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Comment by moflome | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for posting this if nothing else as an counterpoint to the vitriol in other comments... perhaps the best example of their current work is a joint effort with a small city in Western Japan [0] which, from having visited this region of Japan, seems like a great benefit to the local community - economic and social. I hope this is the direction Joe Gebbia and team are heading.

[0]: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14378543?s=51

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I usually try to be a bit more constructive than an article summary, but the discussion here was seriously off the rails. Whatever their failings as a company, prefab homes at AirBnB scale could be very interesting, especially since there're ongoing housing crises all over the USA.

> housing crises all over the USA.

If they can really get the economics of scale going, this has broader implications for long term disaster relief, poverty (not extreme poverty unfortunately), refugees, and climate change migrations. Cheap, robust, and easy housing has long been a goal for architects. Bauhaus has it's roots in German communist housing for the masses, after-all.

Isn’t a lot of cost of housing in local labour (building the houses or building the bulk materials like brick or planks locally)

Would prefab housing really help with poverty when the production is suddenly offshored?

We have pretty serious cultural hangups regarding mobile/manufactured housing for anyone who is not dirt poor.

Buckminster Fuller would have loved this

With existing zoning regs, I'm not sure pre-fab at scale will help.

Recent state legislation in California has legalized backyard cottages in many places they used to be illegal, including some places where the housing crisis is worst. I know a homeowner who is making use of that new law to build a backyard unit. This is a long, difficult, and expensive process. Hiring an architect, finding a contractor to build it, etc. There are not nearly enough construction workers locally, they can’t afford to live here.

Prefab backyard homes could be part of the solution - and at scale could make a big difference.

While that’s a step in the right direction, it would likely be better to allow mixed zoning, so we could mix more multi-family into existing urban and semi-urban areas.

I love home construction techniques that are "factory-ized" for numerous reasons: consistency, energy efficiency, assembly speed, cost, etc but I fear this has nothing to do with that. the quote:

"... gains vast insight from the Airbnb community to thoughtfully respond to changing owner or occupant needs over time"

to me suggests Airbnb believes their long-term future requires more than ignoring zoning laws and city regulations; it requires changing them to suit the company's goals.

There's nothing wrong with seeking to change laws but we should really look hard at the underlying motivation. Is it to make housing cheaper/better/more plentiful or is it to increase the number of airbnb listings?

> There's nothing wrong with seeking to change laws but we should really look hard at the underlying motivation.

Wouldn't it make more sense to look at the effects than the underlying motivation? Why would you care what the motivation is?

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