Tucson startup Stackhouse’ aims to expand home ownership by reinventing communities | Business

[ad_1]

Over the past decade, the concept of tiny homes has grown in popular culture, but a real estate startup affiliated with the University of Arizona’s Center for Innovation is taking things to the next level. Stackhouse aims to transform the way people own and finance a home by offering customizable shipping container homes that are 320 square feet each.

However, the individual container houses are only one element of Stackhouse. The startup plans to shape these containers into urban residential towers and thus create very unique communities for residents with a penchant for minimalism.

“We’ve designed the community very carefully so that our residents have everything they need,” said Janelle Briggs, CEO of Stackhouse. “There just weren’t any new innovations in the home space, and the fact that this is new, customizable, and mobile really got people excited.”

While the Stackhouse model unit is currently located on the UACI campus south of Tucson, the first Stackhouse community is planned in Denver, where 62 units will be placed side by side and on top of each other. While container malls have become increasingly popular in recent years, Briggs says the country’s extreme housing market really strengthens Stackhouse’s business model. Briggs says the company has 1,000 people on the Denver waiting list after just a month of advertising.

“It’s absolutely an asset and a must that we meet,” said Briggs. “People need living space and I assume that we cannot build quickly enough. And while that’s great for our business, I think it’s a problem for the rest of the country that we don’t accommodate our citizens. And that’s why we founded this company because we wanted to help solve this problem. “

Briggs currently resides in the Stackhouse Model Unit at the UACI Technology Park with her partner and co-founder, Ryan Egan. One advantage is that the container houses do not have to contain anything special and can be adapted to the “living needs” of the resident. As Briggs explains, Stackhouse can make this possible when the resident does not need to cook a full meal at home but have their own workspace.

Briggs and Egan founded Stackhouse in 2017 and were inducted into the UACI in October 2020. UACI is a startup incubator currently serving 54 companies by providing resources and connections from both the university system and the Tucson community. UACI aims to support “scalable science and technology companies” and help them through a combination of programming, funding and building relationships with other startups.

“What makes every startup really attractive is of course a new type of technology, but there is also this mix of mission and, above all, the team,” said UACI Managing Director Eric Smith. “Janelle and Ryan and the support group they have built are really inspiring as entrepreneurs. Their motivation is unmatched, and that’s exactly the team we want to work with … Stackhouse was all about getting all of these things done. They had already planned very well, so for us it was just about getting to work. “

For Stackhouse, UACI helped create connections to manufacturing as well as relationships with communities for their housing estate. But perhaps most importantly, they were able to provide space for their first unit in UACI’s 1,300 acre technology park.

“Every startup that needs space in the technology park’s incubator is unique and has unique needs, which is what makes it really exciting,” said Smith. “Stackhouse is of course unique. Very rarely do we have someone who asks to hand over a house on our land, but we made it. “

Briggs, who is bi-racial, says her ethnicity also had an impact on Stackhouse’s history, as well as her focus on inclusion and social change. Her parents both served in the military, her father was black and her mother was white.

“We were always housed and I didn’t have to worry about having an apartment, and that was in part because of the good jobs my parents had in the military,” Briggs said. “The world that made it possible for my parents to meet is very different from the world we are in now. And who I am in the world is a completely different experience than it was a few years ago. Trying to raise money as a first generation college student is difficult. We don’t have a network. Egan and I joke that the biggest win for me was falling in love with a white man because he has more access than me. “

She even says she and Egan downsized to live in their container house, and what they wanted to keep was a matter of race, privilege, and access.

“We take great pride in the diversity of entrepreneurs we serve, both gender and race, and international exposure,” said Smith. “It really makes the cohort of startups we work with more robust.”

Smith says UACI helps minority-owned startups overcome their unique challenges by connecting them with other founders on their network and by leveraging resources in the community specifically designed to support different groups of entrepreneurs.

While Briggs, who has a PhD in voice communications, has a passion for accessibility and entrepreneurship, Egan has worked in real estate his entire career. Briggs says his skills are working with cities to approve plans for construction. Stackhouse was inspired by Egan, who was hired to manage a former employer’s real estate, including a condo in San Francisco.

“It was just a regular condominium building, but the process of getting the city to approve buildings is really difficult, and it took him three years to get a 28-unit condominium building approved by the City of San Francisco,” Briggs said. “And there he learned how this process works and how to have effective neighborhood meetings, and he thought, ‘There has to be a more efficient way to do this entitlement process.’ Our goal at Stackhouse is therefore to have a standard building design that we can bring to any city that complies with local and municipal regulations so that it is easy to approve and we can build quickly across the country. “

Briggs says they are starting their first community in Denver because the city of Tucson slowed processing their government land rent applications and Stackhouse had to keep moving. Even so, they have had such a positive experience with UACI that they plan to remain a member after moving to Colorado.

“We thought we’d have to wait for a big city to see us build in a place like Tucson first, but we blindly presented the concept to the city and it was very well received,” said Briggs.

The container homes are made by the manufacturer, built to the Housing and Urban Development Code, compliant for all 50 states and insulated for all four US climates, which means they can withstand both Tucson and Denver temperatures.

In addition, the community will be equipped with solar panels to be off-grid, and the battery bank for each house will be able to store electricity for two days. Using the technology of another UACI startup, the container houses also store the necessary water on each floor.

“A lot of our work isn’t pretending we know everything, but rather using the university’s connections to get them to the people who know those specific areas,” said Smith.

Although Stackhouse is leaving the Tucson area, Smith says the majority of the startups UACI has served since 2003 have stayed in Arizona. But over the past year and a half, they’ve expanded their virtual presence to serve businesses that have never existed in southern Arizona.

“UACI is a place where if you are a startup in their program and you need something you will lift heaven and earth to help you succeed,” said Briggs. “It’s so great to be in the house we imagined four years ago. It’s real and I’m so proud of us and grateful for the support Tucson has given us. “

[ad_2]