mass‑produced modular housing has deep roots. Midcentury designers Ray and Charles Eames explored prefabrication in projects such as Case Study House No. 8, promoting affordable, well‑designed systems using standardized materials. Today Eames Demetrios has revived that lineage with the Eames Pavilion, developed with Spanish furniture maker Kettal and unveiled at the Triennale di Milano. The system uses aluminum frames and interchangeable panels of glass, wood or composite materials. Initially a single‑room kit for studios or offices, it is planned to expand into customizable single‑ and multi‑level dwellings by 2027, with projected costs kept under $500 per square foot and material options for different sites.
Industry proponents say prefab’s benefits extend beyond speed and cost: factory construction reduces waste, enforces tighter quality control and makes it easier to integrate new materials and technologies. For communities recovering from disasters, those advantages can translate into safer, faster returns to stable housing and the ability to build something that feels permanent and personal rather than merely temporary.
Prefab still faces hurdles: local zoning and permitting rules, insurance and financing systems geared to conventional construction, and lingering aesthetic biases. But choices made by disaster survivors are helping shift perceptions. In Altadena and other hard‑hit places, manufactured and modular homes are increasingly viewed not just as quick or affordable fixes, but as ways to build resilience into neighborhoods where climate disasters are a recurring reality.