If I had a hammer It is possible to build houses cheaply in the Bay Area But the construction has do be done elsewhere T HE BUILDING at 833 Bryant street in San Francisco’s trendy SoMa neighbourhood will be unusual. To start with, all the inhabitants of its 146 units will previously have been homeless. Its constituent parts will have been prefabricated, constructed miles away and fitted together on-site like puzzle pieces. Most unusually, the project will have been cheap to build, at least by Bay Area standards. A report by the Terner Centre at University of California, Berkeley found that, once completed in July, the project will cost 25% less per unit than comparable ones.