Shipping containers may become residences of future in Columbus

Two shipping containers were dropped off last week on a grassy lot on the Near East Side that a builder hopes to turn into one of Columbus’ first single-family homes built from a steel box.

A 40-foot-by-8-foot shipping container was unloaded Monday, followed by another on Oct. 9, at 840 Parkwood Ave., a few miles east of Downtown.

The containers will be used to build a shipping container home for the House of Redemption, a faith-based nonprofit that plans to rent the home to women who are getting out of prison, said Bryan Hamilton, owner of Hamilton Contractors in Dublin, which is building the 620-square-foot home.

Hamilton, who built a model of shipping containers for the 2016 Central Ohio Home & Garden Show, said the home will take about three months to complete once the foundation is laid.

“It’s recycling these boxes that would get thrown in the ocean,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton’s project is at least the third shipping container housing project in Columbus.

Nearby, on Bassett Avenue, a two-story house of five shipping containers called “CargoHome” is being built by Nothing into Something Real Estate. The nonprofit development firm is also building Cargominium, a 25-unit apartment complex of shipping containers on Old Leonard Avenue that is one of the largest residential projects in the nation built from shipping containers.

The agency didn’t want to say when the house and apartments would be finished.