VANCOUVER – Cheaply produced shipping containers, designed to transport cargo in 12-metre bites, are increasingly being used to house people in British Columbia who are in need of temporary accommodation.
One such refitted eight-room shipping container has sheltered homeless people in Chilliwack, B.C., while women’s advocates say they are close to winning approval from the City of Vancouver to erect a cluster of 12 apartments at a vacant Downtown Eastside lot.
“We will be able to provide 12 units of housing for young women on otherwise vacant land. It will be full,” says Janice Abbott, executive director of the non-profit Atira Women’s Resource Society, which provides housing for disadvantaged women.
If council approves, she said, the units could be ready as early as Sept. 1.
“The building-code reviews have come back clean. It’s very unlikely it won’t happen,” says Abbott.
The suites would be stacked three high in groups of six units each, with a courtyard in between the clusters.
Sized at 320 square feet, they would be laid out as self-contained studios with individual kitchens and full bathrooms.
There would be a floor-to-ceiling window at the front of each unit and the steel shells would be drywalled and insulated with spray foam.
The cost would be about $85,000 each. Because of the simple construction methods, Abbott says they could be built quickly and save money in the process.
Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang, a University of British Columbia psychiatry professor who has long advocated for modular housing, said the idea could be a low-cost solution to a long-term problem.
“I’m really excited. We want to do something which anybody would be proud to live in,” he said.
“But they really have to be livable. They can’t be stacked boxes for poor people. People have to accept them,” he said.
He said he’s heard from manufacturers that purpose-built units can be run off on industrial-scale production lines with provisions for things such as waste, water and electricity.
In Chilliwack, meanwhile, the only unit put into actual operation cost about $100,000 and was donated by a business.
Built on wheels, it is designed to be highly portable so it can be used when need is imminent.
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