Shipping containers 'used to house homeless children'

There should have been a hoo ha. Two wrongs don't make a right. What might be different now is the sheer scale of what's happening.

Terminus House - that is the one featured in the programme and just featured on the BBC news

quizqueen what exactly is this 'real world' that someone like roseleah lives in and we do not? The phrase is usually used by people trying to wriggle out of justifying sweeping statements that they cannot substantiate.

There may have seen more houses built, but how many of them are within the reach of the bottom 25% of the income range to afford. They are as entitled to decent homes as those on higher incomes.

In the past (pre 1979) about a third of the population lived in rented public sector homes at rents within their budgets. Given that council housing was introduced to give decent housing to that sector of the population whose income would never be sufficient to pay a market rent or to buy a property of their own. I suspect that one quarter to one third is a fairly steady proportion of households in that situation.

I live in Oxfordshire that has been told to build, proportionately, 3 or 4 times as many houses as other counties. Everywhere I go I find another new estate going up. My own village has doubled its size in the last 10 years. On all these estates at least half the houses are large detached houses selling for £500K plus. Yes, we have lots of high tech industry paying well, but we also have a lot of warehousing where the jobs are not well paid.-

I live a few miles from the town with the lowest average income in the county. The majority of the occupants of that town need subsidised rented accommodation. The minimum, even the living wage will not cover a mortgage on a property there. There are 14 pages of properties listed on Right move. Only the last 4 1/2 pages have any property below £250K

My dad lives in a bungalow on the outskirts of a large council estate (the same one where my DGS goes to primary school) . There are a huge amount of single elderly people living alone in 3 and 4 bedroom homes that could be given to larger families . If the LA built more little bungalows perhaps those people would be willing to give up their homes to a family? Or maybe not? I don’t know.

M0nica not trying to play games here but I live in a town with one of the lowest average incomes in the entire U.K. you would struggle to find a house worth more than £250k here !

The average wages are very low too and the most wealthy people here (by a huge margin) are teachers, police officers and almost anyone else working in the public sector .

There are lovely houses here offered for sale at £100k or thereabouts but no one can get a mortgage to cover it. The North South divide is alive and kicking.

Why do they insist on putting these people in " ghetto-type " areas ? Why not spread them around and mix them in with those in decent areas ? I could never understand the mentality of anyone bunching people together to create " poor areas ". Concrete and no grass for the children to play on.

It's little wonder that these people don't take a pride in where they're living, they're given no encouragement.

Those look horrible places like prisons. What a rotten outlook. No imagination whatsoever---no thought !!

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It's not shocking at all. It's a miracle. When the Christchurch earthquake devastated the city, the whole business district, plus many homes, were built from containers.
I wandered through Container City many times and it was a vibrant, brilliant place which spoke of ingenuity, hope and sheer human grit.

Currently a friend of mine is one of the contractors turning containers into homes for the homeless in another najor NZ city.

It may sound shocking because its not what you are used to but we are not talking about people living in big, bare metal boxes, but containers with bathrooms and cladding for insulation - neat little homes in fact.

And if they last longer than intended, well, so did post-ware prefabs - and people love them.

What has caused homelessness in prosperous NZ was the right-wing governments very unwise decision to allow overseas investors to buy up massive amounts of properties and raise (for that read double or triple) rents and house prices.

It has happened all over the world.
When countries with 'slave-labour' policies allow a very few to become super-rich because of it, all that money has to be invested somewhere - and they are NOT investing in their own country.

So as a result, we have families living in cars and garages because wages didn't double or triple - so huge hikes in rents and mortgages could not be paid.

Containers are a blessing to many.

I think as a short-term measure they are fine although I think some people are still living in prefabs all these years on.
Many people live in Park homes too.
The difference is that these prefabs were built in a hurry but made into nice little estates and each with their own garden.

Prefabs were much bigger than a container. They had to be a minimum of 635 sq ft. A container is about 146 sq ft.

I have seen accounts of containers used for student housing. That's fine; one person in a space that is often larger than a room in a hall of residence or a shared house and the student isn't expected to put all their belongings into it. The container I saw pictured this morning (in the DM!) was reasonably fitted out but no way suitable for a family, even a very small one. Two together might make a decent living space

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7377321/Thousands-homeless-children-living-shipping-containers.html

It is difficult for councils to go anywhere near resolving the local housing crises when their budgets have been so severely cut and there is so little social housing stock still under their control and available for the newly homeless because most of it has been sold.

When my husband was training to be a nurse, we lived in hospital accommodation - one of a crescent of prefab bungalows which had, I think, originally been used to house prisoners of war. It was actually OK, though it needed quite a bit of heating. But the windows were quite high and I found it depressing only being able to see outside if I stood up.

I think any sort of "emergency" accommodation is only suitable for use on a very temporary basis. Shipping containers may be OK for childless couples or singles but I can't believe they are ideal for families. However, I think one or two rooms in a rundown hotel, with parents and children having to use that room for sleeping and living is far worse - and these B&B emergency placements have been around for some time and increasing year on year.

As others have said, the whole housing situation is completely out of control. My view is that in the long run paying housing benefit to private landlords is like pouring money into an ever growing pit. Governments must bite the bullet and invest heavily in social housing and stop right to buy or provide much less favourable terms for tenants who want to buy. Figures have shown that a significant proportion of what was formerly council property has, over time, been snatched up by private landlords. Thatcher talked of the great "property owning democracy" but now there are far fewer people who own their own homes or can even contemplate doing so.

I also think that there should be far less leeway given to people to object to new housing developments. Where my Mum lives in Suffolk, most housing and business proposals are vehemently opposed by residents. Yet they bemoan their shops and pubs closing down, their post office being precariously kept open part-time by volunteers, their local secondary school facing closure and their buses being reduced in frequency.

Most people see the Green Belt as somehow sacred but I'm inclined to think that some of the land designated as such is of little aesthetic or practical use and could be used for small housing developments.

As for RosieLeah's comments that illegal immigrants and feckless people are probably responsible for their own homelessness, she should know that if you're an illegal immigrant it would be most unwise to present yourself to the council demanding to be housed. And to characterise those who fall on hard times as probably being to blame for their predicament suggests little experience or understanding of the various curve balls that can throw people's lives into disarray. Thankfully, at least on Gransnet, it appears that most people are not so judgmental.

Maizie 146sq ft ?
A Container is 40ft x 8ft I make that 320 sq ft 2 of those are equal to a Prefab in floor area.

I like the idea of repurposing containers and agree they are not what comes to mind when most imagine what housing should look like- My only concern with them is proper ventilation- And lightning strikes ..

How they can be used for affordable housing, I don't know- They are around 1k each, factor in the cost of land,
possible concrete slab, windows, doors, electrical, plumbing and insulation- If situated in a rural area, septic and well would be needed- Nothing about the combined cost of the above speaks "affordable" to me-

Only one state legally allows people to carry on as they please regarding the building of anything goes type homes and that's Alaska- Outside of city limits- All other states have building codes- Some more lenient than others-

Like some others on this thread, I think shipping containers can be acceptable in the short term for couples or singles. I would think they are preferable to rough sleeping.

They would not be at all acceptable for families with children, though.

Regarding RTB and the so called bedroom tax, these may be viable solutions where there are viable alternatives. So in the case of RTB, similar numbers of affordable homes should be built to replace them.

In the case of bedroom tax, people should first be offered suitable alternative (smaller) accommodation.

None of this is happening. The 'stick' is applied regardless of the non availability of the carrot.

Maizie 146sq ft ?

Thanks, David I should have worked it out by hand instead of using my laptop's calculator.

It still makes it only half a prefab...

One of the areas with container "homes "as seen on the news
has empty flats, built as investment . The Council concerned is very happy to build very high blocks of flats which are very expensive and are marketed in the Far East.Semi detached houses near me are on the market for £1 million and rents are extortionate. . There doesn't seem to be the same energy to replace council homes

Regarding RL and her posts, sometimes a line is crossed and all decent people of whatever political persuasion would object.

2 such lines have been crossed...1 is that feckless people and illegal immigrants are responsible for their homeless problem, the other being that 17 year old girls would be queuing up to be of service to Prince Andrew.

Blinko,

Sorry to be an numptie, but what's the RTB?

"Bedroom tax" is only relevant if people receive housing benefit. The issue is that people who might in the past have been poor are living in family-sized council houses. In some cases, their families have now left home and they themselves are no longer poor. There is no incentive for them to downsize to a smaller dwelling.

One of my (Conservative) councillors get quite heated about this issue. As she's always pointing out, people in these houses are paying about a third of the rent they would have to pay if they were renting privately.

The other side of this is that most of the families in "over-sized" houses are over 50. If they'd been paying a mortgage, they would probably have paid it off by now and wouldn't be paying any rent.

I don't know what the answer is to that one.

Over 50 and you'd have paid off your mortgage by now? I wish...I'm 50, DH is 56 and the vast majority of our friends still have mortgages and will do until we're well into our 60s. Times and mortgage terms have changed sadly.

I absolutely agree with you about council house rents - it's shocking that you can have people on incomes way in excess of the national median who are paying minimal rent for a house that is so badly needed by others.

‘......huge amount of single, elderly people living alone in 3 or 4 bedroom houses......’

If the houses are local authority houses, or social houses, then it is absolutely the right idea to rehouse them so as to release these houses for families. If on the other hand, the elderly people own the 3 to 4 bedroom houses, it would be impossible to force them to move, quite rightly. If a person has bought their own house, it is legally their own house, and they can live in it just as long as they wish to.

Local authorities can't force tenants to move home, especially as they don't have any alternatives. It might work if councils started building attractive retirement homes for their tenants, but they don't have the money to build and the locals usually mean planning permission takes years or fails.

Paper solutions look good, but not when real people and situations are concerned.

I agree, growstuff.

People could be encouraged to move out of their larger houses if there was an attractive and reasonably sized alternative in the area where they are living.

We have to remember that these are not just LA housing stock, they are people's homes.

All too often 'retirement home' means a one bedroomed bungalow with small kitchen and sitting room which may suit some but not everyone.

Eloethan- I live in a village that has just successfully opposed a housing development in the middle of the village.
We already have lost our amenities, our small school is full,
And it would have almost doubled the homes in the village, from just over 300 to 500.
Our council has enough land with planning permission already in the area just up the road.
There is no big industry round here so where would the residents work. We are more than 20 miles from a sizeable town. Bus services leave a little to be desired.

We don’t need estates like the one planned here. We need starter homes and 2/3 beds with small gardens and parking.
Preferably with amenities and public transport to keep our carbon emissions down.
5 bed executive houses are not required.

I think I'm convinced that "affordable" housing is a pie in the sky notion- At the moment- Given the state of the overall conditions globally, people will continue to fall through the cracks until, I imagine, drastic changes are made-

Don't mean to sound like a Debbie Downer- Most I know are stressed the eff out and struggling to make ends meet - Those not struggling to make ends meet are are steeping in the drama of their first world problems-

We're currently being fed fake, sweeping statements about the "good" economy from some skittish pundits- But in reality, once again, personal debt is high- And rising- No economy is "good" when the cost of goods and services driving that economy are satisfied with credit- You can fact check these truths at the Federal Reserve: www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc/background.html

Nearly 60% of Americans have less than 1,000 in savings and are concerned about becoming homeless themselves-

Why can't we use the vast amount of empty buildings which are in every town in the country to house people ? How has this one person in particular ended up living in a container with 4 children ? Where was she previously to living there ? I dread to think !

You could be talking about the UK, rosecarmel. Our only advantage is that here is that people don't get hit by enormous health charges. Though that could all change when the tories sell of the NHS