Vancouver considers recycled shipping containers as social housing

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Vancouver considers recycled shipping containers as social housing

The 320-square-foot units would be created out of 12 shipping containers stacked three high


By LORI CULBERT, Vancouver Sun April 12, 2012 6:02 PM




Vancouver city council will consider next week whether to financially back a proposal to create social housing for Downtown Eastside women in recycled shipping containers — believed to be a first in Canada.

Atira Women’s Resource Society has proposed to operate the 12-unit building as housing for women in need, on land it owns on Alexander Street.

The 320-square-foot units would be created out of 12 shipping containers stacked three high, each with a private bathroom, in-suite laundry and a kitchen with a fridge, stove and dishwasher.

Atira executive director Janice Abbott has heard from “lots of skeptics” who question whether people should be housed in shipping containers, but she argues they will create nice, safe and affordable accommodations for women without a permanent home.

“When you are standing inside you won’t know you are in a shipping container versus an apartment somewhere,” she said.

Using recycled shipping containers for social housing has been tried in places like Amsterdam, but Abbott said this is a first for Canada.

Atira, a non-profit agency providing services to marginalized women, is asking city hall for $92,000 to help finance the construction of the $1.7-million project.

A staff report recommends city council support the request to further its goal of increasing social housing in the Downtown Eastside. And Mayor Gregor Robertson said in a statement Thursday that he hopes council will agree at its meeting next week to provide the money.

“This is the kind of creative housing partnership we need in Vancouver,” Robertson said.

This unusual scheme is, not surprisingly, a much cheaper alternative to building more traditional social housing.

Each unit in the development will cost $85,000 to make; units of the same size in a traditional building just constructed by Atira cost $270,000 each, Abbott said....


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