14 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY october 17-23, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com The future of workforce housing on the Central Coast may well look like a three-bedroom, twobath house tucked away on a lot at 1045 Cass St. in Monterey. The house, which the public is invited to check out at a 5pm ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 22, is a product of a partnership between two companies both committed to building healthy, affordable communities—ReVision West, a development company that owns the lot, and Shibusa Systems, a construction tech startup focused on eliminating every possible inefficiency from the homebuilding process. On a recent afternoon, ReVision CEO Diane Coward, Shibusa’s CEO Katy Reynolds and Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Michael Gwynn lead a tour of the 1,100-squarefoot home, which they imagine (not accounting for the cost of the land) will cost $375,000 or less to build. The way Shibusa is able to pull those numbers off is by minimizing labor costs and waste of materials during construction. It works like this: Shibusa provides exact specifications for each home— everything’s been engineered and designed down to a single nail. Then, as the homes are being built, orders are put in to the suppliers as the process moves along so that supplies arrive when they’re needed. In materials like wood flooring, pieces are pre-cut to minimize cutting onsite, reducing both the cost of labor and materials. As six workers shuffle around the house putting in the finishing touches, Gwynn says that essentially, anyone who’s ever built anything with Legos could build a Shibusa house—one just has to put the pieces together. (There are competitors like Abodu, a Silicon Valley-based startup that builds prefabricated accessory dwelling units, and relies on a factory with sophisticated manufacturing equipment.) Shibusa emphasizes good materials—no drywall for walls, for example, only high-quality wood—that homeowners (or renters) would want to live in. Per the developer’s needs, a home can also be modified on order— Shibusa’s system is modular—to add a bedroom, floor, porch, etc. The homes are designed to be elevated from the ground, creating a more hospitable crawl space to install utilities and to eliminate the need for a solid concrete slab foundation, which saves on cost, carbon emissions and creates a more permeable landscape. ReVision partnered with Shibusa, which recently relocated from New Orleans to Monterey, because it believes in their system and sees it as a way, Coward says, “to shoot for the missing middle” in the housing market. ReVision, using Shibusa’s designs, is currently developing a 15-unit multifamily project in Marina, with construction expected to start soon, and is in talks with CSU Monterey Bay and the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, among others, about building workforce housing. Coward says ReVision’s goal is to build between 200-1,000 units in the next five years. Reynolds says Shibusa aims to be delivering the designs for an average of 10,000 units annually by 2030. Building Blocks A new partnership aims to make a meaningful—and meticulous—dent in the housing crisis. By David Schmalz Shibusa Systems Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Michael Gwynn says there’s only two inches of wasted wood in each row of a Shibusa home’s floor panels. NEWS Everything’s been designed down to a single nail. DANIEL DREIFUSS This project was supported, in part, by grant number CFDA 90SAPG0094-05 from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official Administration for Community Living policy. It’s tIme to talk about medIcare coverage Medicare costs, medicare advantage (Part C), and the prescription drug plans (Part D) change each year... learn more at one of our Free medicare updates Presentations Salinas: Alliance on Aging - Mon 10/21 at 3pm (English) Salinas: Alliance on Aging - Thurs 10/24 at 3pm (Spanish) King City: King City Library - Tues 10/29 at 2pm (English) and 3:30pm (Spanish) Call to learn more about our FREE service in your area! 800-434-0222 www.allianceonaging.org Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program - ‘HICAP’
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