Posted on 01/04/2015 2:12:50 PM PST by lowbridge
An unusual home taking shape inside General Motors' sprawling Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant is intended to be part of a movement to rebuild the city's economy and deteriorating, disappearing housing stock.
Skilled-trades workers, taking breaks from their tasks at the factory that produces the electric Chevrolet Volt and other vehicles, dart in and out to do door, window and wall installation and framing, as well as electrical and plumbing work. Meanwhile, a nonprofit urban farming group is preparing property a few miles away that will welcome the project, what's believed to be the city's first occupied shipping container homestead.
Come spring, the house-in-progress will be delivered to Detroit's North End neighborhood and secured on a foundation where a blighted home once stood. After finishing touches and final inspections, the 40-foot-long former container will feature 320 square feet of living space with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, and will serve as home base for a university-student caretakers of a neighborhood farm and agricultural research activities.
One shipping container home won't turn around Detroit's housing woes. The city emerging from bankruptcy has roughly 40,000 vacant homes waiting to be demolished. But it's a start and, organizers hope, a model to lure and keep residents as Detroit removes blight and recovers from bankruptcy.
Shipping containers converted into living or working spaces are common in some other cities. For instance, in Salt Lake City's rundown warehouse district, a nonprofit group last year converted them into "micro-retail" spaces. A Seattle-based company designs and builds houses out of reclaimed containers.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That explains some of it.
I could see one as a gentleman farmer’s house on a dozen or two acres, but not in Detroit. Maybe on one of those reclaimed coal mine mountain tops in the Appalachian Mountains.
Most people don't realize that shipping containers are reinforced with steel ribs. It makes them easy to stack in container yards and the like, but really reduces your floor space if you try insulating on the inside. You avoid this problem by insulating on the outside, but then you add the expense of siding.
I could be wrong, but I suspect this is some feel-good project supported by government funding.
Actually there is a lot more going on in Detroit these days than the willfully ignorant are willing to see.
There is a big money land rush going on in Detroit right now largely driven by Texas investment and hospitality firms. They’re buying up 1920s era warehouses for renovation into high dollar residential and shopping. They’re also drawing up plans for the riverfront. Even the Packard plant has been sold taxes paid and cleanup begun for a half billion dollar restoration.
The busiest freight crossing on the continent is at Laredo and Detroit is the second busiest. The building of the new bridge over the Detroit river is going to increase traffic, warehousing, logistical jobs etc.
That makes sense.
I personally find it disturbing that people are very obviously being conditioned to accept less/a lower standard of living as we deal with the new normal. Detached single-family homes are going the way of the dodo; new complexes (hives) are being built to house people with few or no children, and many young people today move from lease to lease on cars (without ever obtaining a title). Even fast-food costs are prohibitive to many people, and that is the bottom of the bottom in terms of eating out.
Depends - if I was to push this in California, I'd simply get a couple dozen of them built, prepare the land, put up a whole bunch of Craig's list ads for low rent units, drive them in and fill them, and the moment the city shows up, cry to the media cameras about how the city is trying to shut down low income housing that is actually earthquake safe.
Not only would it make a massive stink in the media, you'd be effectively advertising your product across the country and more likely than not, some city in California who wants to up their low income housing numbers will give you a ring to invite you to set up your next project there.
At the first sign of the city really gearing up a court case, turn the project over to the city - it'll take them at LEAST a year to evict anyone. Meanwhile, you have a whole bunch of people putting pressure on the city to just let the project be, and getting the issue out in the public conversation to fix these codes.
Most ideally, find a place near a college and fill them with students - great camera time 'I finally found an affordable option, and the university wants this shut down, as it competes with their on campus housing which is impossibly expensive...'
Oh, wait a minute...I said elbow grease. Never mind.
They are proud of becoming a third-world country.
LOL. Now I see why a small container would be better.
Plus most of the container is bullet proof!
I have a problem with this too, I see this entire generation going the way of lower wage versions of engineering contract worker gypsies if people don’t start opening up a whole lot of new small businesses. Either that or develop new strategies for opting out of human livestock mode (baaaa! Fleece meeee!).
The “Original Container House”.
Thanks for the pic.
Grandpop's bungalow is going to look mighty good as soon as those "poor, longtime residents" break in, steal the millenials' electronics and paw through their underwear drawers a couple of times.
As an idea it’s not bad. But Detroit is a stupid place to try it. Detroit has whole suburbs that are basically empty, the last thing it needs is more houses to fill.
Keep your sorry ass out of California!!!
Barely 1/8 inch thick? Am I interpreting your decimal measurement correctly?
North Dakota has so many jobs in the fracking industry, they cannot keep up with housing demand. But of course, North Dakota + fracking are the anti-Obama, and the containers are a union thing.
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