
Cheap 3D-printed home is a start for the 1B who lack shelter - Dangeranger
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/12/17101856/3d-printed-housing-icon-shelter-housing-crisis
======
kragen
Hard to tell, but it sounds like they're 3-D printing the building envelope,
minus vapor barriers and whatnot. But nowadays the envelope is not the
expensive part of a building, although it is the most visible. Plumbing,
electrical, HVAC, floor finishing, decor, and so on accounts for most of the
building cost. For some reason they aren't mentioned in the story, probably
because nobody has a credible automation approach to them yet.

If you want to reduce the cost of the building envelope, possibly superadobe,
shotcrete on airforms, ferrocrete, and flexible domes are better bets than 3-D
printing of concrete. (The geodesic dome was conceived specifically as a
solution to this problem, but I'm not convinced it actually does a good job at
it.)

What's the current solution these things are competing with? Here in
Argentina, the standard low-cost construction approach in the _villas
miserias_ is masonry with hollow bricks (18×33 cm), which cost 50¢. So a
6m×6m×3m building envelope requires about 1200 bricks, costing US$600
(AR$12000) if you buy them new instead of scavenging, plus some mortar and a
corrugated-metal roof, which add a bit to the cost. It takes several days or
even, at times, weeks to finish the construction; usually the family who live
there build the house themselves, which is less of an opportunity cost than it
sounds like with the unemployment rate as high as it is, especially among
youth. Some families pour concrete slabs, others use dirt floors.

So, roughly speaking, this approach has to come down in cost by 10× to even
compete with our current vernacular architecture, let alone improve on its
pricing.

The concrete-3-D-printing approaches I've seen, like Andrey Rudenko's
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M),
all share the drawback that they require a long time, because you have to wait
for the lower layers of the construction to cure a bit before you can add more
layers. Their big advantage is not that they're cheaper than pouring concrete
into forms — although they may be, especially if you're building a large
building or a dense construction — but that they have a lot of freedom of
geometry.

~~~
kiliantics
Not to mention the cost of the land...

Short of a radical change in how our society works, the only realistic
solution to homelessness is going to have to be some kind of decent social
housing. Maybe it will somehow be cheaply 3D-printed but the government is
going to have to buy the land first. (That, or stop making it exclusive to the
rich.) Access to land was the original problem here (since Enclosure Acts) and
it has to be part of the solution.

~~~
idrios
In the last few years I've lived in Cleveland OH (5 years in college), Denver
CO / Colorado Springs (3 months), and San Jose / SF Bay area (1 year). All 3
of these places had homelessness issues and the root causes were very
different in each.

In Cleveland, the homeless seemed to be mostly folks who grew up in low-income
neighborhoods (median reported household income $14,000 [1]) from very broken
families, who find themselves adults with few skills no motivation to help
themselves because they've never known what hope is.

Homelessness in Colorado seemed to stem more from veterans with PTSD who can't
hold down a job, or those with other forms of disabilities.

Homelessness in the SF Bay area was the most confusing to me. I met people
there who could've been myself in 10 years, but they were homeless or had once
been homeless just because they couldn't afford a place to live there. I don't
know if this area just lacks housing or if it attracts the homeless but I know
for certain that being homeless here is nothing like being homeless in
Cleveland.

It's really not a one-size-fits-all problem.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hough%2C_Cleveland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hough%2C_Cleveland)
I'm using this neighborhood as an example because I used to volunteer at a
school here, but there are many neighborhoods like it.

~~~
bsder
> Homelessness in the SF Bay area was the most confusing to me. I met people
> there who could've been myself in 10 years, but they were homeless or had
> once been homeless just because they couldn't afford a place to live there.

Mental illness and drugs (which really should probably be folded into mental
illness) is actually a bigger factor.

1) Saint Reagan (/s) dismantled a bunch of the infrastructure to help those
with mental illness in the name of, say it with me now, "Efficiency of the
private sector". Consequently, the mentally ill wind up on the streets or in
jail--neither of which is actually a good solution. We've only had about 5
years since removing most of the nitwits from the state legislature/Congress
(the jungle primaries and redistricting commission have been in effect since
2010 and it flushed most of the Republican nitwits--and Mueller may get the
remaining ones), and building/fixing takes more time than dismantling.

2) It also didn't help that some places were actually busing in their mentally
ill population to San Francisco.

3) San Francisco weather doesn't kill people. Morbidly, being sufficiently
mentally ill in, say, Pittsburgh or Cleveland, probably kills you in winter
(and possibly summer).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Saint Reagan (/s) dismantled a bunch of the infrastructure to help those
> with mental illness in the name of, say it with me now, "Efficiency of the
> private sector".

De-institutionalizing the mentally ill was broadly supported across the
political spectrum; the institutionalized system was both ineffective and
often inhumane.

That both community mental health treatment and poverty support was and
remains inadequate are problems, and de-institutionalization certainly
highlighted those problems, but let's not create a false historical narrative
that de-institutionalization was a policy forced on the country by one
political faction.

------
Matth3wMarshall
Hi, this is Matthew, one of the cofounders at New Story (YC S15). We're the
nonprofit developing this 3D printed home. I'd like to share why we decided to
invest in an innovation like this and where we're headed. For context, in 3
years, we've built over 1,000 homes in 11 communities around the world through
local partners.

The challenge we face is monumental; there are more than a billion people
across the globe living without safe shelter. To make a dent in that number,
our ability to scale up has to change.

Steady, linear improvements will never reach the total addressable market of
families in need.

We believe R&D and product innovation is essential with a problem of this
magnitude. We have to take big swings with forward-thinking technology to
achieve a quantum leap in speed, affordability, and quality.

Our goal is to help power anyone building homes for the poor — governments and
non-profits alike — to do their best work. As we make these strides, it means
more families around the world will have safe shelter and can better actualize
their potential.

We’re looking at a one billion person deficit of a basic human need. We
believe maintaining the status quo is irresponsible — it’s terrifying to us —
as it’ll never tackle this deficit. Our hypothesis today is that this
breakthrough to reach more families can be achieved through robotics and 3D
home printing.

A year ago, the technology we needed didn’t exist. That’s when we began
working with ICON to create a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem. The
exciting result is “the Vulcan,” a 3D Home Printer designed to print a home
for less than $4,000 in less than 24 hours. This robotic breakthrough
delivers:

* Cost decrease (from $6,500/home to ~$4,000 and even lower future cost) * Speed increase (from ~15 days to 12–24hrs to build one home) * Improved quality and customization of the home unit for families

More here -> newstorycharity.org/3d-home

We'd love to answer any and all questions.

~~~
jaclaz
With all due respect for your work and intentions, please explain to me (hairy
reasoner) two things:

1) How would the hypothetical 15 days/home reduced to 24h/home be relevant [1]

2) How the new machine is compatible with the statement on your site:

[https://newstorycharity.org/sponsor/](https://newstorycharity.org/sponsor/)

>Built By Locals

>By training local labor and buying locally sourced construction materials
your donation not only builds a home, but it stimulates local economies and
teaches skills in the process.

[1] Please consider also how the 24h are per home is also per machine/robot,
if you assemble 15 teams of local builders you have exactly the same
production

~~~
conductr
I am similarly cynical. Can you explain why it is not better to use something
simple, like cinder blocks, and put people to work in low wage/low
employment/low skill environment? My only guess is because there is no place
for your tech in that equation but, it seems better if you are really trying
to make this a social mission.

------
DoreenMichele
One of the problems with such schemes is that it is not vernacular housing. It
is a top down, one size fits all scheme that contains zero local knowledge and
no means to incorporate local knowledge.

Vernacular housing is local traditional housing built with local materials and
suited to the local climate. So, adobe in the American Southwest and deep
porches in the American Southeast so you can have windows open in rainy
weather.

It typically winds up working about as well as transplanting a New York
apartment to a farm. A New York apartment makes sense in New York. It doesn't
make sense on a farm.

~~~
reneherse
In addition, what happens to the local building trades, whether established or
nascent? Are they integrated into the scheme or made redundant?

After watching the video, it's evident this method of construction has another
disadvantage over the lifecycle of the structure: The walls cannot be easily
modified. (And this is a characteristic and complaint of nearly all poured-in-
place concrete construction, often cited by institutional caretakers of
brutalist buildings.)

An economical house should be able to change and grow according to the needs
and means of its owners. That's much more difficult when adding a door or
window requires a diamond-blade, water-cooled saw to cut through a thick
structural concrete web while avoiding embedded service conduits. In
comparison, walls of concrete block, brick, and wooden studs are more readily
modified, though each has other favorable and unfavorable characteristics.

------
shiftpgdn
The folks that put together this 3D printer maybe should have visited a
country like Mexico to understand the houses are already put together ad-hoc
with cinder blocks. You can put together a cinder block house for about
$10,000 [1] and pay as you go over months or years requiring no loan or
interaction with a bank. You can carry cinder blocks by hand or truck up the
side of a mountain and it doesn't require much skill to put together.

[1] [https://www.curbed.com/2015/1/2/10006114/mexico-
affordable-h...](https://www.curbed.com/2015/1/2/10006114/mexico-affordable-
housing-box-house-s-ar)

~~~
technofiend
And that is including the massive cement markups found in Mexico thanks to
PEMEX. Imagine if Mexicans could purchase cement at the prices their neighbors
to the North do.

See
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1019426769244153760](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1019426769244153760)
for a dated explanation.

------
jimnotgym
I used to be in the home-building industry...

With a team of three carpenters a hand-saw and hammers I could build a house
like the one in the picture in 48 hours out of a sustainable material -
softwood. With a nailgun I could go quicker still.

I could use a 4x2 studding wall, plywood, breather membrane, counter-batten,
clad with larch featheredge. Once up a vapour barrier could stapled inside and
recycled paper insulation blown in. Inside that I could line out with fire
resistant plasterboard (drywall to my transatlantic cousins) (backed with
urethane if extra insulation is needed). This design is easily prefabricated
if desired.

To contrast with the concrete one this would

a) use sustainable materials

b) meet the building code of a developed nation.

If you are dead set on a concrete wall then just build a set of plywood forms
(shuttering as it was called in my day) and cast it in place. A day to put the
forms up and pour. The forms are reusable too once set. Now you have a bunker
to insulate, waterproof and line out. In the UK you would need to build some
kind of studding inside your pill-box for insulation and damp control, much
like the 'barn-conversions' the UK is full of. This makes the concrete bit
semi-redundant.

Sorry but I think this is a poor application of 3d printing. All we need now
is a start-up to build a house with a cloud-based block-chain to get the VC's
really excited.

If you want to look at some really quick constructions there are the brilliant
post war 'pre-fabs' of the UK, designed to replace housing lost to bombing.
Some could be assembled on-site in 4 hours! There are many still in use today.
If it wasn't for the amount of asbestos used there may have been many more
still remaining.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom)

------
raise_throw
Isn't it the case that the vast majority of people lacking housing are really
lacking in land (or at least, stable land)?

$10K on a permanent structure is only viable if you have permanent title on
the land below it.

There are places in the UK in which you could buy brick-and-mortar constructed
homes, fully wired in to electricity, water, gas and telephone lines with a
freehold for approx 5x that - the cost usually isn't prohibitive as such, it's
the fact that they're in the wrong place (local jobs pay barely anything, or
the community is bad).

Similarly I can go out and buy a car for 300 GBP, but the insurance costs
(especially if young), excise duty, fuel costs, ongoing maintenance absolutely
dwarf it.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't feel construction costs are relevant
here, there are a whole bunch of regulatory / community / cultural issues in
play.

------
Animats
It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done
worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard
forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms,
and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't
popular.

Much of the world lives in poured-concrete apartment blocks. It's just so
cheap. The main problem is crap concrete mixes. If you want to improve
concrete construction, come up with a hand-held device where you stick a probe
into the mix and it tells you if it's OK.

This has been tried a few times.[1][2] Just pouring on concrete like that
doesn't compact it properly. Compare the Lil Bubba curb making machine, a
simple machine which makes concrete curbs.[3] It's a slip-form machine; the
form gives the concrete a smooth edge and top, and as someone shovels in more
concrete, it compacts it and pushes itself along. The 3D concrete printing
people need to develop something as good as the Lil Bubba. Then they can make
flat, solid walls in place. Some of the competing machines have some slip-form
guides, so they get a flat surface.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_WqvjJtDw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_WqvjJtDw)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-iebHRxJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-iebHRxJk)
[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJZMpu4MKn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJZMpu4MKn8)

~~~
baybal2
>It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done
worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard
forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms,
and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't
popular.

Totally true. And these days it is possible to go even further than that.

Concrete construction can be made even cheaper if the cost is a genuine
impediment. If material cost is the issue, you can use large aggregate filler,
foaming agents, flyash based cements. If it is the time that is at premium,
than you can go for SIPs or stay in place formworks. If workforce is the
limiting factor, go for larger concrete pours with concrete flowability
enhancers.

------
nabla9
How much homelessness exists in developing world because houses are too
expensive to build? $4,000 already builds a nice house in many areas,
especially when labor is very cheap.

To build a house one must first own or rent the land where to build the house.
Investing $4,000 for a house you build illegally is stupid. When city planning
and zoning is inadequate and ownership uncertain, slums naturally emerge.

------
RobertRoberts
I have seen a lot of these "neat" solutions over the past few years. And the
counter arguments I've seen are "we already have this, it's 10x cheaper,
faster to setup, etc...". These arguments are based on things like the Ikea
shelters/homes, or other prefab stuff that's _super_ cheap.

But, the arguments against these is that it doesn't provide income for local
labor, or use local resources... but neither does this 3d printed house.

So, where is this all really going, when we have multiple solutions right now
that could help people, but they are not being used?

Is the problem actually political and corruption, and not technical or
monetary? Or are these other solutions just as much hot air, and we really do
need a new tech to fill in the gap?

~~~
pjc50
Housing is rarely limited by construction, it's limited by land rights and
infrastructure buildout. Oh, and credit availability; even down to
"microcredit" for the really poor places.

~~~
RobertRoberts
Then doesn't seem like then the most likely successful solution will be the
_easiest_ to get past the bureaucracy?

Seems like a discouraging thought. Maybe a fancy 3d printed solution would
appeal to some politicians ego, and that's the trick to getting it to happen?

~~~
pjc50
There's an excellent discussion of this in The Other Path :
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Path:_The_Economic...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Path:_The_Economic_Answer_to_Terrorism)

Basically the author points out that so much housing in Peru was slums built
on illegally occupied land that technically belongs to the government, what
was needed was a route to legitimacy. Give people proper title to the land
they had already had possession of for decades and suddenly they can use it as
collateral.

Legitimacy also causes people to choose more durable building methods. If
there's a risk of being thrown out there's no point making anything more than
a tin shed.

~~~
smokeyj
> Give people proper title to the land they had already had possession of for
> decades and suddenly they can use it as collateral.

Makes you wonder how the municipality keeps track of titles and tax
assessments. Without collecting proper taxes how can the local government
provide water/sanitation/energy/education? Perhaps what these people need more
than affordable housing is affordable yet sustainable government.

Give the people the tools they need to self organize, trade, set up courts and
resolve disputes. With the basics in place it might be possible to attract
capital via municipal bonds to invest in critical infrastructure. Having
running water and electricity makes it easier to attract business which in
return generates taxable revenue.

~~~
pjc50
Considerable progress has been made:
[http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website00819C/WEB/PDF/PERU_...](http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website00819C/WEB/PDF/PERU_LAN.PDF)

------
ch4s3
I'm never quite sure what these approaches add to prefab. This process costs
$10k to produce up to an 800 sq ft (74m^2) home. They say this is a fraction
of the cost of the average American home, but the average new American home
since ~2013 is 2500 sq ft (232 m^2), so of course its a fraction of that, and
I guess it cuts out the labor. However, I would imagine that even in El
Salvador, the principal cost of a new home is acquiring the land. Surely labor
and materials are cheaper there, so what am I missing here?

~~~
maxerickson
Outside of cities land is not a big component of the cost.

There's acre lots near town here that are $10,000; further away prices go
down.

~~~
usrusr
But is there much homelessness to solve outside of cities? When I think of
poor rural areas I think of abandoned houses, not of people sleeping under the
stars for lack of novel construction techniques.

The "help the poor" angle could be a clever attention hack though, if the
technology is fast and cheap enough there might be a nice market in civil
engineering somewhere between concrete and gabions to pivot to.

~~~
maxerickson
I was just making a narrow point about construction of homes in the US. People
that want to live in exclusive areas pay a lot for land, others not so much.

And for homelessness, the problem isn't really that housing costs a lot to
build, it's that no one wants to build it. This is probably true in a lot of
places that aren't as wealthy as the US.

The town planning commission here just rejected a $10 million project that was
mostly low income housing. Some of them had the brass to come right out and
say that they didn't want low income people living in that part of town and
some of the others used the "historic character" of the shoddy commercial
building presently on the site as a fig leaf. One guy dissembled, saying that
the project should happen somewhere else. But of course the developer has a
different set of concerns and won't necessarily be willing to make the same
investment in a different location.

------
jaclaz
At first sight it seems to me like it is the usual "flawed" approach to third
world problems by people having only first world experience.

Loosely building a house is made of costs coming out of:

1) base materials (and the plants to make them and the logistics to bring them
on site)

2) equipment

3) labour

In "first world" countries they can be _roughly_ weighted (as percentage of
building costs) as:

1) 40%-50%

2) 10%-15%

3) 35%-50%

So everyone is trying to make more "industrial" the building using
prefabricated components, standardized parts, etc, attempting to reduce the
labour on site, it is logical.

In not-developed countries, usually pure labour is extremely cheap, while
materials (and the logistics) are extremely expensive, besides equipment that
(not being available for rent or sub-contracting on the local market) needs to
be imported and is only justified on larger projects.

It is not unusual that the same percentages in a not-developed country become:

1) 70%-75%

2) 15%-20%

3) 5%-10%

Additionally the problem might be finding locally _skilled_ labour capable of
managing the high tech equipment.

~~~
ddingus
Skill is a significant factor.

Tech can mitigate it as can mentoring and enabling at scale.

Quality matters. The better the homes are, the better the return on investment
and quality of life is, both being necessary goals.

~~~
abakker
I'd say technology can also increase the burden of skill. I.e. an average
jigsaw and pencil line requires less skill and is safer than operating a CNC
router, until the router gets a ton of failsafes, sensors, etc implemented.
the Anti-crash features probably cost more in a CNC than the rest of the
machine does (and that is why mine doesn't have any except the minimum).

You're right that quality matters. My take on this is designing for poor
tolerances to still yield strong structures. This 3D printing approach looks
good for some aspects, but the lack of a roof seems disqualifying for me. The
roof is the hard part, and potentially the easiest part to do
incorrectly/unsafely. I'm surprised they didn't just print in crenelations in
the top edge to allow drop-in roof joists. a simple shed roof seems like it
could have easily been integrated.

~~~
ddingus
Agreed. They could also make a similar process to create roofs. Building some
support structures maybe a layup type thing, print over the top of that and
now you got roofs that can drop in maybe be drilled and bolted together.

------
fruzz
They want to get costs down to $4,000.

You can already build a home of that size for $4,000. The lack of permanent
shelter for the world's poorest isn't a technology problem.

------
maxerickson
Comparing the price to a "typical" American home is ridiculous. The typical
American home is not a small rectangle.

Compare the price to a similar structure built using the same techniques used
to build a home and you end up right in the same ballpark:

[http://84homes.84lumber.com/Garage%20prices.pdf](http://84homes.84lumber.com/Garage%20prices.pdf)

~~~
smacktoward
_The typical American home is not a small rectangle._

So we should just compare it to the typical Bay Area home then?

(I kid, I kid)

------
CharlesMerriam2
Technology is not always the solution to all problems.

1\. You could ameliorate the misery of homelessness by providing a low cost
"locker" system where people could store a cubic meter of so of goods while
homeless. 2\. There are various low cost home plans, shelters made from a
single sheet of plywood, hot-bunk and ultra high density housing plans. 3\. So
far, no one has a sustainable economic model that would encourage an
municipality to compete for the existing homeless.

Both architecture and civil engineering are the wrong advances to solve this
problem.

------
893helios
How is this in any way locally sustainable. If you want to shelter people then
the people need to be able to build and sustain that level of technology.

------
m23khan
I applaud the intention behind it but it would be yet another addition to such
endeavors. Problem is not the lack of such ideas, the problem is lack of any
organized approach to address this problem at a Global Stage.

Similar to World coming together to fight against measles and polio, basic
human needs such as shelter, etc. need to be met.

------
JackFr
This is ludicrous.

It's the solution one comes up with if they haven't given a minute to ask why
1B people don't have adequate shelter. I don't think this will move the needle
a bit.

------
petermcneeley
Constructing walls by laying down layers of cement does not constitute a 3d
printed home. How does this automatic wall maker compare to El Salvador labor
in cost and quality?

~~~
VikingCoder
This is exactly what I think of when I think of "3d printed home." I'm curious
what you think it would mean?

~~~
petermcneeley
I think of a house as more than just concrete verticals. A house has
insulation, wiring, wood framing, windows, plumbing, heating, flooring,
siding, roofing, ventilation not to mention all the decor that is considered
part of a house. Just look at the picture in the article and ask yourself what
was "printed" in that image. I think the only thing that was printed was that
ugly concrete vertical layered stuff.

~~~
VikingCoder
So, how about "3d printed house frame"?

------
rubarb
A house, any house, needs to be placed on some plot of land. So as for those
who lack shelter, do they already have a piece of land and just can’t cheaply
build on it, or is it not having land at all that is the problem

------
theNJR
This seems like a better solution for the massive homeless populations in the
United States. These could be govt funded and placed on state owned land. I'd
love to see it tested out in California. Los Angeles funded the $1.2b
proposition HHH. We have around 58,000 homeless. For less than half the
allocated funds, you've built a house for all of them. Yes, it's more
complicated than that. But it's a start.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
They need jobs too, so if you're going to house homeless people it probably
makes more sense to have dorm style housing somewhere close to jobs they can
do, rather than individual homes farther out.

------
BatFastard
Interesting idea. What's the cost of this home vs a timber home? Life span,
cost of upkeep, R factor, etc.

From my observations building the frame of the house is relatively quick here
in the states. I would be that the habitat for humanities groups could put up
a similar size house frame in less than 8 hours. So what is the advantage
here?

------
kevin_b_er
Article says they _hope_ to bring the cost down to to $4000 from $15000.
Meanwhile projects like this exist:
[http://www.300house.com/](http://www.300house.com/) That's $300. So what's
revolutionary about $15000 or $4000 for a "cheap" home?

~~~
djtriptych
Interesting article, but odd to frame the cheapest possible house as the last
word in ultra-affordable housing. Has anyone actually built one of these?
Would Americans live in one?

~~~
morganjlopes
It is built. v1 was built in Austin,TX (sxsw) and we'll be rolling out to the
developing world later this year

------
hoosieree
Replace "concrete" with "lunar soil" and we're talking.[1]

[1]: [https://www.space.com/19602-moon-colony-3d-printing-lunar-
di...](https://www.space.com/19602-moon-colony-3d-printing-lunar-dirt.html)

------
Nomentatus
There's a reason concrete isn't generally used for housing : it retains heat
very well in the summer, and transmits cold in the winter just as well. A
double shell or foamy concrete could solve this, however.

------
rdiddly
Well god bless good intentions, and it's a cool idea, but it seems better-
suited to the first world than the third.

None of the naysayers have yet mentioned the fact that concrete (especially
its ingredient Portland cement) is one of the most energy- and greenhouse-gas-
intensive building materials available. (It's made by baking certain minerals
in an oven at high temperature.)

We who live in large, energy-intensive houses would actually do better for the
environment, and for global housing inequity, by living outdoors and in
improvised huts of natural materials, rather than trying to get the people who
are doing it _right_ to come "up" to an Austin, TX standard of living. But
nobody wants to hear that kind of idea. Therefore, we wait until nature
imposes that solution on us.

------
donquichotte
> Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and
> plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house.

OK, according to the "global wealth pyramid" [1], a graphical representation
of global wealth distribution, the bottom 3 billion own less than 10'000$. I'm
not saying that being poor is equal to lacking shelter, but there is probably
a correlation there.

3d printing homes is cool and might have potential, but it won't help a poor
farmer in rural Azerbaijan get shelter. It would be great if the media could
stop presenting this as a panacea to homelessness.

[1] [https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-
and...](https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and-
expertise/the-global-wealth-pyramid-2016-201612.html)

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Sorry, I'm confused by this.

Almost no one in the United States owns their homes. Can't the poor farmer in
Azerbaijan finance this just like we do?

The payments on a 30 year loan like we have for $4,000 would be like $10 a
month before interest.

~~~
kragen
No. Generally speaking, this kind of low-cost financing only exists in rich
countries. In poor countries, interest rates, default rates, and often
inflation rates are high and unpredictable. (There may be exceptions, and in
particular I've never been to Azerbaijan, but I don't know of any exceptions.)

One element that contributes to the unavailability of financing is the
unpredictable nature of many people's land tenure; I wrote a bit about that in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569078)

~~~
jimnotgym
Then wouldn't a low cost way to introduce proper land title and efficient
banking systems to third world countries be a better use of our first world
technology/skills/knowledge?

~~~
kragen
As it turns out, invading "third world" countries, overthrowing their existing
institutions, and installing "proper" systems designed in "first world"
countries has been tried. It was, broadly speaking, the foreign policy of
Europe toward poor countries during roughly the period 1600 to 1950. It was
called "colonialism", and it caused the problems we see there today, as well
as much worse problems (up to and including the extermination of entire
populations) while it was going on.

I do not think that attempting to re-establish colonialism, as you propose,
would be a good use of our technology, skills, or knowledge. However, Peter
Thiel and the current government of Honduras seem to disagree.

~~~
jimnotgym
I'm really glad you replied. I hadn't realised that it was impossible to offer
help and technical support without invading. Strawman-of-the-month-award goes
to....

~~~
kragen
It's not a strawman. You didn't propose offering help and technical support.
You proposed introducing “proper” systems of banking and land title. If you
can decide how a country’s systems of banking and land title work, you are
governing that country. Thus, your proposal is that “third-world” countries be
governed by people from “first-world” countries. That's nothing more or less
than colonialism. It is a terrible idea.

Perhaps you think that poor countries don't have existing systems of land
tenure or credit. We do. We aren't monkeys banging on rocks. The problem is
that those systems suck. You might think they suck because nobody here knows
how better systems work. But in fact, not only do we have internet access and
universities, many of us have studied overseas in rich countries and even
worked there, some even in banking and real estate. They suck because of
resistance to change by the people in power, who are not entirely wrong,
because change often looks like the Congo Free State, the Khmer Rouge, the
Second Opium War, or Donald Trump.

------
mrfusion
Offshoot question. Why can’t we do this with plastic. Plastic sheds hold up
great. And plastic lasts for 1000s of years.

~~~
leggomylibro
Well, one concern may be that plastic lasts for 1000s of years. What do you do
when you decide to renovate a village of ten thousand plastic silos or boxes?
Transporting and recycling that volume of material would probably be
expensive, even if it were a type of plastic that was largely recoverable
without losing much of its material properties.

------
wheresmyusern
this is a waste of time. besides all the great points made elsewhere, about
the availability of land, there is the fact that this technique does not
provide a good house. concrete houses are usually re-enforced with steel.
where is the re-enforcement? concrete is supposed to have "aggregate." without
it, you basically have a pile of hardened mortar that expands and contracts
way too much when exposed to water.

------
braderhart
Having adequate mental health services in the United States would be a good
start.

