Shipping containers to house homeless arrive in Brighton

The first shipping containers converted into homes for the homeless have been delivered to Brighton.

Six containers converted into studio flats arrived today (Monday 21 October) with thirty more due by the end of the week.

They are being stacked up to five storeys high at Richardson’s Yard, an old scrapyard, in New England Road, Brighton, behind the recently demolished Cobbler’s Thumb pub.

The containers will become home to 36 homeless men and women for five years as part of a scheme run by Brighton Housing Trust (BHT) with the developer QED.

BHT chief executive Andy Winter said: “To say I am excited is an understatement.”

When Brighton and Hove City Council granted planning permission for the project in April Mr Winter wrote on his blog: “Planning officers recommended approval, saying that the containers were an ‘imaginative and appropriate’ way to meet a very real need for affordable accommodation.”

The containers were going to be used for a social housing scheme in Amsterdam but it fell through because of funding problems.

Mr Winter described it as an exciting moment and said: “We have identified 21 of the first 36 residents and they are being prepared to move into their new homes.

“The residents will have completed one of BHT’s programme for change and will free up space in other services that will be able to take in men and women who are currently on the streets.

“There is an acute shortage of affordable accommodation in Brighton and Hove and, in a landlords’ market, particularly for those with a history of homelessness.

“The number of street homeless people in the city has increased from 37 in November 2011 to 43 in November 2012.

“However, there is a wide consensus that the actual figure is more likely to be between 70 and 100.”