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Prefab housing complex for UC Berkeley students goes up in four days
- wanderfowl 8y agoIn other news, $2100+ for a small unit is viewed as 'affordable' for grad students to UC Berkeley administrators. I know there's a rent crisis out that neck of the woods, but that's some quality lack of perspective.
- jacquesm 8y agoThat's ridiculous. Even in Amsterdam student housing is ~450 for single occupants, and the tuition is a lot cheaper as well. At $2180 it is probably better to just move into your office or lab and sleep there. The best way to deal with these idiot prices is to rent a regular house a bit off the beaten path and split the rent with a couple of mates.
- steanne 8y agodon't know about berkeley specifically, but some towns have laws against more than a set number of unrelated people living together.
- jacquesm 8y agoInteresting. Amsterdam actually has a scheme that promotes this ('woongroep') for the express purpose of accommodating students.
- gt_ 8y agoIn America, all it takes is a developer not making their money back (i.e. not wanting to be a “risk-taker” anymore) and these sorts of laws magically disappear.
- astura 8y agoIndeed, however, the number is usually very reasonable, usually 5+, its not gonna stop a grad student from saving money on rent. Though the court case that upheld these laws as constitutional, Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, the zoning law was extreme at limiting only two unrelated persons - which is extreme.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoReasonable to you, but others may think 20+ is fine. I’m not sure what the law is even trying to protect, or why it matters.
- astura 8y agoIt's zoning ordinances and like any zoning ordinance its aimed at controlling or maintaining the character of the neighborhood, preventing frat houses and group homes in certain neighborhoods, etc. If parking for one family is expected and 8 students take up the whole block, etc. It's limited to unrelated persons because "family status" is a protected class under housing law. Different houses on the same street can be zoned differently. My house is zoned "single family" but two houses down is zoned "boarding house."
- dsr_ 8y agoI expect that most grad students don't have enough office or lab space to unroll a sleeping bag.
- nikanj 8y agoIt’s illegal to sleep in an office. That legislation, like many others, was put in place to protect renters and workers but now ends up hurting them instead
- smhost 8y agowhy can't we write laws that are conditional, where we explain the intent of the law, and then the law can be ignored when the conditions aren't met
- hyperpape 8y agoWithout judging the merits of this particular law, it's because conditions will be abused by the people who have the strongest incentive to game them. Laws are like code in this way: simplicity is not always easy, or possible, given the constraints, but complexity has significant downsides.
- smhost 8y agoi mean if you say so. the supreme court does it, and it's not like they're some special breed of superhumans or something.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoYou are mixing two concepts here, perhaps unintentionally. The supreme court has a standards document against which it evaluates the laws (the constitution, whether it is state (SCOC) or country (SCOTUS)). I have not read a decision where they evaluate "what the legislature 'meant'" when they make their rulings, although they do sometimes comment on that.
- hyperpape 8y agoThe Supreme Court absolutely interprets the meaning of federal law passed by the legislature. Whether they do it by appeal to authorial intent or something else is a matter of jurisprudential philosophy. For an example of talking about what the legislators intended, see King v. Burwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_v._Burwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_v._Burwell
- davidw 8y agoOff the beaten path in the Bay Area means... what, these days? Stockton? That area is a huge mess in terms of housing prices and NIMBYism.
- dopeboy 8y agoIf you are fine with roommates, there are plenty of sub 1k options in and around the area. El Cerrito and Richmond aren't too far away and generally cheaper than Berkeley.
- ghull95 8y agoExactly. Even in decent areas of Oakland you can find sub 1k rent with a roommate. Currently live in an apartment that's a 5 minute walk away from a BART station in Oakland and pay 1800/month for a 1 bedroom that I split. Takes me 35 minutes to get to work in the SF Financial District. While housing is very expensive here (especially if you have family), there are definitely ways to find cheap housing. Anecdotally I know people who are renting rooms out of their homes in San Leandro/Hayward for $750/month.
- frozenport 8y agoThis is worse than most single studios. It's living in a shipping container. They don't even have enough room for a bed and couch. Instead you have a foldable sofa.
- jrowley 8y agoI share 1BR for $2000 about 2 miles from this location (away from campus). It has a great yard but is old and has rats/squirrels in the walls. Rent is crazy here.
- keithpeter 8y agoYou have vermin? Is there not a pest control service about? Good luck
- jrowley 8y agoThe rats have been contained to the walls thus far, and pest control comes periodically but it can be hard to lock down an old house. Such is life.
- namibj 8y agoEver considered (a) cat(s)? If deployed correctly, they deliver those that they don't like the taste of to your doorstep, albeit often very mutilated (think with (part (!)) of the head missing).
- jrowley 8y agoThat's a great idea. We live on the second floor, so the cat wouldn't have access to the outside directly, which is complicated. The other issue is the lovely vizsla that lives downstairs - she is scared of cats. But I'd love to get a cat or dog when my life is 10% more stable.
- chrisseaton 8y ago> I share 1BR for $2000 You literally share a bedroom with someone you're not in a relationship with?
- jrowley 8y agoNo, I’m in a relationship with them. But the quarters still feel tight sometimes.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 8y agoExactly, the cost of the rental ($2180) for a single person for a 310 square foot apartment overshadowed the modular/technical aspect of the story for me. If it was 800 square feet or something like that I could understand but these are tiny.
- goodoldboys 8y agoThat's the sad reality of bay area housing in 2018. However, if they keep building enough units like these, prices should eventually become less insane.
- gt_ 8y agoNot in our lifetimes. Any American not retired or who doesn’t own a home most likely wants to move to the Bay Area, and most likely because there are jobs. The only reason they don’t is the rent rates. Housing by market value is a losing proposition.
- paulie_a 8y agoThat is a pretty pretentious attitude about the bay area. Which is pretty much the primary reason I would never want to live there. I'll take a guess that the vast majority of that demographic doesn't want to live there also.
- umanwizard 8y ago> Any American not retired or who doesn’t own a home most likely wants to move to the Bay Area Huh? Is this supposed to be serious? I know plenty of Americans who don't own a home and aren't retired. No more than a few percent of whom want to move to the Bay Area.
- jessaustin 8y agoIsn't net migration out of the Bay Area? https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/Bay-Area-outward-migration-exodus-sf-redfin-12563337.php https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/Bay-A...
- Randin 8y agoI don't
- Nasrudith 8y agoWhile strictly better than a two story or a one story single family home I don't think that they'd be sufficient for solving the bay area housing issue.
- psychometry 8y agoTrue. While stipends vary from school to school, they don't really seem to vary according to regional cost of living. You're probably maxing out at 30k/year whether you're in Boston or Cleveland.
- ebikelaw 8y agoBerkeley hasn't built a damn thing since Gerald Ford was President, while the population has increased a lot, mostly through longevity rather than the oft-blamed migration. Going rate for a normal sized studio apartment is about $4000/mo.
- khuey 8y agoBerkeley's population has actually been flat or falling for most of the period since 1970. In the 1970 census there were 116,700 people living there. In 2010 there were 112,580. Many of the intervening years were barely above 100k. This is what happens when you don't build any new housing and median household sizes continue their decades long decline.
- ebikelaw 8y agoYes but Berkeley is not in deep orbit, it is central to the 7-million-person Bay Area. The population has doubled in the time since Berkeley decided to freeze itself in amber.
- daydreamnation 8y agoit's insulting to have this called affordable
- sowbug 8y agoFTA: "In lieu of providing affordable units on site..."
- rflrob 8y ago$2100/month is literally more than my partner’s pre-tax stipend as a grad student at UC Berkeley.
- plankers 8y agoSomething something student loans, something something increased future earning power, something something growth based economy. Ah, the joys of the modern higher learning establishments.
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoIt’s interesting that the contractor had to pay a $500k fee to Berkeley for an affordable housing trust. While I applaud the spirit of such a thing, it seems like the last thing you want to do in a housing crisis is make building more expensive. Perhaps if the contractor didn’t have to pay such a high fee just to build the place, they could offer better prices to the tenants. Can anyone comment on the work done by that housing trust?
- supermdguy 8y agoThe article says it was given "in lieu of providing affordable units on site". So, sounds like it was a penalty of sorts?
- sowbug 8y agoThe article expressly says these units are not considered affordable.
- xvector 8y agoWhen housing costs in SF are 3-4K for a single, it's actually quite reasonable.
- nikanj 8y agoAlas, construction speed isn’t the bottle neck behind the housing crisis
- lainga 8y agoI'm impressed Berkeley went to all the trouble of designing, approving and erecting an entire dormitory without ever seeing the point - or maybe while trying not to.
- gt_ 8y agoThat’s how this works. Wealthy people don’t develop out of kindness. They do it to profit.
- TomMarius 8y agoOf course, how else would they feed their families and why would they put their capital at risk if there is no possible profit? The question you should be asking is "why is the regulator slowing down the housing market?" - because the profit margin would be much lower if they weren't, as more competition would be allowed to grow and it's a well-known fact that competition leads to better services for lower prices.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rustcharm 8y agoIf the government didn't stand in the way, these 'wealthy' people you hate so much would have built a lot of housing.
- adrianmonk 8y agoYou know what would have way more impact on housing affordability? Build it using traditional construction methods but make it 10 stories instead of 4 stories. But the city will find some reason why that's absolutely unacceptable. Then they will go on to talk about how this is just fundamentally a difficult problem that they haven't found a solution for, but rest assured they are still looking for ways to solve it.
- ams6110 8y ago> prefabricated all-steel modular units made in China Hope they were tested for formaldehyde and other VOCs, lead paint, etc.
- dfee 8y ago“This product is known to cause cancer in the state of California”
- paul_milovanov 8y agoIsn't everything?
- grogenaut 8y agoI love seeing those signs on the jetway in Cali airports. It's basically saying to me "the state of California is known to cause cancer by the state of California" We also had some super cheap mice at one job that had that sticker on them. Like $1.02 per mouse. And it was on the cable. We were like a) profit margin, b) are we safe of we just don't handle the cable or is the mouse body itself the problem?
- paul_milovanov 8y agoLook, given that for the majority of cancers there are no definitive environmental causes, the state of California should basically slap a sticker like that on the forehead of each one of its residents. Anything else is not full disclosure.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoA dirty little secret of Prop 65 warnings is that businesses often put them on things as a lazy CYA measure, not actually having evaluated whether they've exceeded the limits.
- paul_milovanov 8y ago
- goodoldboys 8y agoIf only the approval process didn't take 250x as long as the actual building of the units...
- jpeg_hero 8y ago> The project, initially approved by the city in 2010 as a hotel, then re-approved in 2015 as studio apartments, will be leased to UC Berkeley for graduate student housing 8 years of permitting! Most infuriation article.
- alexisrivas 8y ago4 days of box stacking. 8 years of permitting. Multi-unit projects like this which require discretionary permits and approvals are too slow of a response for the housing crisis. California state senators enacted laws in 2017 (SB 1069 and AB 2299) which allow Accessory Dwelling Units to be built in backyards of single family homes. They're full living units with kitchens and bathrooms, and the state law requires that cities approve them strictly based on zoning within 120 days of an application being submitted.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoCaveat legislative action which overrules city zoning/permitting when placed near mass transit. Time will tell.
- surfmike 8y agoThat bill was DOA.
- gonyea 8y agoProblem: Almost every SFH has an easement in the rear of the lot. And cities like Mountain View are using that as the basis for denying ADU applications. If there’s telephone wires (not even a pole) then there’s an easement.
- baybal2 8y ago> prefabricated all-steel modular units made in China https://youtube.com/watch?v=3-9fMcqxg4k https://youtube.com/watch?v=3-9fMcqxg4k Not really a prefab. It is LGSF + foam concrete, pretty common outside North America
- cm2187 8y agoI wonder what the sound insulation looks like. Particularly in the context of student residences.
- baybal2 8y agoFoam concrete used for insulation is at around 200-300 kg per cube. Should be enough. Right now, I'm renting in a high rise with precast foam concrete insulation blocks in between apartment walls. Never been troubled by that.
- sah2ed 8y agoApparently the chinese company is called PTH. http://www.putianhouse.com/ http://www.putianhouse.com/
- rustcharm 8y agoNo elevator? They're going to get ADA lawsuits before it even opens.
- analogmemory 8y ago> ADA accessible units are on the ground floor.
- bubblegumtycoon 8y ago<rant> Does anyone else think that ADA (American Disabilities Act) and some other lobbies are completely out of hand? Ever wonder why in your own house you need to have > 15" clearance in both sides of the toilet: ADA (see link below). Or why restaurant down the street was fined wholesome (or rather settled out of court) because some serial litigant filed an ADA lawsuit against them because doorway to their restroom didn't meet some ADA requirements. Does good of a few overcome that of many? Where do you draw the line? What may very well have started as an effort of best of intentions may have become a mindless lobbying monster that may have very well lost sight of what it really should be doing. I say - strike down ADA. And let's start from the beginning. </rant> https://www.buildings.com/article-details/articleid/9242/title/the-ada-compliant-restroom https://www.buildings.com/article-details/articleid/9242/tit... https://www.ada.gov/ https://www.ada.gov/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/04/10/serial-ada-lawsuit-filer-striking-bay-area/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/04/10/serial-ada-lawsuit-fi...
- ghaff 8y agoSingle-family homes, even new construction, do not need to be ADA compliant. http://nahbnow.com/2015/02/ada-and-fha-what-builders-need-to-know/ http://nahbnow.com/2015/02/ada-and-fha-what-builders-need-to... I'd suggest breaking a leg sometime and see what you think after you've been on crutches for a few months. Yes, every now and then there are results that seem out of line but, if compliance were something it was easy to avoid, every business would be a special snowflake that had some unique excuse for not complying.
- userbinator 8y agoHopefully it will stay up a lot longer than 4 days... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16716970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16716970 Maybe I'm just old, but I've always had this uneasy feeling about prefab construction.
- smittywerben 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_balcony_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_balcony_collapse I remember this was a big incident back in 2015. At least steel can't rot.
- jacquesm 8y agoIt'll rust just fine and the acoustics are terrible. A container based building I worked in had a fridge several units over that you could clearly hear. Steel construction needs to be clad properly or you're going to hear everybody moving around.
- ravenstine 8y agoAm I the only person who thinks this is luxury? https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2711-Shattuck-Interior-View-9_23_2015-900x514.jpg https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2711... > The modules are effectively ready-to-go 310-square-feet studio apartments with a bathroom, closets, a front entry area, and a main room with a kitchenette and sofa that converts to a queen-size bed. They come with flat-screen TVs and coffee makers. Affordable my ass. They built these things to bilk young people out of more money because they know my generation and Gen Z grew up spoiled and have suburbanite parents that think nothing's too good for their son or daughter. If I was going to university, and was serious about getting a worthwhile degree, the last thing on my mind would be TV, and why the hell would I want to blow so much money on a fancy studio that I'm going to use primarily for sleeping? I'd prefer something much more minimalist, perhaps even with community restrooms and showers. Give me a closet with a cot or even a hammock for all I care, so long as I don't have to waste even more student loan money on what's essentially nothing. Boy, we're sure spoiled these days.
- stefan_ 8y agoThe stuff in that ant apartment is at most $100 of the monthly rent.
- ravenstine 8y agoAs I mentioned above, the point is not that the actual cost of the furnishings and the bathroom are somehow wrapped into the rent. It's that people are willing to pay extra for something they ultimately don't actually need. People will usually choose superficial quality over something more utilitarian, and will pay handsomely for it because it makes them feel like they're at home in mom and dad's suburban mansion.
- xvector 8y ago> pay extra for something they ultimately don't actually need Do you understand the concept of "want"? Things have value to people. If you want to be so reductionist as to say that we should only have what we "need", then we don't need higher education - or any education. We don't need air conditioning, cell phones, lighting, or plumbing. All we really need is a shelter from our immediate environment and a food source. Capitalism and the modern world in general are driven in a large part by what people want. Acting on these wants is much of what has driven humanity to where it us today. And wanting things is an absolutely fine emotion to have - more than fine to act on if it's within your financial means.
- adrianmonk 8y agoSomewhat similar methods were used to build a hotel in San Antonio, Texas back in 1968. It wasn't done in 4 days, but the rooms were built off site, complete with furnishings, then installed in the building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_Palacio_del_Rio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_Palacio_del_Rio EDIT: As a bonus, the wikipedia article links to a video about the hotel's construction, and at the 2-minute mark, they talk about how an IBM System/360 computer is used to do critical path analysis for the project planning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7shgCkCfhU#t=2m0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7shgCkCfhU#t=2m0s
- ChuckMcM 8y agoI don't know if they bought this stuff from the Broad Group[1] in China but this sort of prefab is catching on. They were never successful at building their "sky city"[2] which got them a lot of publicity (perhaps the intent). If it was possible to build it suggests some interesting things like a single sky city would be possible to house the entire bay area homeless population, assuming you could fill each living space to its capacity, plus a hospital, plus mental health and drug treatment centers, plus kitchens and shops in one building. It starts looking like Silverberg's arcologies. But I haven't seen any reports on how maintainable these structures are once built. I presume that Berkeley will be doing that as part of their program. [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/broad-group-usa-targets-their-first-usa.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/broad-group-usa-target... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GrU_2UK0-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GrU_2UK0-c originally proposed in 2012 (https://newatlas.com/broad-sky-city-one/22983/ https://newatlas.com/broad-sky-city-one/22983/)
- dopeboy 8y agoI live pretty close to Berkeley and have walked past this a couple times. I'm impressed that the developer embarked on an experiment. That kind of thinking is welcome for solving the housing problem. It didn't seem like a huge saving but I imagine there's a lot of learnings here that can be put towards v2. That said, that price point is not for Cal students, especially if it is single occupancy only. My guess is this might be geared towards older students / grad students who want to maintain a certain standard of life they are used to.
- alexisrivas 8y agoThing with prefab is it's been tried many times before, and hasn't succeeded. Why? Most companies take traditional construction methods, and simply move them into a factory where there's cheaper labor. But then the assembly process and on-site finish work is laborious and expensive (in this case, 70%+ of costs). For prefab to succeed, there needs to be a ground up redesign of the entire building process, from design and engineering to manufacturing and assembly, with software at the core to enable a system that's scalable and allows for different designs across numerous projects, and with the actual building to be made of parts that truly click together like legos. YC F3 company Cover (i'm a founder) is doing this.
- alexisrivas 8y agoURL to blog post which outlines our mission and approach: https://www.cover.build/post/what-why-how https://www.cover.build/post/what-why-how
- petra 8y agoDo you have any estimates by how much construction cost could be reduced by such methods, in volume ? In particularly for apartment buildings?
- tomarr 8y agoI've been involved in modular buildings in the past and one area that seems to end up informing design choices (in a negative way) is the size of elements that can be readily transported from a central facility to a site. Having bays of modules related to wagon width often, and regular joints/seams seems to end up driving basic ideas like wall loactions and floorplate thicknesses. Have you evolved much in this aspect?
- Nasrudith 8y agoI thought the biggest issue with prefab was lack of demand largely from bad reputation owing to aesthetic or safety concerns - trailers are considered hideous and are often dangerous given lack of sufficient storm anchoring. They were stuck in the role not of a legitimate alternative like siding instead of plaster but 'something to be replaced with a real building as soon as feasible'. Some of that may be human senses of aesthetics and a sense of uncanny valley with repeats. Just look at video game level generation and the moves to 3D. Preassembled components added more complexity and sense of structure but insufficient amounts of them made the area feel samey and copy pasted. I'm curious as to how software could be the core instead of merely an optional but useful tool akin to typical usage of CAD for housing schematics.
- sologoub 8y agoDoesn’t say much about the materials used for walls/insulation/etc. No info on HVAC either. It does compare these to containers. After spending a few weeks overall inside an office building built of recycled shipping containers, I’d definitely think twice about considering these at any price - the air inside gets very stale and humid from breath alone. Nothing “breathes” inside and you end up in a very unpleasant tin can situation. Good AC/dehumidifier, strategically planted plants and ventilation can help, but never fully cure this environment. At least not easily. At $2200, it’s downright a ripoff.
- jweir 8y ago> He’s s still evaluating bottom-line costs. Four days to assemble, how many days did it take to build, in China? What about the energy loss in transport? How much carbon was generated by this project versus if it had been built with modernist techniques. More interesting if had been been built with pre 20th century techniques. Watch the Amish build a complex barn in ten hours https://sploid.gizmodo.com/watch-the-amish-build-an-entire-barn-in-less-than-10-ho-1630848773 https://sploid.gizmodo.com/watch-the-amish-build-an-entire-b...
- baybal2 8y ago>Watch the Amish build a complex barn in ten hours But that's made out of wood! >Four days to assemble, how many days did it take to build, in China? Depends if they were shipping complete panels with infill, hollow panels, or just precut frame parts, but in all cases it should still be economical to bring stuff across the pacific.
- jweir 8y agoGood point, it would fare better in an earthquake. > Some 1,400 years ago, tall wood-framed pagodas in Japan were built to 19 stories tall. In spite of the area’s high seismic activity – including the 6.8 magnitude Hyogo-ken Nambu earthquake in 1995 that caused widespread damage – these structures still stand today. https://csengineermag.com/article/wood-frame-construction-advantageous-in-areas-prone-to-seismic-activity/ https://csengineermag.com/article/wood-frame-construction-ad... Now, I don't know if actually would fare better than a steel frame in an earthquake (which this building is very close a fault line), but the Japanese seemed to have figured out how to do it a long time ago. I don't know because I am not even close to experienced with wood structures over 3 stories.
- golemiprague 8y agoIn japan they build pre fabricated building for years, made from steel or concrete slabs. Those building are pretty solid but in Japan they tend to destroy them after a while and build new ones instead anyway.
- dev_dull 8y ago> Imagine a four-story apartment building going up in four days, and from steel. That’s easy to imagine. Now something that’s difficult to imagine is them finishing the permitting and environmental impact studies in less than 3 months!
- tim333 8y agoIt's striking given the housing shortage and homeless problems how quickly things could be improved just by giving permission to build stuff.
- baybal2 8y ago... or by scrapping the permitting mechanism altogether
- chongli 8y agoThe homelessness problem in the Bay area has more to do with good weather and a homeless-friendly local government than it does with the usual causes of homelessness. Lots of other homeless-unfriendly cities tend to drive people there.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoOne of the rules of thumb for rental property sale price is monthly rent * 120 (10 years). So given $2180 per month, you have a per-unit valuation of $261,600 . Somehow that seems "out of whack"...
- xvector 8y ago260K sounds reasonable for apartments of that size in CA.
- closeparen 8y agoNot while real estate is appreciating dramatically. A unit would be worth several times that. Play with the NYT rent/buy calculator for the Bay Area’s recent numbers.