Five tiny houses, ranging from 120 square feet to just over 400 and temporarily erected in southeast San Diego, could represent a solution to the regional housing crisis.
City Councilman Scott Sherman and the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Architects kicked off a demonstration Thursday of small housing units that can be erected quickly and inexpensively. The five designs will be open to the public through Saturday in Market Park Plaza at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation.
C&N Modular Structures, a subsidiary of a San Diego ship repair company, showed a 320-square-foot home built in a standard shipping container and costing less than $50,000. The units can even be stacked in a high-rise configuration.
One challenge is local building codes, but a recently signed bill by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez has smoothed they way.
“Local authorities are expanding the discussions,” said Bob Link, program manager for the shipping container venture. “They all agree this needs to happen.”
He said the shipping-container homes would be particularly useful after disasters like the recent hurricanes that struck Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.
Robert Bird, a county employee who volunteered to help set up the houses, said tiny homes could be a solution to the housing homeless, providing self-respect and an sense of autonomy and reducing crime in the process.
The smallest of the five houses, just 120 square feet with an upstairs sleeping loft, was built in 48 hours — something homeless individuals could easily do.
“Why not employ folks in providing their own housing?” he asked.
That home was built by City Design, a company based in Old Town that has designed a number of tiny structures throughout the region.
Sherman’s office estimated that over one million new residents will move to the San Diego region by 2050. To account for this, roughly 350,000 new living units, or about 11,000 units per year will need to be built between now and 2050.
