Even updating existing homes is rife with barriers. The majority of Alaska homes were built during the ‘80s or earlier, and now many of them require improvements to keep pace with modern living. For someone in an Alaska city, such an endeavor is expensive, and off the road system it’s nearly impossible. Finances aren’t the only limitation, either. Most homes today require highly specialized knowledge and tools to work on, and both are difficult to find in rural Alaska.

In a feedback loop, the housing hang-up discourages workers from living in Alaska, thus shrinking the workforce and making homes even harder to build and maintain.

Yet there are innovators trying to escape that loop.

Tinsley, by then a research technician at the Colorado-based National Renewable Energy Lab, echoed these concerns. With more than thirty-five years of construction experience in Alaska, much of it in remote communities, Tinsley had collaborated with homeowners, contractors, and researchers to address building problems. He’d become obsessed with changing how structures in remote Alaska were built, so he began noodling on the idea of a kit-of-parts home design.

Tinsley, the company’s “chief visionary officer,” compares it to a giant LEGO set. The houses aren’t made of giant, primary-colored bricks, but a collection of interchangeable and replaceable home parts.

The Department of Energy grant opened the door to testing vacuum-insulated wall panels (VIPs) in Alaska home design. These panels are low-volume, high performance, and can be replaced without destroying them.

While Tinsley and the team ultimately decided they’d rather use wood fiber or other locally-sourced insulation in their home design, VIPs proved that reversible building systems—that is, home materials that can be removed and replaced without damage or loss—were possible.

Alaska Adaptable Housing didn’t stop there, of course. The next step in the kit-of-parts system is arguably the most important: the foundation. In Alaska, home foundations take a beating; they’re bent, broken, and tossed around by relentless freezing and thawing, erosion, and seismic activity—sometimes all in the same season. Eighty percent of Alaska is affected by permafrost, adding more complications for the ground-to-building interface. Making foundations that are shippable, maintainable, and replaceable in remote Alaska adds to the difficulty.

Alaska Adaptable Housing is rising to the occasion with a unique foundation system. The foundation, patent pending, can stack flat to ship, requires no heavy equipment or specialized tools to install, and is self-squaring. The system also received special recognition as winner of the UAF 2025 Arctic Innovation Competition in April, earning the $15,000 top prize plus two $2,000 kicker prizes in the Arctic and Climate Adaptation categories.

The Arctic Innovation Competition collected submissions from more than 150 entities and, according to Stacey Fritz, was an invaluable opportunity for Alaska Adaptable Housing to pitch ideas to fellow Alaskans and streamline its thinking.

Lumber is the primary housing material expense. Alaska spends approximately $20 million per year importing Canadian lumber. An 8-foot 2×4 can cost as much as $30 in remote communities, according to the Tanana Chiefs Conference. The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation cites such high lumber costs as a reason new building permits declined by 15 percent in 2022.

In 2023, the Alaska Legislature made moves to shift that. House Bill 93, also called the Local Lumber Exemption, opened the door for local lumber resources to be used in home construction. Under HB 93, small-scale sawmills can produce dimensional lumber and receive free training in visual lumber inspection. It also provides an exemption from the typical building code requiring grade-stamped lumber to be used, while requiring an equivalent system of Alaska grades.

Alaska Adaptable Housing cites this legislation as a huge opportunity for rural communities. Tinsley has already explored some of the bill’s potential by harvesting driftwood on the Yukon River to be milled by a collaborator in Galena.

Lumber is not the only resource that can be sourced locally. McKay is leading Alaska Adaptable Housing’s initiative to use other local materials to make Alaska communities more self-sustaining.

First on the list is seaweed. Certain seaweeds can be used in wall insulation, as they’re naturally fire-resistant and antimicrobial. Kelp can also be used as a cement alternative, drastically reducing carbon emissions normally associated with concrete production. Alaska Adaptable Housing is also looking into using local mineral resources for similar purposes.

Alaska Adaptable Housing set a goal of sourcing 85 percent of its home materials locally in the next five years. A prefab home package developed in cooperation with Alaska Building Arts and Sciences, a training nonprofit in Delta Junction, incorporates as many adaptable building principles as possible. Within the next year, Alaska Adaptable Housing anticipates evaluating a full-scale prototype of its foundation. The system itself is currently at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of five to six; a TRL of one indicates basic technology research, while a TRL of nine signifies that a technology is ready for launch.

Alaska Adaptable Housing’s goals are lofty. But the goals are backed by a team with vision, experience, and grit to buckle down and get a job done. Kit homes could be what Alaska needs to break out of the housing spiral. Adaptable homes aren’t mere figments of the past. They could very well shape the future.