"Built to meet local and international building codes, they're very different from the cheap, toxic trailers that FEMA deployed 20 years ago, when Hurricane Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Some of those trailers had formaldehyde levels that were 75 times greater than safe levels. They were poorly insulated and never meant for long-term housing, but some families were stuck in them for years."
"The cottages in Hawaii, by contrast, use materials chosen to maintain healthy air quality. The homes are filled with light, with huge windows and high ceilings. They were built to be durable, with the potential to be turned into affordable long-term housing after their temporary use. They could be a model for future disaster response. But as the Trump administration pushes to dismantle FEMA, it's not clear what will happen to the homes now-or what will happen during the next disaster."
"Liv-Connected, the New York City-based modular home company that designed most of the new Hawaiian cottages, didn't originally plan to build disaster housing. But the startup, founded in 2019, got attention from the disaster relief world after it made some early prototypes. The company's first goal was to lower costs by making transportation easier for modular homes. The team saw the potential of building Lego-like homes efficiently in factories,"
A new neighborhood of factory-built cottages sits in Lahaina, Hawaii, providing temporary homes for families who lost everything in the 2023 wildfires. The prefabricated houses were built in Colorado and Idaho and delivered to Maui on a barge. They meet local and international building codes, use materials chosen for healthy indoor air quality, feature large windows and high ceilings, and are designed to be durable and convertible into affordable long-term housing. The cottages contrast with post-Katrina FEMA trailers that contained dangerous formaldehyde and were poorly insulated. A modular company, Liv-Connected, pursued lower transport costs and factory efficiency to make these homes.
Read at Fast Company
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