Could 3D-printed homes solve California's housing crisis?

“California’s housing crisis involves everything from the affordability and availability of homes to homelessness, and there’s not one, simple solution.

However, two Northern California companies are trying to shake things up in the construction industry. Instead of conventional, “stick-built” homes, they are using a 3D printer, something they think will make a big difference in the future.

Emergent 3D, in Redding, and Mighty Buildings, in Oakland, have different approaches to 3D printing homes, but both say — what they’re doing can help mitigate the state’s housing crisis, especially as the technology evolves and their companies grow.

EMERGENT 3D AND WILDFIRE RECOVERY

Matthew Gile and Don Ajamian lead Emergent 3D, a Redding-based company that’s just days away from printing its first 3D home…


…They’ll be printing what they call the “Wildfire Restoration House,” a 1,200 square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home that meets all of California’s requirements for building in wildfire-prone areas.

“The windows have to be certain types of windows, the attic ventilation can only be certain types, exterior finish, the way you treat the eaves, the type of roofing, and so on,” Ajamian explained.

“For families that are moving in, that maybe have been traumatized as a result of having to flee for their lives out of their homes and have their homes burned down, to have a concrete home…can give you some peace of mind,” Gile said….






https://www.abc10.com/article/enter...ings/103-f5955833-c66b-4bbc-8063-41bc971a91dd










Some really neat home designs

emergent-3d.com/our-designs



Creative solutions

emergent-3d.com/about-emergent

Oh, and the cement captures carbon too.

www.cemnet.com/News/story/175356/fortera-carbon-capture-plant-to-come-on-stream-at-end-of-2023.html

A finished project. 3 bedroom 2 bath 1200 sq ft no garage

emergent-3d.com/projects

 

two 3 bedroom 2 bath 1200 square foot homes and four 2 bedroom 2 bath 1200 square ft homes with 2 car carports have been built. Park rangers in Redding occupy the 1st two and fire affected families get the other four. There are three additional designs for the city of Paradise rebuild. They can use co2 reduced cement to build them.

 

I'm sure some politician will put a stop to it with some sort of zoning regulations.

People can make fine homes out of shipping containers for very little money but of course the government would rarely allow such a thing in most areas.

 

"months to finish" doesn't seem revolutionary. Modular housing is the way to go.

 

They haven’t yet. In fact local government in Redding, Butte County, Shasta County are very much in favor of this. We even have a co2 reduced cement available. A look at the floor plans shows basic to pretty spectacular. The city of Redding owns two of the homes built within city parks for park rangers to occupy to help keep them safe and homeless free. 24 others have been completed or are under construction here.

 

Thats neat. But more buildings doesnt solve homelessness. There's 15 million homes sitting empty right now. The issue is that property values are too high for people to be able to afford them. It doesn't help that there's a lot of people who are unable to be productive and responsible enough to afford housing... but housing is also more expensive now (relative to other costs) than it ever has been, and its getting worse, and as it does, more and more people, productivity and responsibility aside, slide from barely getting by to not getting by. More buildings will just mean more rentals, and if supply of housing reduced demand and thus rental prices, there wouldn't be 15 million homes already sitting empty. This is primarily the result of real estate being one of the few meaningful ways to store real wealth, as our money loses its value and debt becomes more valuable than cash. Yay fractional reserve banking and money printing. But also more and more housing is being bought up by investment firms, who turn it into rentals. So much so that they now effectively set rental rates, and they set them to precisely the maximum amount that the average person can afford, leaving everyone below average income unable to afford rent (nevermind buying a home), and eating up any savings that would otherwise be imagined by increased wages. So long as this is the case, making it easier to build houses, while neat, isn't going to solve anything, because people will still have to rent them (or, more accurately, rent the land those houses sit on).

 

Cutting the production time by 25% and the cost by 20% along with using less energy to heat and cool helps. Where empty homes are and where there’s a shortage of homes out there is a matter of location. There’s a ton of empty shacks in Detroit. There are other such declining population cities with more homes than people wanting to live there. In California there are places inland that are 50-75% less expensive than the state or Bay Area median and yet people are only now beginning to move to the San Joaquin Valley to go Stockton to the Bay or Bakersfield to LA. The far north and the eastern Central Valley are still very conservative and inexpensive. Even with so many conservatives moving out of state there’s still a housing shortage here and a big battle between the state and city / county governments over local control over growth, housing, and density.