Shipping containers could house homeless
Silicon Valley mogul wants to use them as mini-apartments
SANTA CLARA, CALIF. A Silicon Valley real estate developer has a new fix for the region’s growing homeless problem: shipping containers.
Billionaire mogul John Sobrato wants to build 200 microapartments for the homeless and low-income families on a 2.5-acre plot of city-owned land in Santa Clara, Calif., 3 miles south of Levi’s Stadium, home to the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.
Sobrato envisions 240- and 160-square-foot units made out of shipping containers large enough to house a kitchenette and bathroom with shower.
Sobrato declined comment. During a presentation Dec. 6 to the Santa Clara City Council, which was videotaped, Sobrato said it was “time to turn my atshipping tention to creating a very cost-effective solution to housing the homeless and very low-income people.”
Under the project, called Innovation Place, the Sobrato Organization would build and own the dwellings and lease them to Santa Clara County, which would provide homeless services and property management. The facility could open as early as 2018.
“The approved (Exclusive Negotiating Rights Agreement) with Sobrato simply allows them, as the developer, to complete the preliminary analysis of the property to determine capacity for a proposed development and to conduct extensive outreach to hear what the community would like to see designed,” Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor said in a statement. “Any proposed project must fit within the needs of the community first and foremost.”
The project was first reported by The Santa Clara Weekly. Shipping containers have become a low-cost, versatile option for residential and commercial use in the USA.
Los Angeles is the site of shopping centers, pop-up coffee shops and hillside dwellings made of the material. A centrally located business park in downtown Las Vegas is composed primarily of containers. In St. Charles, Mo., city officials are weighing the regulation of shipping containers as homes.
Sobrato’s plan is the second in recent weeks to address a decades-old problem in the backyard of Silicon Valley billionaires. This month, Facebook said it was pumping $20 million into a community investment program.
Since 2010, 55,588 housing units have been built in the state despite the creation of 500,000 jobs in that time, according to the California Department of Finance and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional planning organization.
At the same time, it’s never been more expensive to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. The median price of a single-family home in San Jose-SunnyvaleSanta Clara, the heart of Silicon Valley, soared $780,000 in 2013 to $950,400 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.
San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland are three of the four most-expensive U.S. cities to rent in, according to Zumper’s National Rent Report for December.
Silicon Valley workers, on average, earn $121,000 a year, compared with $118,000 last year and $108,000 in 2011, according to data compiled by market research PayScale for USA TODAY.
It’s “time to turn my attention to creating a very cost-effective solution to housing the homeless and very low-income people.” John Sobrato, real estate developer