Could 'tiny houses' help the LA housing crisis?

The announcer in a promotional video says, "The spaces we live in have a profound effect on our lives."

The video is for Cover Homes, an upstart in Gardena staffed by millennials and led by its CEO, Alexia Rivas who says, "It was important to make purchasing a home more like purchasing a car in terms of effort and time it takes for a client." He says, that it includes selecting options and immediately knowing the price.

What are the prices of his special brand of tiny prefab homes? They range from $55,000 for something that might be a good office or a guest room to $100,000 or more for a multi-bedroom home. You provide the land. He builds the home.

Rivas isn't your typical 24-year old CEO. He says, he "wanted to figure out a way to use the technology available to us today - both manufacturing and technology that is common in the auto industry and also in software."

He sees things in panels. He says, it's "kinda like a high tech set of life-sized lego blocks." Then there is the proprietary software "...which allows us to turn around custom-designs in three days."

It's no secret that LA has a significant housing crisis. Not enough places to live. Rivas says making smaller living spaces makes it possible for people to create rental properties in their back yards. He says that could help with the housing problem we have.

The process is web-driven. It starts on the website: Cover.build.