Gov. Wes Moore picked a fitting backdrop for his latest housing announcement: a modular home under construction near Curtis Bay in south Baltimore. Standing at that job site on Thursday, Oct. 1, he signed two executive orders aimed at getting more homes built in Maryland, one pushing factory-built housing and the other going after the state permits and licenses that can leave a project sitting idle.
"Here's what today means: we're building faster, we're building smarter," Moore said, according to Maryland Matters. "We're building a Maryland where more people have a place to call home."
The same day, two housing laws Moore pushed during this year's legislative session took effect. More on those below.
What the orders do
The first, the "Housing Innovation" order, leans hard on modular construction. According to the governor's office, it creates a Governor's Initiative to Accelerate Modular Housing Construction that will modernize regulations, develop statewide pre-approved building plans and provide technical assistance to local governments. It also sets up a state Modular Workforce Partnership to develop training curricula and create on-the-job housing construction training for Maryland Corps/Service Year cohorts and high school-level registered apprentices. And it expands the mandate of the Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Council to support local workforce development.
The same order creates a Maryland Housing Innovation Incubator inside the Department of Housing and Community Development, backed by a new Housing Innovation Advisory Council. Housing Secretary Jake Day described the incubator as a "space for entrepreneurs and housing experts to identify and scale best practices to bring innovative housing solutions to market."
Day put the size of the problem bluntly. "We've underproduced housing at a rate of 8,000 units a year for 20 years," he said. "Maryland's housing shortage wasn't created overnight, and we know it won't be solved overnight."
The second order creates the Governor's Permitting and Licensing Acceleration Team, or PLAT. Its job is to dig through the state's permitting, licensing and certification processes, find the administrative, regulatory, statutory, operational and technology barriers, and recommend fixes. Its first focus is multifamily housing and other priority development. The governor's office says PLAT will produce process maps, standardized timelines and performance measures, a priority-project dashboard and "concierge-style coordination" for select priority projects.
"When permits get stuck, projects don't get built. It's that easy," Moore said. He also insisted that faster approvals won't mean weaker health, safety or environmental rules: "We can keep standards, we can move faster and we can protect our people."
Two new laws on the books
Oct. 1 was also the start date for the Maryland Housing Certainty Act, which gives developers "vesting rights" so their projects are less likely to be delayed by changes to local housing or zoning policies. A second new law encourages building near transit by restricting parking minimums and certain other local decisions in specific situations.
Both land on top of Moore's September 2025 "Housing Starts Here" order. The governor's office says that order has led to 26% faster DHCD reviews of multifamily housing applications, a 25% average cut in Maryland Department of the Environment permit processing times, and on-time processing of State Highway Administration permit applications rising from 87% to 95%. It also opened pathways to third-party permitting through those two agencies, and the state has identified more than 300 acres of surplus state land now under review for housing.
The orders came days after a new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Maryland Matters reported that Pew attributed about 21% of the state's poverty level to housing costs and rent, and WYPR reported that Pew put Maryland's average monthly rent near $1,800, well above the national average of $1,400.
Neither the state nor the news coverage identified the builder or manufacturer behind the Curtis Bay modular home where Moore signed the orders.
Why it matters for Contractors
Statewide pre-approved plans and modernized modular rules could open a bigger market for builders who set factory-built homes, along with the site, foundation, utility and finish crews that come with every one of them. Contractors who haven't worked with modular yet should watch for those plans as they're developed, and for the new training programs, which could turn into a hiring pipeline. On the multifamily side, PLAT's dashboard and standardized timelines are worth tracking if you've ever had a job stall waiting on a state sign-off. And the vesting rights in the Housing Certainty Act should give developers, and the contractors they hire, more confidence that an approved project won't get changed out from under them halfway through.