Factory Built Homes From Airbnb Billionaire Offers Fast Solution For LA Fire Victims

Prefabricated, factory-built homes could be arriving to aid LA fire victims much faster than many predicted. Bloomberg reported that Joe Gebbia, the billionaire co-founder of Airbnb ABNB and a board member of Tesla TSLA plans to donate $15 million to Steadfast LA, a foundation launched by fellow real estate billionaire Rick Caruso. The foundation will use prefab homes developed by Gebbia’s company, Samara, to support the cause.   

Lower Income Residents First

The first homes will go to lower-income residents of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods who are uninsured or underinsured. Gebbia expects the homes to be ready in five months. 

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“In addition to people getting back into their home quickly, this gives everybody hope who’s a victim that change is coming,” Caruso told the Los Angeles Times.

Caruso plans to match Gebbia’s $15 million donation of Samara homes for a total of $30 million, allowing the manufacture and installation of 80 to 100 homes.

Constructed In Mexico

Caruso said 600 of the homes that burned down in Altadena were about 1,000 square feet or less. Fire victims chosen for the program will receive Samara homes with a fire-resistant design and HVAC system. The homes will be constructed at the Samara factory in Mexicali, Mexico, about six miles from the California border, and will be installed permanently.

“We do the lot prep while the home is being built off-site,” Mike McNamara, chief executive and co-founder of Samara, said. “And what we’ll do is truck it in on the back of a semi, pick it up with a crane, lift it onto the site and install it literally in a couple of days.”

ADUs or accessory dwelling units are common in various configurations, from 420-square-foot studios to two-bedroom units of 950 square feet. Prices vary from $147,000 to $261,000, plus installation.

According to Bloomberg, Gebbia, 43, has a net worth of $9.7 billion. He left Airbnb full-time in 2022 is joining the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk. 

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Plant Prefab

Samara is not the only prefab home company getting involved in rebuilding LA. Unlike Steadfast LA, Plant Prefab is a for-profit homebuilder that takes orders from homeowners looking for fast construction. 

“Construction resources will be extremely limited — they’re already constrained," Steve Glenn,  the company’s founder and CEO told Bloomberg. He expects rebuilding after the LA wildfires will occupy "an incredibly significant" part of his business in the next few years. 

The company has been around for a decade. It traditionally manufactured 30 to 40 units a year. However, fires in California, such as the Woolsey Fire in 2018, have seen increasing demand.

“We didn’t specifically think, ‘Well, because of climate change and fires, we’ll be building for fire victims,” said Glenn. “In retrospect, that of course, makes sense.”

A labor shortage means that prefab homes, which can be built anywhere, as with Samara’s factory in Mexico, have a distinct advantage over traditionally built homes.

“There are not enough general contractors in Los Angeles to rebuild 12,000 structures in addition to all the other work,” Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, told Bloomberg. “Solutions where you can build most of the homes somewhere else not subject to the labor constraint that will affect Los Angeles could be particularly attractive.”

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