The Emergency Housing Model That Turns Crisis Into Infrastructure

From housing investing to a bigger question: what happens after the fire?

RJ comes from a real estate lineage, fourth generation in the industry, and like a lot of people during Covid, he and Xander took a hard look at what they wanted to spend their lives doing.

The center of gravity for them was simple: families and homes.

They started in the manufactured housing world, buying and modernizing communities and exploring how to unlock new entitlements, in a space where zoning approvals are notoriously rare and misunderstood. Then a real world catalyst hit.

The LA fires. People lost homes overnight. Permits dragged. Rebuilds crawled.

RJ looked at it and asked a question most of us never model: why does housing recovery move like molasses when the need is immediate?

Modular vs manufactured: the one distinction that matters

RJ gave the cleanest breakdown I have heard of the difference between manufactured housing, modular, and stick built.

It is not vibes. It is code.

Manufactured housing is typically built to HUD standards. Modular is generally built to IBC or IRC standards, but assembled through off site or factory processes. Stick built is traditional on site construction, usually IRC, with local state overlays on top.

That matters because it changes perception, permitting paths, durability, and what municipalities believe they are approving.

The play: steel frame on site manufacturing

Artanis is pushing hard on steel frame on site manufacturing, and the reasoning is practical.

Steel frame homes last longer, are more fire resistant, reduce termite risk, and can cut construction waste meaningfully. RJ is not pitching magic savings versus normal American stick built. He is pitching durability, repeatability, and the ability to standardize production like modern industry does.

This is the throughline: instead of treating housing like a one off craft project, treat it like infrastructure.

Artanis is not just a housing company, it is a story company

This part was fun.

Artanis is “Sinatra” spelled backwards, and the brand is intentionally vintage Americana. Think 1950s and 1960s, post war “build big things” energy. RJ wants investors to feel like they are walking into a living room with a record playing, not a corporate pitch deck.

But there is a serious economic point underneath it: the average first time home is out of reach for most Americans. Their original affordability thesis was to build communities that feel like real neighborhoods, with an entry price closer to $100K to $200K so someone making $60K to $70K a year has a path to ownership, not a lifetime of renting.

The pivot: Beyond FEMA and the “Emergency Community”

After the LA fires, Artanis was pulled into a much bigger mandate.

RJ described building a business plan around what the Trump administration calls a “Beyond FEMA” agenda, pushing disaster decision making closer to states while still relying on federal funding. Politics aside, the operational problem is real: millions rely on FEMA housing assistance and the outcomes are ugly.

Artanis’ solution is the “Emergency Community.”

The idea is to use emergency authority after a disaster declaration to move faster, bypass local bottlenecks, build to a standardized national compliance model, and deliver communities in roughly 120 days. The homes are designed as assets, not disposable trailers. They have residual value. They are redeployable across disaster cycles using a chassis system that can be moved by rail, boat, or truck

Why this is a capital markets story, not just a humanitarian story

RJ came with numbers, and that is what makes this investable.

He contrasted the current approaches like single use FEMA trailers or long term motel vouchers that can cost hundreds of thousands per family over time, with Artanis’ all in model of roughly $440K that includes land, development, manufacturing, and long term community management.

The key shift is that Artanis is not pitching “spend more because it is sad.”

They are pitching “spend once, manage the asset well, redeploy it, and reduce the long tail cost of homelessness, healthcare, and social services.”

That is how you get buy in from fiscal conservatives and from anyone who is sick of watching the same broken playbook repeat.

The traction: pilots in Virginia, North Carolina, and beyond

Artanis is not just theorizing.

RJ shared a pilot underway with the state of Virginia in Tazewell County, starting with nine storm resilient homes with a target of 120 days from funding to keys in hand.

They are also working on a larger recovery pilot tied to Hurricane Helene recovery needs, with the intent to scale from an initial tranche to significantly more units if funded and executed well.

And then there is a second vertical that I think is a sleeper.

“Industry Communities.”

AI data centers, nuclear plants, shipbuilding, semiconductor manufacturing. These projects drop thousands of workers into places with 37 residents and no housing stock. Artanis wants to use the same redeployable housing framework to support American reindustrialization without shanty towns, RV chaos, and blown out local rents.

Why this works

1. They turned disaster housing into an asset class

   Not a one time expense. Something durable, managed, and redeployed.

2. They are building a one contract solution

   Instead of 17 fragmented vendors, they are pitching a single integrated system that covers development, manufacturing, logistics, and management.

3. They are framing the problem in outcomes, not politics

   Stable housing reduces downstream costs and keeps families from spiraling into homelessness and long term dependency.

4. They are thinking like infrastructure builders
   Standardize, manufacture, deploy, maintain, reuse. That is how America built big things before it forgot how.

What you can learn (and steal)

1. Move toward problems with real urgency

   LA burned. They could have ignored it and bought another park. Instead they swung at something enormous.

2. Make your model legible to decision makers

   RJ is not pitching vibes. He is pitching timeframes, unit counts, cost per family, and downstream savings.

3. Be willing to look crazy early

   He said it well: history is rarely written by people sitting on the sidelines.

Listen to the full episode

🎙 Groundbreakers with Jordan Fishman, CSO at Artanis Capital

In it, we cover:

• The real differences between manufactured, modular, and stick built housing

• Why steel frame construction is the long game

• The “Emergency Community” model and how it can deploy in 120 days

• What “Beyond FEMA” could look like in practice

• Why industry projects like nuclear and chips are creating a housing crisis of their own

If you want to learn more, RJ shared these links: ArtanisCap.com, BeyondFEMA.com, and AHomeForIndustry.com, plus socials at @ArtanisCap.