Slots: 1
Deadlines
Internal Deadline: Friday, July 11th, 2025, 5pm PT Contact RII.
LOI: N/A
External Deadline: July 24, 2025
Award Information
Award Type: Cooperative Agreement
Estimated Number of Awards: 15
Anticipated Award Amount: $500,000 – $1,500,000
Link to Award:https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/359825
Process for Limited Submissions
PIs must submit their application as a Limited Submission through the Research Initiatives and Infrastructure (RII) Application Portal: https://rii.usc.edu/oor-portal/. Use the template provided here: RII Limited Submission Applicant Template
Materials to submit include:
- (1) Two-Page Proposal Summary (1” margins; single-spaced; standard font type, e.g. Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, or Georgia typeface; font size: 11 pt). Page limit includes references and illustrations. Pages that exceed the 2-page limit will be excluded from review. You must use the template linked above.
- (2) CV – (5 pages maximum)
Note: The portal requires information about the PIs in addition to department and contact information, including the 10-digit USC ID#. Please have this material prepared before beginning this application.
Purpose
The primary objective of this grant program is to develop knowledge that has the potential of increasing the supply of affordable housing as expressed in the Presidential Memorandum: Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defending the Cost-of-Living Crisis. Applicants are invited to select topics from the research categories (Section III.G) with the aim of identifying or developing outcomes that will result in an increase in affordable housing supply. HUD encourages research projects that not only study the effects of interventions but also suggest pathways and strategies for adopting or scaling effective interventions, whether through public policy or industry practices that reduce the time of housing construction and deployment.
Research Categories
Research Category 1: Models for Quickly Rebuilding Housing Destroyed by Major Disasters
In the aftermath of major disasters, there is a need to rebuild non-temporary housing as soon as possible so that affected individuals can return to normal. Yet, there is no systematic approach for helping communities rebuild long-term housing in a timely manner. HUD seeks research on finding such solutions. Proposals should identify communities that have recovered relatively quickly from severe disasters (within a year) and document what policies were most effective to achieve fast recovery; and what federal, state, and local policy changes might have allowed them to recover even faster. This research should also identify disaster recoveries where manufactured, modular housing, or other rapid construction methods were significant parts of the disaster recovery and document the effectiveness of those strategies. The research findings need to be useable by States, local governments or tribes to design a program that could be developed pre- disaster to expedite future disaster recovery, specifically oriented toward a goal of replacing housing which has been damaged or destroyed by disaster within 90 days or less. For example, such proposals might include, but are not limited to, a roster of modular or manufactured housing contractors who are always on call and ready to deploy to disaster areas quickly and rebuild housing in short timeframes (i.e. 60-90 days), as well as ways to fund such an effort, whether through CDBG-DR funds or other means.
Research Category 2: Reforms to the HUD Code and Impact on Housing Construction
The Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards, commonly called HUD Code, is a national standard for a specific type of offsite constructed housing that is built on a permanently attached steel chassis. Possible research proposals may include 1) studies quantifying the benefits of removing the chassis requirement from the legislation governing the HUD Code, including cost reductions, regulatory streamlining, demand aggregation, or other benefits; 2) developing changes to the HUD Code that reduce regulatory burdens, zoning complications, and improve interoperability with state and local codes; 3) economic analyses that compares costs, financing, and market demand for on- and off-chassis models; and 4) surveys and stakeholder engagement to gauge industry and consumer acceptance.
Research Category 3: Offsite Construction Methods and Emerging Building Technologies
This research category will solicit proposals that seek to further the adoption of emerging building technologies that have the potential to reduce construction costs, reduce long-term operation and maintenance costs, and increase housing supply. The topics for research may include 1) educating lenders on offsite construction costs and incentivizing the creation of lending products for this segment 2) improving the efficiency of supply chains and methods of asset procurement used by offsite builders 3) creating a roadmap to reduce transportation costs for industrialized construction materials and products 4) updating HUD’s 2007 report “Factory-Built Construction and the American Homebuyer: Perceptions and Opportunities” to learn the current state of consumer perceptions of factory-built housing, providing a current analysis of public attitudes, market trends, and barriers to adoption, 5) analyzing the long-term property values and performance of modular housing (both single and multi-family) and its potential impact on nearby residential properties, and 6) providing research funding for new and emerging building technologies in the pre-competitive stage to create building codes to reduce barriers to adoption. In the past, HUD funded research on steel framing, insulated concrete forms (ICFs), and structural insulated panels (SIPs) that helped eliminate barriers to the acceptance of these new technologies by the building industry, State and local governments, and consumers. Research proposals will be solicited to develop new homebuilding products and processes that increase the rate of innovation and the diffusion and adoption of innovation among homebuilders. Other research ideas might be gleaned from the Offsite Construction for Housing: Research Roadmap report.
Research Category 4: Innovative Financing Models for Unsubsidized Modular or Manufactured Housing
Given the persistent difficulty in developing models for financing modular or manufactured housing, this research seeks to explore new and innovative methods to finance those types of housing for both single-family and multi-family projects. Proposals should seek to develop models for financing modular and/or manufactured housing that are palatable for all involved parties; should seek to determine the implications of distinct lending markets for chattel and manufactured housing loans (for example, the merits of expanding FHA insurance to a broader set of modular and manufactured housing, or of reforming Title I to increase the ease of financing manufactured homes); and should seek to develop data models which can be made more publicly accessible, without triggering any privacy concerns. Additionally, studies could incorporate listening sessions with both traditional and non-traditional financial institutions to discuss strategies for facilitating funding.
Research Category 5: Accelerating Use of Artificial Intelligence to lower regulatory burdens
Responding to the President’s Executive Order to accelerate the use of Artificial Intelligence (EO 14179). There are numerous regulatory requirements that both add time and cost to projects and are routine in such a way that they might be made less onerous through the application of Artificial Intelligence tools. Examples of possible research projects to create public use AI models are:
Simplify and speed up Housing Choice Voucher Housing Quality Standards compliance. Reduce the need for PHA staff to do inspections by having an AI tool, so landlords can walk through their unit for rent with their phone video and the app shows the deficiencies that must be corrected before seeking tenants. The app can also pass the unit (with location and timestamp) such that no human inspector is needed and there is no delay in leasing units.
Automate permitting process for housing construction. Train AI for approving construction plans meeting different versions of the ICC so that plans can be uploaded into a system and get immediate building permit (or immediate disapproval for failure to comply with specific guidance on how to address the failure).
Train AI for building code compliance for different commonly used versions of ICC.
Instead of scheduling building code inspections, builders walk through properties with video (with location and timestamp) to get inspection approvals/disapprovals for foundation, rough ins, and final, against approved plan and ICC requirements.
Train AI to assess multifamily property financial risk by using HUD s vast library of Annual Financial Statements tied to enforcement actions of the past. For example, evidence for under-funding maintenance leading to future building problems could be captured.
Train AI to do environmental review based on the vast inventory of environmental reviews in the HUD HEROS system. For example, a possible research project might involve inputting a few key data points for a project (address, activity) and then generate an environmental review that may indicate a few questions but does most of the work for the proposer and has an automatic approval for a project without HUD or local government involvement in most cases.
Train AI to do most of the legal work on multifamily mortgage insurance loan closing. There are thousands of prior deals the model could be trained on.
Visit our Institutionally Limited Submission webpage for more updates and other announcements.