Billionaire Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb Inc. and a board member of Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., plans to donate $15 million of factory-built dwellings to victims of the Los Angeles wildfires.
The pre-fabricated houses — made by Gebbia’s startup, Samara — will first go to low-income residents whose properties burned in Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods, according to a statement. The Samara homes can be built in as little as five months and require only weeks to install.
The homes will be 100% funded, including installation costs. The effort is being coordinated by Steadfast LA, a nonprofit started by billionaire mall developer Rick Caruso to help rebuild the city.
“This initiative is about keeping communities intact,” said Caruso, whose family foundation will also provide funding for the housing. “We’re giving these victims a realistic way to stay on their properties and quickly return to their lives at a time when the deck is stacked against them.”
Last month’s wildfires killed at least 29 people and destroyed 16,000 structures, including 11,000 single-family homes. Economists at the University of California at Los Angeles estimated this month that total property and capital losses from the fires will be as much as $164 billion.
Gebbia, 43, joined Tesla’s board in 2022 and is worth $9.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The New York Times reported last week he is joining Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, which is aggressively cutting government jobs, spending and contracts under President Donald Trump.
Gebbia launched Samara soon after leaving Airbnb full-time in 2022. The company builds and sells affordable, small homes for installation in backyards.
“So many people are faced with unbelievable circumstances. We want to help them get back home,” Gebbia said in the statement.
Samara’s homes for fire victims would be two-bedroom, two-bath models measuring about 950 square feet (88 square meters) that are listed for $261,000, excluding installation costs, according to the firm’s website. About 600 lots in the Altadena area had homes of comparable size, Caruso said.
The units, which are manufactured in Mexico, cost about $275 a square foot. Custom-built homes can cost roughly $1,500 per square foot to rebuild in the fire areas, though the use of merchant builders would bring that down significantly, according to a report this week from UCLA.
Samara is counting on Steadfast LA to help streamline the building approval process, according to Mike McNamara, Samara’s chief executive officer.
“We’re hopeful working with Steadfast LA to actually take it the next level and maybe make some permanent California housing policy changes,” McNamara said.
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