May 8th, 2025

Catching up with Full Stack Modular

I first met Roger Krulak in Cincinnati in June of 2023. He spoke at our Appalachian Finance Hub event that the Heartland Network co-organized with the 10,000 Communities Program of the Milken Institute. Roger has been in high demand since launching Full Stack Modular in 2016 or so.

Full Stack can build multi-family housing faster and more cost-effectively than traditional construction. And, being steel-built, it offers major advantages in terms of resiliency. With technology, proprietary IP, and approved manufacturer status, FSM is focused on a market in the tens of billions of dollars that consists of multi-family, lodging, student housing and affordable housing.

The company claims it is fully committed to adopting labor agreements in their Connecticut and Southern California factories, and its So-Cal factory buys from Herrick Steel, a USW represented firm. The firm enjoyed major union support in New York, and utilized pre-apprenticeship programs in its founding Brooklyn factory (which moved across the border). More to come on this, but a breakthrough in modular might bring the trades back into the residential construction field.

We are pleased to pass along an article from Fast Company — which covered the launch of Heartland many years ago, btw — about FSM’s big Cal State Poly student housing project and a report by CAP on modular and affordable housing.

-Tom Croft, Managing Director

This University needs thousands of housing units. A factory is building them

BY: Nate Berg

Source - Fastcompany.com

The country's largest modular construction project is a 4,200-bed dorm complex at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

With enrollment on the rise, the California Polytechnic State University in seaside San Luis Obispo has found itself staring down a familiar California problem: a severe housing shortage. “Cal Poly’s located in this beautiful town of San Luis Obispo. That is one of our competitive advantages, but it also means that everybody else wants to live here, too,” says Mike McCormick, vice president of facilities management and development at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

This desirability poses a problem for the university, which has seen enrollment grow in recent years, with trendlines suggesting an additional 4,000 students by the end of the decade. “It’s really hard for us to grow without providing housing,” McCormick says. “The city simply can’t absorb any of it. So that’s what’s driving our program.”

We also recommend taking a look at the article below for more insight:

Increasing Affordable Housing Stock Through Modular Building

BY: Michela Zonta

Source - Americanprogress.org

Modular building, if brought to scale, has the potential to reduce construction costs and make building new homes more affordable, especially in areas experiencing severe affordable housing shortages.

The United States is in the middle of a severe housing affordability crisis, largely due to a supply shortage that is difficult to address in a timely manner with traditional subsidies and construction methods. Today, home building still relies predominantly on the traditional, site-built construction process. However, the on-site construction industry features growing productivity inefficiencies due to its significant fragmentation and a critical shortage of skilled construction labor.

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Heartland Capital Strategies fosters a "Community of Practice" for responsible economic impact investments. Heartland promotes strategic responsible investments to rebuild the rebuilt environment, renew the industrial commons, grow the clean economy, and make the boss more accountable. Inspired by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), Heartland Capital Strategies (HCS) promotes investments and projects essential for revitalizing our productive economy and community prosperity.