Tiburon developer looks to turn steel shipping containers into tiny homes

Tiburon resident Charlie Oewel has every reason to coast through the rest of his career. Over more than three decades in real-estate development, he has built thousands of multifamily units and has become a leading developer of housing for university students. He currently has three projects in the pipeline to build 265 apartment units near the University of California at Berkeley. But the 76-year-old isn’t stopping there. Now, Oewel is working on a brand-new project to create emergency housing out of steel shipping containers. Oewel has been a catalyzing figure in forming Disaster Area Steel Housing, or Dash, a company that hopes to create cheap, livable steel homes that can be quickly deployed to house people affected by catastrophes like wildfires. The company also has plans to develop a prototype village that could house the homeless.

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