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A new idea for affordable housing: shipping containers

April 13th, 2010 · 31 Comments

For those who haven’t spotted it, The Tyee and Monte Paulsen have an interesting series starting on affordable housing. The series looks at how shipping containers, which are ubiquitous around the world, can be used for housing.

I admire them for taking on this topic. And I’ve seen shipping containers used ingeniously in a few places I’ve visited. It seems to me I saw stores operating out of them in Kabul and, at the other end of the universe in all ways, I also visited an organic farm in Maui where the owners had turned a shipping container into their office. (They’d also turned a garden hose into an outdoor shower for our benefit, but that’s another story.)

However, I have to say that in the way of the great Media Chicken Shunning that is going on in this city, I currently am having strong doubts about whether Vancouver can accept any idea that strays outside the parameters of the mediocre and middle of the road that seems to prevail here. I’ve always known the city was parochial and small-minded, but that’s been brought home forcefully in the last couple of weeks, as all the pundits of the land have thundered on about the way global disaster will come to Vancouver if it allows urban chickens.

I’m frankly completely baffled by this reaction. I could understand their scorn if the Vision council had decided to make decisions by consulting a ouija board or if it had mandated that all new housing development include a space for housing pigs and donkeys at the basement level, in order to promote food security.

But we’re talking about allowing urban chickens — a trend that has been growing in North America for at least the last decade. If anyone wanted to do even the most minimal research, they would see that hundreds of cities have made the move to allowing people to keep small numbers of chickens and that it’s hardly a radical concept. Susan Orlean in the New Yorker wrote about what a trend it is, definitive proof that, far from being some new age weirdo fad, it’s a yuppie as a Starbucks non-fat, no-whip moccachino.

So … shipping containers as housing? Nice try, but I can well imagine what the great minds around here would have to say.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Dan Cooper

    “the great Media Chicken Shunning”

    Frances, thank you for this perfect phrase! and the article as a whole. You’ve summed it all up.

  • mary

    if we are ever to get out of our parochialism, it will be to your credit. Thank you.

  • Jonathan

    I lived in container housing near the city centre in Amsterdam for a while recently. It wasn’t great, but it cost a small fraction of what some friends were paying for their small canal-house flat. It would be great to see some pop around Vancouver…

  • cashisking

    What’s next … well appointed dumpsters?!?

  • Chris Keam

    I wonder what a chart showing overlap between Stanley Park kid’s farm closure critics and backyard chicken critics would look like?

  • spartikus

    Ooo…this calls for a Venn Diagram!

    It’s been quite amusing reading the usual suspects who feel urban chickens/community gardens are the greatest stains on Vancouver in history (Komagata Maru? Pshaw!) and…the reaction of my peers, who for the most part fit in the late 30s – early 50s w/small children demographic.

  • Urbanismo

    On my, oh my!

    Is this how we are going to warehouse our less fortunate? While the smooth little men in expensive suits live it up on Angus Drive.

    If this is who we are: beware, you’ll be next!

    I have not had anything to do with containers, other than to partake of the goodies delivered: but I know the building business.

    The exterior box is a minor part of a home. After debugging, after the envelope has been secured, after the windows and doors have been punched thru, by far the most expensive elements are the interior finishes: to say nothing of fees and land costs!

    This is a pipe dream. Don’t let the real culprits off the hook! Looking at the sketches if we are prepared to damage our urban senses with such atrocities then we have no business calling ourselves civilised!

    The real problem is not building techniques, the problems are two fold inherited from a very cruel eighteenth century Europe: fractional reserve monetary policy and “closure” land titles.

    We cannot solve our social problems on a whim. Stop this man’s nonsense immediately!

    When our misplaced enthusiasm shakes out the homeless will still be homeless, ourselves humiliated, the city a disgrace and out . . . mucho, si mucho dinero. ¡Verdad!

  • Sean Bickerton

    Love these innovative ideas, especially when any ideas, any plan would be welcome … and I also support allowing backyard chickens (just not shelters for them …)
    http://seanbickerton.com/2010/04/08/a-chicken-in-every-plot-why-not/

  • Uhhh

    Can we take a step back here for a moment. Your right Urban Chickens are a non-issue and all the hoopla about them is just so much wasted time.

    But container housing! How on earth is this a solution to the affordable housing crisis in this city (the world).

    The solution, is to provide real affordable housing to people. Decent housing that people can afford and actually feel good about living in .

    If the market wont allow it and dictates that poor people should live in a shipping container. Then we need to use other means to do this.
    (National Housing Strategy Anyone!)

    The problem with this is that it would reduce profits for developers, which seems to be a no go situation in this city. The solution is to not care.

    People generate the wealth in society, and its time we worked on making society work for the benifit of everyone rather than private profit.

  • Visiting

    Sean, I’ll love to put you in one of these boxes for a year. To share it with the chicken. That would do miracles for your next campaign. And yes, you’re welcome.

  • MB

    I would rather innovation be directed to real solid permanent housing, not structures co-opted from industrial uses for temporary housing, which inevitably becomes ‘permanently temporary’ in any case.

    Anything less is a cop out.

  • Bill Lee

    Dozens more of cold walls and echoing chambers at
    http://weburbanist.com/2009/12/01/cargo-shipping-container-house-home/

    However, Vancouver always does things on the cheap, so Z & A 32-inch studs in short frame housing, with rents kept low.

    And there is the problem, everyone wants a two bedroom size for one person to lounge around in. No one will live in a studio apt. if they can help it.
    And we have existing rentals of various sizes that are now out of reach economically for the barista/night cleaner ($8 per hour x 2000 hours a year = $16,000, taxes off and 1/3 for rent = $390 per month without utilities etc.)

    Where are the $300 a month apartments d’antan? Gone to Surrey, every one. O when will they …
    Sharing-the-rent? Zut Alors! See above about rattling around in their own solitude.

    And shall we dig up horror stories about rent control back East in T.O., Mtl, and NYC and how that is exploited?

    What is a problem is the preservation of the single family housing of Dunbar, Kits, Point Grey and the refusal to mandate there some number of people per square metre/square foot in those houses.
    Maybe it is time to bring in the Hong Kong cages to provide basic living rentals.

  • Bill Lee

    …” or if it had mandated that all new housing development include a space for housing pigs and donkeys at the basement level, in order to promote food security.”

    You’ve seen the nouveau riche mansions in China outside the main cities.
    And it’s not a basement in the meaning of below ground, but on the ground level–the first floor.
    Not unsual, and in The Muskoka and other parts of rural Ontario where they never tear anything down, the present chicken shed or storage out-building was actually the first house built on the property until they moved to the larger building.

    Some would go along with it.

  • Michael Geller

    As someone who has actively promoted the concept of relocatable modular housing as an interim solution for the homeless, I feel an obligation to respond to this item.

    I will be joining Monte Paulson at the event Thursday night organized by Architecture for Humanity to examine the feasibility and appropriateness of ‘quick’ housing solutions using containers. I will discuss the concept but from the perspective of the containers as large ‘building blocks’ which can be recycled.

    One of the most successful examples of using containers as building blocks is container city on the London waterfront, http://www.containercity.com/ While it fits in with the industrial context, I am the first to admit it might not look that good at the corner of 16th and Dunbar…(although it might still look better than the atrocious stucco apartment block across the street.) However, there are many examples of new housing and other commercial uses built with refurbished containers that look good and function well.

    Coincidentally, Jeremy Gutsche of Trendhunter.com gave a talk today in which he identified the reuse of containers and relocatable buildings as two of today’s top 20 trends .

    After studying the matter, I have concluded that while the re-use of containers is ‘trendy’ and a ‘sticky’ idea, factory built modular buildings may be a better approach for quick and cost effective housing. But Monte Paulson is to be congratulated for promoting the idea and encouraging discussion.

    PS. I am told that the idea of housing the homeless in containers is not going to happen here, because a very senior provincial figure is turned off by the notion. I guess I shouldn’t share with him my other idea….to use some of the new mini-storage buildings as housing! Have you seen them. They’re much nicer than thousands of housing units in our city. But that’s a discussion for another day!

  • landlord

    A COSCO condo. Besides, we only need a couple thousand steel boxes and voila! : problem solved. They’re not homeless, they’re Trailer Park Boys.
    Neighbours disruptive? Call the Vision straddle-carrier and move them down the road, lock, stock and recycled plastic rain barrel. Maybe to a nice view lot on Cortes Island.

  • Dan

    nice thought frances.

    Seriously, some of you have to imagine something a little more creative than rusted shipping container with vaulted doors sitting on 25×55 lot (ok, maybe smaller). These could be beautiful, artistic and innovative homes if you get your head out of the dumpster. I know a few architects that could turn these into their modernist wet-dreams.

    ship it

  • JCobb

    Total stupidity. Containers are intended to ship things out (or people if, if that’s what Vision meant). Come to think of it….

  • Glissando Remmy

    The Thought of The Day

    “Arrive in a Container; Live in a Container; Depart in a Container… The Cycle of Life.”

    Apparently, for some American castoffs, the American Dream is to…land a Job with the City of Vancouver, courtesy of Vancouver Vision and the Friends of Hollyhock.
    For some Canadians however, the Canadian Dream is a… Waterfront Container. No windows, no plumbing, just Box.

    Appalling. What a dream. How disgustingly arrogant and bigoted is this?
    To advocate something like this, in these times, in Canada, in the land of plenty, and glorious and free, is nothing short of blasphemy.

    “O Canada!
    Our home and native land!
    True patriot love in all thy sons command.
    With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
    The True North strong and free!
    From far and wide,
    O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
    God keep our land glorious and free!
    O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
    O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.”

    Tell me, where in our National Anthem do you see the lyrics: “Living in a Container is Ok”?

    Keep in mind that some unfortunate people have reached and entered Canada inside a Container. For some heartless Architects of the Highest Standards of Living to imply that continuing Life in a Different Container, even for a short time, is of no consequence is unacceptable.
    Will these poor people ever have a say in shaping their own destiny? Maybe, during their Final act on Earth they will point out towards Cremation. At least in death they are not going to be stuck in another Container.

    WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

    First the Big One will shake Vancouver into a stupor. Second, the Tsunami will wash the Waterfront. Third, all the pricks suggesting life inside a Box is chic, will be provided with their own Container, for evaluation. Call it even.

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    “An Old Idea For Affordable Housing”…

    … We tend to over-rate innovation: Give me good, affordable, reliable transit and will find my way to “affordable housing” and back.

    Thank you very much.

  • Urbanismo

    My God, do we ever have grasshopper minds on Bula-blog!

    Why it was only this time last year we were waxing indignant about the demolition of those perfectly sound and occupied remaining residences in Little Mountain.

    I had my own little bit of fun http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/Packsack.1967.pdf but that was half a century ago and containers hadn’t even been invented. Besides, I was just the local tag end of a world wide hi-tech fad.

    I’ll bet they wouldn’t go for this stuff around The Crescent! Only for the rubbies, you say!

    And errrr . . . was it not just last week we were in a rarified debate on charrettes and urban design and and quartiers and trams and green and sustainable and pretty, pretty maidens all in a row . . .

    We’d have been smart to keep those remaining families in their Little Mountain redoubt: at least until the container fad passed.

    Where are they now?

  • michael geller

    For those of you who think it is inhumane to expect someone to live in a home made from recycled shipping containers, please take a look at this Victoria home. It might change your mind!

    http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/04/13/MostAffordable/

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    No, no, Michael, it’s not “inhumane”… it’s daft.

  • Urbanismo

    Right Lewis . . .

    Michael why on earth are you fussing over junk metal?

    So a nutty couple in Victoria has too much money, no common sense and a lack of self-respect, want to live in a sardine can. They do not have to, yunno: there are alternatives . . .

    Containers are not modular homes!

    Looking at the pic, they may have got their slush bucket for a bargain price but they sure as hell had to drain the piggy bank, at Denny’s . . . errrrr . . . I mean Standard Furniture, to doll it up.

    You are a smart guy, Michael, you know what the real problem is!

    Containers have served their shipping purposes. There must be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, rusting away on yellowing old trampers rotting in tropical backwaters. The fools that bought them are now hell-bent on persuading us to relieve them of their misbegotten greed.

    Vancouver housing isn’t about shortage of supply. It isn’t about cost of building or land. It’s about the coastal Chinese dumping their worthless paper: stuff the US conned them into for its addiction to Guangzhou sweatshop trash.

    Those guys are in a worse predicament than we are but that doesn’t mean we have to fall into follow them into that den of iniquity.

    Yes, and foolishly, we are shipping all our jobs and raw wealth back to those sweatshops in the MV Black Forest: I watched it yesterday . . . as for Harper, the Bible says nothing about that so he don’t understand . . .

    The mindless consumer binge is over Michael but that doesn’t mean we have to pick up its left over junk. But it does mean we will suffer the consequences for along time . . .

  • Urbanismo

    PS . . . Those guys on the Bund are better at money laundering than Threadneedle Street ever was . . . even though that’s where they learnt their tricks . . .

  • MB

    Well, I’m not as eloquent as Urbbie or Glisssssss. But….

    Even though co-opted containers can be eye candy to those who are too easily beguiled by architectural fashionistas whose realm of awareness stops at the exterior walls and doesn’t last long enough to gather dandruff , these things do not create a neighbourhood with anything but a transitory, shallow value.

    The idea is to provide real housing for the disadvantaged, and provide it within the context of fostering a sense of worth within the heart of the community, not at its edges.

    A pretty pile of containers may not be so pretty after the patina of 20 years of weather and the wear of being social outcasts takes root.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    James Chanos, U.S. hedge fund manager who foresaw the Enron collapse, was on Charlie Rose a couple of days ago answering questions about China, and touching on topics dear to our souls.

    The tax structure is very different in China and local and regional governments rely on development for most of their income. This leads to overdevelopment and collapse. The most recent in 1990, the next one in the making according to Chanos.

  • Anna

    media chicken shunning—very funny.

    i think there is an artist…andrea zittel maybe? whose house in california is made from shipping containers. she showed at the vag last year or the year before.

  • Anna

    http://jasonjasonjason.com/geochainjun06/geochainjun06-Pages/Image21.html

    i guess it’s her studio space. still pretty cool though.

  • michael geller

    You might want to check out these amazing container solutions…especially those of you who wouldn’t dream of supporting the idea of putting a homeless person in a container.

    http://green.yahoo.com/blog/daily_green_news/8/twelve-amazing-shipping-container-houses.html

    Those attending the Architecture for Humanity program heard that containers are not necessarily less expensive than purpose built modules as a building block…however, they do help recycle a product in a sustainable way…

    My own observation? As long as WOOD IS GOOD in BC, we will not see much provincial funding for the steel boxes, (although most would have wood studs on the interior walls). But I still think this is a viable approach for some housing, especially when compared with the cost of putting someone in a shelter.

    But that’s another story!

  • Dave Huer

    Soon after moving to Vancouver 9 years ago, I pitched modular container apartment systems as transitional in-fill housing for homeless people.

    Then looked at doing this again in 2007 as a mixed-income venture where the very attractive per square foot cost enables the builder to make margin with BOTH market and low-income rates, by building for market margin then offering price cuts for social housing.

    I was undercapitalized, and kept encountering cultural and political barriers even though these systems are accepted in many other countries as The Tyee article shows.

    Note: Cost-wise, tempohousing of The Netherlands builds and ships units on-spec from China, then installs at 100/psf, 1/3 the cost of traditional steel-and-masonry housing.

    http://www.davehuer.com/about-me/project-work/stakbloc-container-housing-2001-2007/

    With all due respect to everyone, what still puzzles me about reactions to this idea as a homelessness point solution is I keep seeing the belief that well-housed people know better than homeless people about how they ought to be ‘saved.”

    I’ve volunteered in the DTES, and regularly drove through the alleys in later days as an Impark employee.

    From what I could see, a homeless person needs a secure place out of the weather. A place to stay warm. A place where their stuff does not get stolen. To my mind, this modular apartment system could make for a dream; an awesome step up for someone living in a cardboard box or sleeping on a mattress in a back alley.

    Not to mention anyone transitioning from lower income to condos and back again (students, young couples, trendies, artists, empty-nesters).

  • Markimark

    I would love to live in there.

    I saw this Container building in Berlin some month ago.

    http://www.twotimestwentyfeet.com/p/hilfiger_w2011

    Container buildings are a fascinating part of modern architecture. Maybe even of future Architecture.
    in particular in times of “green movement”