Americans aren’t alone in the quest for affordable housing. John Daly, with the Irish Examiner lays out a vision of how “Redefining the concept of ‘home’ could help tackle the housing crisis.”
If Daly and his fellow Irishmen could compare and contrast what they are excited about with the modern manufactured homes available in the U.S., they might think at first blush it was blarney.
Americans should feel fortunate to have the HUD Code option, as you’ll soon see as Daly’s vision is examined.
Daly says, “With the housing crisis in Ireland and elsewhere across western society set to remain one of the major social issues of the early 21st century, the time to redefine the meaning of ‘home’ is clearly at hand.”
“Since the late 1990s, the transformation of shipping containers into a variety of accommodation options has gone from quirky and eccentric into a viable source of alternative low-cost housing,” Daly writes. The Daily Business News recently spotlighted American versions of container housing, at this link here.
Daly points to, “Project Ripple, a 2014 social housing project constructed from a 3.7sq m container was built on the grounds of Dublin’s Irish Museum of Modern Art over three days.” That would be equal to a spartan 39.8265 square feet, per Google’s calculator.
Daly notes that container housing is catching on here in the U.S. and down under, in Australia.
“With an estimated 30 million unused shipping containers all around the world, a serviceable unit can be bought for €2,000, measuring 2.4m wide, 2.6m high, and either 6m or 12m long… High-cube containers with increased ceiling height are priced up to €3,000,” he said.
A check on Project Ripple yielded the photos above and those that follow below on this page from the SelfBuild.ie website. There you can find the following.
“While the initial aim of project RIPPLE was to come up with a low-cost model of housing that could be rolled out quickly and without the long lead-in time that traditional housing requires, it became clear that this approach contained its own unique challenges in Ireland. Our climate demands greater levels of insulation, and given the size of the container, it had to be external rather than internal,” states SelfBuild.
Compare and Contrast the Costs with HUD Code Manufactured Home
The site then states, “The same home traditionally built would cost €55,000 but a 40ft shipping container can be converted into a fully-compliant home from €25,000 direct labour or €35,000 using a contractor.”
At today’s exchange rates, per Google calculator, that yields ‘site built’ cost would be $62,922.75 in U.S. dollars. The contracted price for about 320 square feet (nominal 8’x40’ container) $40,042.28 in U.S. dollars.
As was previously reported on the Daily Business News…
U.S. Census Bureau Manufactured Home Statistics
“The average sales price of a single sectional manufactured home as of Dec. 2016, according to the Census Bureau, was $49,900. A 14×70 foot single section manufactured home is about 924 square feet – which is a typical model, although the 16 X 80 is a more popular size. Those homes are made to stringent standards under the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Code for manufactured homes, which turned 41 earlier this month. Using the smaller 14×70 size to be conservative, that works out to be some $54.00 per square foot.”
That Ripple container house – as ‘cool’ as it looks to many in housing hungry Ireland and elsewhere – is about $125.13 per square foot.
The U.S. Army reportedly did a study some years ago to determine what was a good size home for a family of 4. Sources say the answer was about 900 square feet. That’s about the size of a single section 14×70.
Ireland? Americans? Are the facts speaking loud enough to hear them clearly? ## (News, Analysis)
(Image credits are as shown above, and when provided by third parties, are shared under fair use guidelines.)
