Latest news with #rebuilding
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The Rush to Take Modular Homes Mainstream in Disaster-Ravaged Areas
After Jerry Camarillo's childhood home in Altadena, Calif., burned down, he was determined to rebuild the one-story, midcentury ranch house exactly as it was before the Los Angeles wildfires. That all changed with one look at the home's insurance policy, which would cover only a fraction of the $700,000 estimated cost to rebuild. Then he stumbled across Hapi Homes, a company that builds prefabricated homes as pieces in factories and then assembles them on-site. The company said it could build a home for $200,000 less than the cost of traditional construction, and do it in less than half the time. The new home would look and feel the same as it did before the fire, Hapi Homes pledged. Camarillo was sold. 'This makes rebuilding possible,' he said. Companies that use modular construction, 3-D printing or other nontraditional methods have existed for decades on the fringe of home building, often tainted by an association with lower-quality construction and previous missteps. Now, these companies are trying to break into the mainstream by offering a faster and less costly alternative for rebuilding in cities ravaged by natural disasters. Many of the thousands of displaced homeowners in Los Angeles, Hawaii and the Southeast are giving these businesses a look. Victims of hurricanes, wildfires or other disasters can be desperate to rebuild, but their insurance payouts are often well short of what is needed to cover traditional construction costs. 'Homeowners in a moment of crisis want to try something different,' said Jason Ballard, chief executive of ICON, a company that makes 3D-printed homes. ICON uses giant 3-D printers to squeeze layers of concrete into the framing for a house. The company received hundreds of calls about building projects in disaster-prone areas, including from Los Angeles homeowners and developers after this year's fires, Ballard said. Now, the Texas-based company is rearranging its expansion strategy to target disaster-prone markets such as California and Florida. Modular builder Samara is working with billionaire developer Rick Caruso's rebuilding nonprofit, Steadfast LA, to offer dozens of free modular homes to low-income residents who lost their homes in the Los Angeles fires. And the Los Angeles Mayor's office is having conversations with more than a dozen alternative builders to explore nontraditional construction options. 'Disasters are actually going to be the turning point' for the wider adoption of factory-built housing, said Vikas Enti, chief executive of Reframe Systems. 'That's what we're betting on.' Enti's Massachusetts company builds homes in robotic, artificial-intelligence-powered microfactories. It is planning to build a California microfactory 18 months earlier than initially scheduled, he said, and to hire local Los Angeles employees to meet the postwildfire demand. Offsite-factory construction can accelerate the building process because fewer workers are required and materials are often purchased in bulk. The shorter timeline can sharply reduce carrying costs for a project. And in disaster areas, where many builders are competing for construction labor and materials, factory-home manufacturers have an edge because they can access less crowded supply chains in other cities and states. After the 2023 wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, more than 100 modular companies flooded the Hawaiian market. State officials alongside the housing nonprofit HomeAid Hawaii commissioned five modular vendors to help build 450 temporary housing units for displaced residents. None of these modular companies had worked in Hawaii previously. But their emergency entrance into the market has made Hawaii's public officials more open to alternative competitors. 'As a public official, I'm now saying, 'Hey, we do have alternatives to typical construction,' ' said Joseph Campos II, deputy director at Hawaii's Department of Human Services. 'There can be a partnership with traditional construction trades.' That is a stark pivot from the decadeslong reputational problems plaguing the alternative-building industry. Off-site factory home construction has historically been used for lower-budget homes, leaving many people with the preconception that it tends to be of lesser quality. That stigma has been compounded by high-profile failures. 'Large companies have come out with really big promises,' said Michelle Boyd, the chief strategy officer at Terner Labs, a housing research nonprofit affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. 'And then they go belly-up.' In 2021, the tech construction startup Katerra filed for bankruptcy after raising nearly $3 billion from a host of notable backers such as SoftBank Group. Katerra vowed that it could use manufactured construction to turn home-building into a 30-day, assembly-line process. But the company had yet to figure out the nuts and bolts of that mass production before committing to projects. Some alternative builders are going to great lengths to rehabilitate their image. Hapi Homes, for example, invited Camarillo to tour the company's Utah factory that helped close the sale. 'I had to go see if this was real or just a scam,' he said. Still, the problems of alternative building stretch beyond a bad rap. Expanding these businesses to a national scale is difficult because of the expensive transportation costs that come with shipping entire homes from one place to another. Home builder Williams Rebuild, which intends to build between 120 and 150 homes a year for Los Angeles wildfire victims, is exploring whether building wall panels in a factory could help reduce the materials that need to be stored on-site, said Dan Faina, the company's president. 'If not at major scale, it definitely won't be cheaper' than building homes in bulk on-site, he said. 'I think the adoption rate is going to be substantially less than the excitement that's going behind it.' SoLa Impact, an affordable-housing developer based in Los Angeles, is supporting state legislation to expedite approvals for modular housing. SoLa CEO Martin Muoto said the acute housing shortage exacerbated by the wildfires could boost support. 'Never let a crisis go to waste,' he said. Write to Rebecca Picciotto at and Nicole Friedman at
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Community unites after fire damages historic church building
DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – Parishioners from the St. John the Baptist Church in Maria Stein went to mass this Sunday at the Precious Blood Church over in Chickasaw. The church community was invited to the nearby church because of a massive fire that heavily damaged the 135-year-old building on Thursday evening. 'A big loss': Church steeple, roof collapse in massive Maria Stein fire 2 NEWS spoke with two community members about the drastic change in their lives, Ted and Sarah Burgmen, who live close to St. John's. 'It's like our world changed,' said Sarah, 'we thought of all the baptisms, first communions, weddings and funerals which happened there. Over 135 years is quite a history of things that can't be replaced.' The pair spoke on how the community is looking forward. 'People will rebuild that church,' said Ted. 'The building's gone, but the people aren't.' 'The building is a building, but the church is our community,' said Sarah. The two churches have been closed before. When St. John's was being repainted, Precious Blood invited over their parish for four months. 'Everybody works with each other,' shared Ted. 'This is one great big community here.' Maria Stein community assesses damage after devastating church fire Dr. James 'Jim' Schwieterman spoke with 2 NEWS as he visited the fence outside of St. John. 'This is my community,' said Schwieterman. 'All the sacraments for me, my mother, my grandparents and my great grandparents, all started here at St. John's church. They say 'you try to make the unreal real' and so you come out here to process the loss.' He continued, speaking on rebuilding. 'I was asked, 'do you think they'll rebuild?' and I said I know they will. It's not an if, it's a when. The local community, Catholic and not alike, we band together. It's who we are, it's what we're about.' 2 NEWS will follow the St. John's community through these next steps. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ABC News
2 days ago
- General
- ABC News
Rebuilding the lifesaving huts scattered throughout Australia's high country (Supplied: D. Johnson, Tom's Outdoors)
11 high country huts were damaged or destroyed during the Black Summer bushfires. Five years later, they've all been rebuilt. Supplied: NSW Parks and Wildlife Service / D. Johnson, Tom's Outdoors
CBS News
4 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Altadena residents demand LA County waive rebuilding permit fees
Altadena residents are demanding that Los Angeles County officials waive the rebuilding permit fees that could cost Eaton Fire survivors upwards of $50,000. Freddy Sayegh, who started the neighborhood coalition, said many people who lost their homes can't afford to rebuild unless the county intervenes. Sayegh's family home on North Lake Avenue is one of the 9,418 buildings destroyed by the Eaton Fire, which is the second most destructive wildfire in California. "It's been horrendous," he said. "Every dollar is going to matter, especially in permits, fees and licensing, everything across the board. None of us have enough money to rebuild, nobody." Shawna Dawson Beer lost her entire neighborhood in west Altadena. She called on the county to waive permitting fees after LA Mayor Karen Bass took a similar step for the Palisades Fire zone. The executive order still requires approval from the city council. "We are a community of working-class people and historically underrepresented people," Beer said. "People are getting $40,000 and $50,000 base permit estimates and fees that they are supposed to cough up." Altadena and Pasadena residents will march outside Fair Oaks Burgers on Sunday to call on lawmakers to provide more financial support for rebuilding. "Those who stand in the way of rebuilding efforts should go and start finding a new profession," Sayegh said. "We will vote. We will not forget." The county said it is facing unprecedented financial challenges. Supervisor Kathryn Barger's office said they are working on plan that will be presented by the end of next week. She also plans to introduce a motion to defer permitting and inspection fees for like-for-like rebuilds as well as a funding strategy to waive fees. "I do appreciate the incredible work by Supervisor Barger," Sayegh said. "We want them waived, not deferred." The county said it received more than 600 applications to rebuild in the Eaton Fire area. It's only issued 15 permits as of Friday.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Traffic expected as crews truck Lahaina wildfire debris to central Maui
HONOLULU (KHON2) — It's said to be the next important step in rebuilding Lahaina, moving all the debris from the fire to its permanent site. The move will cause some traffic problems for commuters for the next few months and cost taxpayers millions more. Deal reached: How will the $4B Lahaina Global Settlement be split for fire victims? More than 1,500 structures, both residential and commercial, were destroyed in the August 2023 Lahaina wildfire. The first step in rebuilding is removing all the debris. 'The longer the debris sat there, the more vulnerable the near-shore waters were to exposure when it rained,' said John Smith, Maui County Office of Recovery Administrator. 'So, there were very few options, and Olowalu came to the top of the options in terms of logistics.' Olowalu is just a 10-minute drive from Lahaina town, which officials say sped up the cleanup process while they figured out where to permanently put the debris, which is located next to the current landfill in central Maui. Starting next month, crews will use up to 50 dump trucks a day to transport the debris 19 miles from Olowalu to Puunene. Work will be done seven days a week, only during daylight hours.'You'll see the trucks, but it's not going to be this major increase in traffic,' said Smith. 'I think people don't realize the impact that it's going to have until it actually happens,' said Sen. Troy Hashimoto, (D) Wailuku, Kahului, Waiehu. 'And so people are going to start seeing that, especially people that live in my district who live in central Maui and commute to work. They're going to feel that.' Maui County officials say they surveyed residents and found their top concern was environmental impact, which is why officials finally chose the central Maui site over Olowalu. But the county had to buy the land for $4 million. It also had to pay to prepare the landfill site for the 400,000 tons of debris. 'I think we would probably have rather used some of that money for other things, but I think that decision was made and we have to move on at this point,' said Hashimoto. That's exactly what county officials are doing. Even though only a few homes in Lahaina have been rebuilt, officials say there are more than 250 homes under construction. Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news 'All of that work could not have started unless we would have made this decision right away to move the debris to the temporary site,' said Smith. 'Otherwise, we'd still be waiting on the permanent landfill today, which is just not ready.' The debris transportation is expected to run through November. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
