In the past few weeks the airwaves were flooded with reports of a mother of four on welfare in the UK decrying living in a shipping container and politicians calling “Scandal!” Sky News interviews her saying, “This is a place for animals, not for human beings.”
No one wants to see children living in substandard conditions, but this is one of the hardest challenges with homelessness; there is no one-size-fits-all solution. In this case the container home was not meant to be a long-term solution, and yet this family has been living there for over a year. I for one hope that local homeless advocates get moving and find a place for these kids
The saddest part is the irony of someone wanting a free place to live, and being given a container home, a place they would probably prefer to living on the street. I can guarantee you if we left an open shipping container out nearby where we live, it would not be long before someone moved in. Such is the homeless problem in our own area.
Homes 4 the Homeless believes that container homes are a short-term solution to homelessness; that they can be an inexpensive way to give the homeless a leg up, so they can begin the process of finding a permanent home.
We discovered another video today about a man named Jasper who is helping pioneer the use of shipping containers as a short-term solution to homelessness. He gets it and hopefully people complaining about storage container homes will get it as well.
