Shipping Containers Finding New Life As Homes

Shipping containers find new life as homes
Inexpensive and abundant, they’re turning into affordable housing

By Roger O’Neil
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 8:52 a.m. ET May 4, 2007
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.

"In the spirit of recycling, we're able to take a product that is just sitting idle and recycle it and put it to a use in a way that helps solve our country's affordable housing crisis," says Askia Muhammad Aquil of St. Petersburg Neighborhood Housing.
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