Danny Haber is trying to reimagine the way the Bay Area builds workforce housing . Using an inexpensive “mass plywood” building material and focusing on small, standardized units that can be built at scale, his company has created an 800-unit pipeline that he says will produce apartments at less than $400,000 a unit — about half of what many developers pay in the Bay Area. And in the process, Haber, 34, is also hoping to do something that may be just as difficult: rebuild a public image that has been mired in controversy since he burst into the real estate industry nearly a decade ago. “We are trying to give people exactly what they want at a great price,” Haber said. “It’s a workforce demographic. It’s teachers, blue collar, middle class.” Most developers entering the Bay Area marketplace do so gingerly, tiptoeing around political minefields and hiding behind seasoned land-use attorneys and well-connected lobbyists. But when Haber came on the scene in 2013, he did so … [Read more...] about He came to the Bay Area to form a startup. Now he’s trying to solve the housing crisis
