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Can startups help solve the U.S. housing crisis? BuildCasa thinks so. It raised a $3.5 million round of pre-seed funding to let California homeowners build new homes in their backyards. — Anna

Leveraging new zoning laws

There aren’t enough homes in the U.S., which would need another 3.8 million units of housing to fill the gap, Axios recently noted, citing data from Freddie Mac. And while causes and consequences are open to debate, it shouldn’t be too controversial to say that increasing housing supply is part of the solution.

What does this have to do with startups, you may ask? Quite a bit, it turns out: New business models have emerged as a result of recent laws that aim to solve the housing shortage.