
Shipping Containers to Become Condos in Detroit - spking
http://news.yahoo.com/shipping-containers-become-condos-detroit-110032447--abc-news-topstories.html
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brudgers
_"The first U.S. multi-family condo built of used shipping containers is
slated to break ground in Detroit early next year."_

There are good reasons nobody has done this before.

Among them is that despite more than a decade of attempts to to create such
projects, shipping containers remain grossly ill-suited for conversion to
dwellings. Their dimensions are poor for commodious habitation; they remain
uninsulated, unfenestrated, and expensive to modify due to unibody
construction; and in relatively short supply for the purpose.

It makes little more sense than cutting teddy bears lengthwise to make carpet
slippers.

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CoreDumpling
Maybe not for multi-family condos, but the Dutch seem to have a great time
with their shipping containers. This student housing complex is quite popular:

<http://www.tempohousing.com/projects/keetwonen.html>

Granted, affordable housing is in short supply in the Netherlands, while
there's plenty of shipping containers considering that Rotterdam is the
biggest port in Europe.

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joonix
Why would this be built in Detroit of all places? Isn't the whole point of
shipping container housing that it's cheaper and quicker to build? Detroit
already has a large amount of extremely cheap housing all around it, with
people leaving the city every day. There's no housing shortage.

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johnrgrace
In absolute terms, Detroit has lots of housing. But very specific types of
housing is in very short supply. My sister lives there and "hipster" housing
is in very short supply which is who I expect will live in these.

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daniel-cussen
Hipsters do need an awfully specific habitat to thrive. Streets can't be too
clean, air can't either, just enough poverty, but not too much actual poverty,
a certain background level of tee-hee crime like smoking, lots of viable
Starbucks (for income), lots of non-viable non-Starbucks (for "real" coffee),
vegan sandwich shops, obsolete forms of commerce selling obsolete goods (like
brick-and-mortar record- and book-stores), reasonable public transport, no
actual manufacturing for a hundred miles, urban density, good place to walk
around, the geography can't be boring, maybe an art gallery to complain
about...

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zachrose
Actually, yeah. The thermostat for gentrification is pretty finicky.

If the art scene goes well in an area, retail and restaurants will follow. Two
decades later, the area is expensive and boring.

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daniel-cussen
Hypothesis: Hipsters are the yeast of gentrification.

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ChuckMcM
Having been inside cargo containers they are not nearly as 'cosy' as one might
hope, and if you finish off the inside with interior walls it cuts into the
space. If you have never visited or stayed in a 'mobile home' (US term for
pre-manufactured house) the 'boxness' is impossible to hide even at that
scale. So while I think its a clever concept living there long term will be
challenging I expect. Now as a hotel? A quick place to spend the night on the
way to somewhere else? No problem.

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brudgers
Trailer homes are far better suited for habitation than shipping containers
because they are designed and built for the purpose. To put it another way,
shipping containers are burdened with too much technical debt.

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icelancer
Agreed. The two are basically the same thing except one was modified to be
residential while the other was modified to be industrial. It makes little
sense to try to convert the final product into another final product when
prefabbing mobile homes is going to be much cheaper and easier to get up to
code.

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ChuckMcM
Well one of the issues here is 'container waste' which is to say a container
which is no longer seaworthy. It is not unusual to be able to go down to any
reasonably active port, and 'buy' (you think of it as buying, they think of it
as disposing) a container. A few folks I know have done this and then had it
dropped off on their property as a quick and dirty storage shed. (They seem to
be about $2k each on ebay but I know of at least one that was purchased at the
port of Oakland for $500 cash.)

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Tichy
I've heard that these containers are full of toxic chemicals used for pest
control (also to prevent spreading foreign species of plants and animals).

Hopefully it is possible to get all that nasty stuff out before converting
them to housing? Maybe a bit of sandblasting does the trick, but still, not my
first choice for a home...

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antidoh
Possible, but unlikely to be done.

"We washed them thoroughly with a hose."

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philwelch
Has Detroit reached third world status yet?

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kevinpet
Anyone who's been in the military recently has spent quite a bit of time
packing and repacking a shipping container, or just hanging out inside one
during poor weather. I note that the Amsterdam student housing has an internal
cross section of 225cm square (a little over 7').

They're certainly better than a tent, and I'd happily sleep in one if the
alternative was homelessness or some unsafe shanty town, but they seem such a
poor solution if your goal actually has anything to do with reuse or
inexpensive housing (as opposed to trendy conspicuous environmentalism).

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001sky
_Although containers can be bought for as little as $2,500, they shouldn't be
seen as a low-cost housing solution.

"Ninety-five percent of the cost still remains..."_

\-- The Catch.

