Could an old shipping container be your new Tacoma home? Maybe someday soon
Tacoma City Council member Kristina Walker — who’s well known for her environmental streak — sees them as an untapped resource, available in abundance and just waiting to be reused.
In a growing city with a bustling port, there’s no reason to let the old shipping containers go to waste, she believes, particularly in the midst of a crisis-level housing shortage.
In some cases, the containers — which are hauled by semis and stacked high on cargo ships before eventually being replaced and scrapped for steel — could be creatively transformed into tiny houses, accessory dwelling units or shelters for the homeless, Walker says. In other instances, perhaps they could be used for storage.
The only trouble, the at-large council member said this week, is that current city land-use code largely prohibits all of those possibilities.
On Tuesday night, Walker and her elected colleagues took an important step toward ending this long-standing and arguably outdated prohibition. By unanimous vote, the council directed the city’s Planning Commission to review the ban, with an eye toward potentially repealing it and replacing it with something far more lenient and structured. The changes could begin to take shape by early 2022, according to Jana Magoon, who leads the land-use division of the city’s Planning and Development Services Department. The ordinance also directed city staff to “explore how the city could allow shipping containers to be adaptively reused for innovative housing solutions to address the housing shortage and affordability crisis.”
In the grand scheme, it is a minor move, Walker acknowledges. Even in the rosiest projection, the chances that creatively reused shipping containers will fill anything but a tiny hole in Tacoma’s housing deficit is minimal, at best, she says.
Still, as Tacoma works to increase its affordable housing stock and increase density, every little bit helps, Walker believes.
“I think there are opportunities for innovation and creativity,” Walker said on Monday, prior to the council’s vote. “The bottom line is we have to do everything we can to make housing possible.”
It’s a familiar refrain in Tacoma these days, and also one that inspires no shortage of strong reactions, as the Home in Tacoma project has repeatedly reminded us. While many agree that the city needs more housing — and particularly more affordable housing — how to achieve that goal remains hotly debated.
In other words, whether Tacoma neighborhoods will warmly welcome accessory dwelling units (ADUs) crafted from old cargo containers remains to be seen, but it’s fair to have doubts.
The bigger — and more interesting — question surrounds demand.
Even if the use of shipping containers is allowed — which seems more than reasonable, provided reasonable design guidelines are also established — is this something that anyone in Tacoma really wants to do?
For historical context, Magoon said that during her many years working for the city’s land-use department, requests to use shipping containers in construction have been exceedingly rare. Mostly, land owners or businesses have shown an interest in using them for storage, not housing, she indicated, which isn’t something she expects will change overnight, in part because constructing homes from the containers isn’t always as easy, surefire or cost-effective as it might seem. In fact, Magoon said the issue initially came to the council’s attention unrelated to housing, when a Central Tacoma business owner unwittingly placed two storage containers on the property, violating city code.
At the same time and in places across the country and globe, utilizing old shipping containers as housing is a trend that’s picking up steam or at least attention, Magoon said. On the grandest scale, a 4,000-square-foot home built from 11 shipping containers in Vancouver, Washington hit the market earlier this year for a cool $2 million, she noted, while cautioning that such a project wouldn’t fall under the strict ADU and storage framework the city is now considering.
Walker, meanwhile, pointed to examples from Denmark, like an affordable floating village along Copenhagen’s waterfront.
In Tacoma, Magoon and Walker both envision a modest exploration of what’s possible, and if rules and regulations are loosened, it won’t happen before the city engages in a months-long process of community outreach, they said.
Under the council’s new directive, Magoon said Tacoma’s planning commission will maintain “a narrow focus” on reviewing existing land use code. While there’s established international building code for the use of shipping containers in construction — and she expects the state to follow suit this year — in order for Tacoma property owners to begin to use the containers for new ADUs or storage, Magoon said that how and where they’re allowed in the city will need to be addressed.
Magoon suspects that the prohibition on using shipping containers for storage or accessory dwelling units was originally established for aesthetic reasons. She described it as just one of many potential concerns that any code change would need to take into consideration.
“We’re going to be looking at the prohibition (on shipping containers for ADUs and storage), and if we want to — instead of prohibiting them … allow them — what, if any standards should be included?” Magoon said of the process ahead.
“Should we limit the number of shipping containers per site? Should we limit where the shipping containers are located? … Could they be standalone? Do they need to have design standards?” she continued, listing just some of the questions that will need to be answered.
“It’s going to be a very robust public process.”
As formulaic and bureaucratically cliche as that might sound, it’s certainly the right idea. There’s no rush and unquestionably bigger fish to fry.
But there’s only one way to find out if shipping containers could benefit a city desperate for housing, which is precisely what makes Tacoma’s measured dalliance worth a shot.
“Really, it’s about exploring the options,” Walker said.
“So it was an easy yes for me.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
