Solutions for Affordable Housing

Affordable housing is usually treated as something temporary and bare-minimum - a roof over your head, nothing more. But what if it could be warm, energy-efficient, with a modern facade and without that feeling of living in “second-class” buildings?

Today cities are facing two crises at once: people are struggling with the cost of rent and utilities, while builders can’t keep up using traditional, slow, labor-heavy methods. As a result, the people who need housing the most - young families, lower-income households, vulnerable groups - end up stuck in aging, drafty buildings where real renovation is always pushed off “for better times.” 

Solutions for affordable housing can’t be cosmetic fixes or one-off upgrades anymore. Cities and owners need approaches that let them upgrade whole buildings quickly, make them comfortable and efficient to operate, keep budgets under control - and do it all without forcing residents to move out. That’s where industrialized facade systems like Dextall’s come in, helping combine affordability, quality, and speed at scale. 

Why Affordable Housing Needs a Different Building Approach

Affordable housing operates in permanent “shortage mode”: not enough buildings, tight budgets, and rising performance expectations around energy and carbon. Traditional construction just doesn’t keep up - not in speed, not in volume, and not in meeting newer environmental standards. 

Demand Outpacing Supply

Cities like New York are now openly acknowledging the scale of the problem: the city’s latest housing strategy includes a historic $26 billion capital commitment and a goal to build 500,000 new homes by 2032 - and even that is playing catch-up with demand. 

At the same time, huge portions of the existing affordable housing portfolio have to meet strict rules like Local Law 97, which pushes owners toward deep energy upgrades instead of “patch and paint” fixes. 

In that context, small, slow, bespoke solutions simply don’t work. Owners need to upgrade entire portfolios quickly, repeatably, and with predictable performance - and that’s exactly where conventional, site-built facades start to break down.

Why Conventional Construction Can’t Scale for Affordable Housing

A traditional facade retrofit or new facade build-out usually means:

• Unpredictable budgets: design errors, shaky quantity takeoffs, and change orders that show up late in the game.
• Stretched timelines: sequential trades working in the field, weather delays, scaffolding, and complex coordination across multiple contractors.
• Heavy on-site labor needs: exactly the thing the industry is short on, and exactly what’s getting more expensive every year.

Dextall’s model flips this: most of the complexity moves off the jobsite and into the factory. Panels are designed with digital tools, manufactured under strict quality control, then show up on-site as ready-to-install units. The facade stops being a one-off construction “adventure” and becomes a standardized, repeatable product that can be deployed across tens or hundreds of affordable housing buildings. 

Dextall’s Industrialized Wall Systems for High-Volume Affordable Projects

To tackle hundreds of affordable housing buildings, the exterior can’t be a custom job every time - it has to behave like a product. That’s exactly what Dextall does: its industrialized wall systems are unitized prefabricated exterior wall panels, designed in Dextall Studio, fabricated off-site, and delivered to the project ready for installation. The same system works for new construction (DWall) and for deep retrofits of existing buildings (DWall Retrofit and SWall Retrofit), which is crucial for occupied affordable stock. 

Unitized Exterior Panels Designed for Speed, Cost and Quality

Dextall produces unitized prefabricated exterior wall panels built around a light-gauge metal frame with factory-installed windows, insulation, air and weather barrier, and exterior cladding in one plug-and-play element. On site, the facade goes together like a kit of parts - without long, wet trades on scaffolding. 

Combining factory production with Dextall Studio, the company demonstrates:

• Up to 80% shorter overall facade timelines, from design through installation, compared with traditional approaches.
• Typical cost savings of about 15–20% versus conventional construction, driven by reduced labor, faster completion, and less waste.
• Up to 70% faster on-site installation and up to 87% less on-site labor, which also cuts risk, site congestion, and insurance exposure.
• Up to 40% better energy performance than standard code-compliant wall assemblies, supporting high-performance, low-carbon buildings.

Dextall Studio ties it all together as an “architect-first” software platform: it turns early design concepts into fabrication-ready models, with real-time cost visibility and coordinated outputs like shop drawings and bills of materials from Day One. 

Inside the Panel: Performance Layers that Enable Passive-Ready Retrofits

Each panel is a multi-layered system where every element serves airtightness, thermal performance, and durability. In the factory, the team first builds out a light-gauge steel frame with attachment hooks, assembling the full “skeleton” of the panel and verifying its geometry. Then they apply sealant, install sheet metal, and form a continuous vapor and air barrier with sealed seams. 

Next comes high-performance insulation, installed in multiple layers with staggered joints and fully filled cavities, followed by protective sheathing. Screw heads and joints are covered with specialized tapes, perimeter joints are sealed with EPDM and other tapes, and the cladding subframe is attached - using Z- and omega-shaped profiles - before the final aluminum (or other selected) cladding goes on. Finishing tapes and gaskets complete a fully air- and watertight panel ready to be craned into place. 

All of this fine-tuned work - the airtight layer, multi-layer insulation, quality checks - happens in controlled factory conditions, guided by digital modeling and standardized processes. On site, crews focus on rapid assembly of large, pre-finished units into a continuous facade that can support Passive House–ready and Net Zero–aligned performance, while sharply reducing heat loss for affordable housing projects. 

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To explore how these solutions work in real affordable, senior and supportive housing projects — and what changes for residents, cities and developers — read our follow-up article “Faster Upgrades, Better Homes: Industrialized Facades for Affordable, Senior and Supportive Housing.”

Quick Answers About Dextall and Affordable Housing

Does this actually work for affordable, senior, and supportive housing - or just high-end projects?
It’s built for exactly those use cases. Dextall is an approved prefab wall panel provider in NYSERDA’s RetrofitNY program for affordable housing, and its systems are being used on projects like The Heritage in East Harlem, 1240 Bedford (the first true prefab overclad affordable housing retrofit in NYC), and Newark’s ArtSide Arts & Housing Hub with dedicated affordable units. 

Why are developers and cities switching to panelized facades like this?
Scale and predictability. One facade platform can be configured once and then reused across similar buildings, with up to 80% faster timelines, typical 15–20% cost savings, and dramatically less on-site labor compared with traditional construction. 

How much do residents feel the difference?
A lot. Panels are installed from the outside, often without scaffolding, which keeps disruption down. After the retrofit, residents get quieter apartments, more stable indoor temperatures, and a refreshed building exterior - without living through years of messy facade work. 

What about climate goals and regulations?Prefab facades produced and delivered the way Dextall does it can reduce construction-phase carbon emissions by up to 43% and operational emissions by 22%, while meeting U.S. codes and environmental standards like NYC’s Local Law 97, LEED, and WELL. That makes them a practical tool for cities and owners aiming for Net Zero.