'Professor Dumpster' Shakes Up Austin Housing, One Micro-Unit At A Time

What was a small experiment has morphed into a movement to push affordable housing in Austin.

Professor Jeff Wilson, eloquently called “Professor Dumpster,” is changing the way Austin builds its apartment units.

After becoming bored with the traditional grind of the academia world, the Huston-Tillotson University senior advisor lived in a 33-square-foot renovated dumpster to teach his students about science and sustainability.

“I was publishing dozens of papers [at Harvard], getting promoted, doing what I need to do in academia,” Wilson told Patch. “I realized that my students weren’t really engaged or interested. With the creation of this dumpster home, I was not only communicating with my students but also to broader public. Putting a comfortable home and a dirty dumpster into one gets folks talking.”

Wilson expanded on the dumpster idea and moved towards a “microunit” project. Along with several other designers and innovaters, he started a company called Kasita, a startup that addresses Austin housing inequality by creating tiny, affordable housing.

Kasita, a play on the Spanish word “casita,” which means “little house,” is what Wilson’s company is using to make this company real. Wilson and his team create homes that are only 208 square feet, yet include all of the necessary amenities for the average apartment owner.

“I started thinking about the best parts of the dumpster. By living smaller and being more nimble, I was able to have freedom to move my house wherever I wanted, while also having a short term lease. I could own stuff rather than it owning me. I started thinking about what if we made something bigger than a dumpster, but made it micro. I wanted to keep it nimble enough where you could move it as you would a dumpster. I literally created a ’dumpster baby’”.

Wilson’s has a stellar team to help the company grow. Elon Musk’s head industrial designer at Solar City, W2 MacFab’s Robert Keith, and micro-unit developer Taylor Wilson all make up Wilson’s dream team, and help make the innovative project a reality.

The living room couch pulls out into a queen-size bed, storage units and closets are built into the walls, and a step next to the couch serves a dual purpose by also storing up to 50 pairs of shoes. The walls in the units are made of tiles that can hold speakers and shelves, and the units themselves can fit into rack structures. Each rack holds up to nine units, and you can fit one rack into an area as small as 1,000 feet.

Kasita has two lots in Downtown Austin that will be ready by 2016. By 2017, Kasita plans to expand to 10 cities across the country.

[Photo: Kasita]