This year, Phoenix has seen the tallest container tower in North America debut downtown and a container apartment complex break ground in Apache Junction. From Washington Street to the West Valley, there are plenty more containers coming.
These tiny homes are made from modified and repurposed shipping containers that otherwise could've wound up rusting away in a landfill. Stack and weld the containers together, and voilà, you’ve got yourself new digs at a huge discount.
Zillow estimates the average traditional house in Phoenix costs $427,586. The average container home, meanwhile, costs between $10,000 and $35,000, according to Realtor.com.
The low price is why one local resident decided to build five of them on his three-acre property in Cave Creek.
You can often find Joe "Bronz" Perez singing gulf and western music at one of the many casinos in metro Phoenix. But these days, you may also find him inside a shipping container.
When Perez first stepped onto his Cave Creek property last year, it was “like going back to the wagon days,” he said. Instantly, he knew it was the perfect spot for a quaint container compound that he dubbed “Bronz Canyon.”
The property was once a dude ranch, the endpoint of a horse trail that meandered all the way to Prescott. Now, the land perched atop a mesa is a container home construction zone. Once they are built, each of the five glass-front tiny dwellings will feature a different view of downtown Cave Creek.
Perez plans to rent the container homes on Airbnb.
On the other side of the Valley in Glendale, Denver-based real estate developer Ruben Grado recently purchased a property zoned for multifamily housing and is mulling building 60 shipping container apartments on the site.
“My heart is in Arizona,” said Grado, a Phoenix native. “It’s the perfect place to provide a container home community for people who need it.”
Grado said the apartments will be eligible for the city’s Section 8 program, which provides low-income tenants with vouchers that pay for a portion of their rent. The city of Phoenix Housing Department also provides financial incentives to landlords who rent to participants in its voucher program.
In today’s hot housing market, container living seems like a more affordable option. With the U.S. importing millions more containers than it exports every year, resulting in 100 million containers sitting idle, the idea of using them to create economical housing seems almost too good to be true.
Recent portrayals of these rectangular residences on TV and in movies don’t accurately convey what a container home really is — a cost-effective and sustainable new way to live.
The HGTV program Container Homes, which aired for a single season in 2016, mostly focused on metallic mansions, including a $2 million Vancouver estate that comprised about a dozen containers. Then there’s Steven Spielberg’s 2018 film Ready Player One, which depicts people living in an indigent neighborhood where rectangular homes pile on top of each other.
Stephen Deubel is constructing this sustainable modular home out of shipping containers in the town of Williams near Flagstaff.
High Tech Container Homes
A New Take on Affordable Housing?
In reality, most container homes are neither sumptuous nor slummy.Phoenix-based interior designer Mel Alva was invited to guest star on HGTV’s Container Homes. She turned down the opportunity. “A lot of these things are only made for TV,” she said. “That’s not the real world.”
Alva recently joined forces with longtime radio home improvement personality Stephen Deubel to set the record straight with their new online radio show, Boxcar Universe.
The show, which premiered on September 15, aims to educate Arizonans about the benefits of sustainable living with an emphasis on container living. “In the United States in general, everything is oversized,” Alva said. “You buy in bulk. You stack the closet. We don’t need to live that way anymore.”
The pair also wants to call attention to containers as one solution for the Valley's housing shortage. “Whatever we do with the show, we want to be able to help the community,” Duebel said. “We want to help the city’s low-income housing goal.”
The City of Phoenix released its housing plan last year. In what Mayor Kate Gallego called “the most ambitious housing goal ever set by our city,” leaders plan to create 50,000 new housing units by 2030.
As far back as World War II, the U.S. Military has used shipping containers to ship a variety of supplies to bases and troops overseas. Those containers are converted to training facilities, office spaces, and housing for soldiers. Government officials in European cities such as Amsterdam have already embraced container homes for low-income and student housing, but no such luck yet stateside.
“The government needs to create affordable housing, and this is the way to do it,” Alva said. “They can be completely modernized and architecturally beautiful and still be considered low-income housing.”
Boxcar Universe is gaining traction thanks in part to Deubel, who has been a home improvement radio personality in Phoenix since 2005. Deubel was the voice of Image Home Improvement Show, which aired from 2014 to 2019 against Rosie Romero’s home improvement show on KTAR, Rosie on the House.
“Times are changing,” Deubel said. DIY projects are still cool, but container homes are the topic du jour.
Boxcar Universe airs on Saturdays at 8 p.m. Episode No. 2 is slated for October 1.
