Does anyone want to work with me and engineer or market a $5,000 tiny home — the blueprints will be open source, but also manufacture at scale if there is demand. This home would have a solar roof, small battery, water tank, will arrive in a IKEA-like box worldwide. It should allow a 6.5 ft person sleep comfortably and should be movable with a forklift. Think a next generation home for the homeless. Should withstand regular weather for 20 years. DM me. I could invest some $50k to start this venture if we can form a team. Email me at somid3@gmail.com or text me +1 323-240-1241
I honestly don't think that the "physical structure" or actual shelter is the main problem w.r.t. homelessness. The land itself is a lot more expensive. And the legal framework.<p>Where I am right now, it's illegal to sleep in a car for instance. And similarly, a lot of alternative housing solutions are highly burocratized, require lots of permits etc. Almost like politicians are protecting their real estate investments.<p>In any case, homelessness at a society level is a political problem.<p>==============<p>OTOH, since I was planning on building a wood cabin for myself at some point, I do wonder what solution you had in mind for the toilets/sewage.
I’m fking tired of seeing human beings sleeping in tents on sidewalks. I don’t care what they did, what drugs they’ve used, who/what they are escaping, many of them are regular people who weee eaten and chewed up by the machine. We have to engineer a dignified a solution.<p>I make about $1mil a year and I can’t believe I haven’t done this sooner.
My shed cost me 3k in building supplies. It is 160sqr ft and has flooring…etc.<p>We could easily build enough units to house homeless but they won’t meet our zoning and permitting process.<p>City’s like San Francisco don’t actually want to solve the problem. Instead they just want to profit off of it.<p>The issue is government, not available funds or land.
There’s already an industry making cost-optimised, factory-built tiny homes - you should look at the travel trailer/caravan industry.<p>Perhaps you could talk to some rough sleepers an get their opinion - and if they agree with you, as an MVP you could give them such a home, and see if it keeps them off the streets?
While a small mass produced teardrop trailer might be doable between $5-10k, it would effectively be a hard shell tent. Which is fine, but that’s the trivial part. The hard part is where to put them and who is going to provide the infrastructure for what is effectively a trailer park.<p>Get cities to rezone their public parks that have existing bathrooms and 90% of the problem will solved. Let’s start with Dolores Park to see how serious the HN crowd is. Start a Change.org petition for that and I’ll be first to sign.<p><a href="https://www.pinterest.com/wamalinf/vintage-teardrop-trailers-1930s-1950s/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pinterest.com/wamalinf/vintage-teardrop-trailers...</a>
A beat up commodity shipping container cost me $3,300. If you can deliver a functional home without taking a loss for $1,700 more, you're a genius and a wizard.
> Arnold Schwarzenegger donated $250,000 to build 25 tiny homes intended for homeless vets in West LA. The homes were turned over a few days before Christmas.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/rnmtpn/arnold_schwarzenegger_donated_250000_to_build_25/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/rnmtpn/arnold_...</a><p>There's some good details there about people already doing this kind of good work.
I lived in Miami in the late 1980s, and recall an article about an architectural student that demonstrated a low cost housing solution along similar lines. The local building codes were changed almost immediately to prevent any such units from being constructed (because “safety”).<p>A hexayurt is good enough most of the time and costs very little, but apparently no one can afford enough politicians to be permitted to help
At the risk of cling unwanted attention one someone: If she hasn’t done so, you may want to get in touch with Doreen Traylor (<a href="http://alexandralindelof.com/story-package/" rel="nofollow">http://alexandralindelof.com/story-package/</a>) for some perspective.<p>She posts as DoreenMichele in HackerNews.
I was researching suitable sites to legally build a tiny house in the EU, without a building permit.<p>So far I have:<p>- Some regions in Sweden<p>- Some areas in Portugal<p>- Possibly Romania<p>- It used to be common in Poland, but possibly illegal today.<p>Wonder if anyone here had also been researching this kind of thing.
I've read of a couple that dug a huge hole with bulldozer.... then dropped 2 shipping containers and buried them back up... cost like 20k... mostly for the welding done to connect the containers, add rooms and windows...<p>being impacted by earth is a natural insulator... and it faces south...<p>I'd love to do something like this... team up buy land then place yurts and things while we build earth bag or container homes... maybe we use some of the land for Airbnb rentals to pay for supplies for the rest of what we want to do ....<p>ideally next to Zion national park in kanab.... could easily make 150 per night for our glamping spots...
I am trying to build a "Sustainable" village with up to 200 houses. In Australia, rural land is about AUD 25K per ha (USD 4700 per acre). It some how you got permission to build on it the value increases to $100K per ha.<p>Your can build for about AUD 1650 per sqm (USD 1.20 per sqft) but that does not include power or water.<p>It is land that is the problem not buildings.