London youth group plans affordable housing communities
倫敦青年組織計劃建造宜居住社區

Shipping containers from China are getting a high-tech transformation to become en-suite studio apartments. A youth organization in London has won permission to create two small communities of converted shipping containers.

It doesn't look much for the outside, painted shipping containers stacked on top of each other. But these are the product of three years of research and testing, a simple but high-tech home for 1 person.

They are the brainchild of one man.

"The price of accommodation in this part of London means you can't afford it if you're on minimum wage. And there isn't anything between. And so it was trying to find something that would bridge that gap, that would be a stepping stone between living in a hostel and getting into the private rented sector," Christopher Pain, YMCA Walthamstow Forest, says.

550 young people come through the doors of the YMCA in Walthamstow each year, needing help, support and accommodation. But once ready to start work, their experience finding accommodation to rent can be a shock.

Private rentals in the capital are soaring, up almost 5% year on year -and now stand at an average 1800 dollars a month.

The mYpads have been designed with low energy costs and are to be rented out at around 100 US dollars a week.

Young people being helped by the YMCA are impressed with the mYpads.

"I think it's amazing. It's got everything you needing here. It's warm. It's comfortable, you've got a TV, you've got a cooker you've got a fridge, you've got your shower room, you've got everything really. So I think they're amazing. Maybe from the outside you may think yeah, it's a shipping container but when you’re inside you just feel like you're in a nice hotel room. There's a TV, a shower room, fridge, it's amazing. When inside you feel like it's a nice hotel room, or a nice living quarters, you wouldn't think it was a shipping container," former YMCA resident Louise Stephenson says.

But not everyone is so welcoming. The council which has approved plans for two developments consisting of 10 and 20 MYpads is wary of the scheme.

The council says it will watch the progress of the Mypads developments with interest but has expressed caution. An official says the council did not see the use of shipping crates as the answer for the 21,000 people needing accommodation in this London borough.

"I fully accept that shipping containers like these are not the long-term solution, but we face a crisis at the moment that's on a parallel with after the Second World War," Pain says.

And it's a solution that is prompting great interest not only from London's other boroughs which face similar housing needs, but internationally, raising the prospect that this experiment in east London, could one day be seen further afield.