http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18475601/
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - This takes a little inside- and a whole lot of outside-the-box thinking. What looks like and lives like a house is actually a shipping container. "I call it my bunker," says Rosalynn Kearney of her container home. Used to import almost everything we use and wear, shipping containers are now a new concept in affordable housing. The containers are claimed to be hurricane-proof, fire-resistant, and there's not a termite to be found. With America exporting so little, shipping companies face the dilemma of what to do with these 32,000-pound containers. Increasingly too expensive to ship back overseas empty, these steel boxes — which can be as large as 20-by-48-feet — are stacked high, sitting in ports around the country. There are as many as 300,000 containers, by some estimates. And they're cheap — ranging from $500 to $2,000 for an unused container. In hurricane-prone Florida, more container houses are going up, though when finished you'd hardly know they're different from any other house.
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http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/By WOLF DEPNER Western News StaffMay 25 2007
The public once again heard about the possibility of turning shipping containers into affordable housing. Linda Sankey, chair of the Penticton Affordable Housing Group, raised the prospect when she spoke before council Tuesday about restrictions to the use of metal shipping containers. “The homes that have been built with containers have been quite lovely in (terms of) construction value, as well as affordability,” she said, pointing to a host of communities, including Victoria, where shipping containers are used for housing. Former city councillor Gus Boersma was among the first to raise that possibility. He said that it would not take many resources to convert shipping containers into housing, provided the city would also change local bylaws. Amendments passed Tuesday restrict the use of shipping containers, but do not necessarily prohibit the use of shipping containers as frames for new housing, as some other municipalities have done. “That wasn’t considered,” said Mayor Jake Kimberley. “It has been brought to staff’s attention that there is a lot of these units being stacked around the city and that is a concern.” While the new regulations actually expand the number of zones where containers can be used, they impose new restrictions on the stacking of containers and their relative location to other buildings. Containers are eligible for use in any zone as temporary storage during construction provided their users have a valid building permit. They must be removed after completion of construction. Violators of these new rules face a $100 penalty.
The public once again heard about the possibility of turning shipping containers into affordable housing. Linda Sankey, chair of the Penticton Affordable Housing Group, raised the prospect when she spoke before council Tuesday about restrictions to the use of metal shipping containers. “The homes that have been built with containers have been quite lovely in (terms of) construction value, as well as affordability,” she said, pointing to a host of communities, including Victoria, where shipping containers are used for housing. Former city councillor Gus Boersma was among the first to raise that possibility. He said that it would not take many resources to convert shipping containers into housing, provided the city would also change local bylaws. Amendments passed Tuesday restrict the use of shipping containers, but do not necessarily prohibit the use of shipping containers as frames for new housing, as some other municipalities have done. “That wasn’t considered,” said Mayor Jake Kimberley. “It has been brought to staff’s attention that there is a lot of these units being stacked around the city and that is a concern.” While the new regulations actually expand the number of zones where containers can be used, they impose new restrictions on the stacking of containers and their relative location to other buildings. Containers are eligible for use in any zone as temporary storage during construction provided their users have a valid building permit. They must be removed after completion of construction. Violators of these new rules face a $100 penalty.
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