The Greatest community Housing Project on Earth

There are approximately 250 million shipping containers world wide. At any one time, up to 5% of that figure is actually not being used, sitting idle at docks. What if those empty containers could be converted into beautiful, affordable and very practical permanent housing for the poor?

This year  we instituted the Kibera community board to look into how the Kibera community could take up a venture that could partly help solve the housing crisis in Kenya and particularly in Nairobi . The young people of Kibera could also find job by solving their own housing crisis in the slums if the  project succeeds.

A 40  feet long shipping containers can be rapidly designed and deployed within any urban location in the city . The planned containerized homes are ‘green’ and are made of 85% recycled/re-manufactured materials. They can be shipped in a variety of ways, including railroad, 18-wheelers, air cargo transports, and ships and even airlifted by helicopter if necessary. 

However to get the project started, a few things need to be done;

1. We instituted the Kibera community board to look into how the Kibera community could take up this venture to benefit themselves and their children on a permanent basis. The young people of Kibera would be able to solve the housing crisis for all Kenyans in the future when this project succeeded.
2.  We also needed to work together to first develop  youth vocational and empowerment centers where the youth would be trained  to design and assemble the custom built 3 bedroom home out of shipping containers. We would need a community center where we would train the young people various skills.
3. The designs would be customized made into a community concepts by the young people of from the vocational center. The young people of Kibera will design these homes for Kibera.

After looking into these requirements, we mobilized the the leaders within Kibera to promote the concept among them and to organize their community groups for the same. 

some of the designs we purposed for Kibera included using developing  1350 square foot, three bedroom houses incorporating three forty-foot containers, two stacked on one another, and the third cut in half and stacked on itself. The  architecture could be re purposed refrigerated shipping containers, which provides instant exterior siding, insulation, and a built-in structural frame. Additional framing would be only needed where windows and interior partitions within the containers were added. Shipping container doors could be repurposed as retaining walls used within the site. Additional green materials could be used throughout the Container House include blown cellulose insulation to the roof and floors, 50% fly ash/slg in concrete foundation and piers, “green seal” paint on the interior, along with 100% wool carpet and bamboo flooring. The green aspects do not stop at the materials, with the inclusion for Solar Tubes for day lighting, energy star appliances, super high efficiency water heater and dual flush Caroma toilets.

 We will add an electrical plan with a 55Watts solar panel that can supply 8 lighting bulbs and a provision for a 14 inch color TV and several mobile charging accessories at a cost of less than KSH 40,000 per 3 bedroom unit.

The project is currently underway. 

Kennedy Gumbe
www.trd.co.ke