Tiny home builders are targeting fire ravished LA
Large swathes of Los Angeles were destroyed in devastating wildfires earlier this year, which destroyed more than 16,000 structures.
Many homeowners who saw their properties burned to the ground were then met with the compounding heartbreak of home insurance payouts that will only cover a fraction of the rebuilding costs.
Now businesses such as ICON and Hapi Homes see an opening to mass market their tiny homes, built off-site with the help of 3-D printers and then transported to their final location.
Such pre-fabricated homes have long had a reputation for poor quality and unattractive design which the companies hope to dispel.
'Disasters are actually going to be the turning point' for wider adoption of modular housing, Vikas Enti, CEO of Reframe Systems, told the Wall Street Journal.
'That's what we're betting on,' he said of the company's push into disaster zone aftermaths.
'Homeowners in a moment of crisis want to try something different,' Jason Ballard, CEO of ICON, agreed.
Ballard told the Journal that his business, which uses technology such as 3-D printers to layer concrete, was inundated with calls following the LA fires.
The Texas-based company is now focusing its expansion on areas frequently hit by natural disasters, such as California and Florida.
Williams Rebuild, another modular home construction company, is planning to build up to 150 homes a year for fire victims in LA.
The Los Angeles Mayor's office is also in discussions with a series of modular builders, the Journal reported.
SoLa Impact, an affordable-housing developer based in the city, is supporting proposed legislation in California that would speed up approval for such housing.
'Never let a crisis go to waste,' the company's CEO Martin Muoto told the Journal.
Building new homes off-site is often much cheaper because materials can be purchased in bulk and fewer workers are required for less time.
For disaster areas, building away from a crowded construction market means businesses can access less busy supply chains.
3-D printers can be used to layer concrete for the house construction
After wildfires devastated Maui, Hawaii, in 2023 more than 100 modular companies flooded the building market.
Five of those companies were commissioned by the state and nonprofit HomeAid Hawaii to build 450 temporary units for those who had lost their homes.
It served as a pivotal moment for the modular housing industry which has struggled to gain such contracts in the past.
'As a public official, I'm now saying, "Hey, we do have alternatives to typical construction,"' Joseph Campos II, deputy director at Hawaii's Department of Human Services said.
'There can be a partnership with traditional construction trades.'
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