I'd love to see a similar approach to San Francisco homelessness problem. At $1000 per unit, housing costs for all homeless people in SF will be below $100M.
Wouldn't you need flat pack high rises?
Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
81–90 of 127 posts
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
10,000 of these are contracted to the UNHCR. I've always found it curious; often innovations in the refugee arena would often be very welcome in other venues: camping, cheap structures, etc. These things are always priced really cheap, but we never see them really entering into the commercial market -- or when they do, they're always going for some kind of 2x the price scheme. For example, these 188 sqft shelters wou…
Have you considered that maybe actually selling them to end users is > double the cost? Massive amounts of risk, supply chain, logistics, all eliminated when selling to the UN like this.
Don't forget about advertising which on it's own often adds 20% to niche items costs.
Also, CC processing might be ~3% but it's added on at the end. aka 3% of manufacturing, 3% sales etc. Which can add up to 10% of the initial manufacturing cost.
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#83Nice to see the 28 billion dollar charity actually doing some. http://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/infographic-of-the-day/i...
This cannot be said often enough: "non-profit" is a phrase relating to the tax situation of a corporation. It is not synonymous with "good", "charitable", or even "not greedy." On the flip side, "for-profit" is not necessarily synonymous with "evil" or "non-charitable".
Indeed, in this case, the non-profit that holds IKEA is a private foundation and not at all a public charity.
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends. There's a lot of cheap land in the western US once you get away from the city where $5k-$10k will get you a place you can plop a few of these things down when you wanna get away from things. You'll have to bring your utilities with you, but water tanks, solar panels, etc aren't horribly expensive these days.
There are towns in rural Saskatchewan Canada that will sell you a serviced lot for $1 if you agree to build a house on the lot and live in it for three years.
And some are even offering tax credits to move there. Pardon the ugly link, it seems the main town website is currently down. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GyiysDw...
As a curiosity, are you from around here? I'm in Saskatoon right now, but we've got some land down in the Last Mountain Lake area that we might develop with a small "away from the city" home. (In fact, my girlfriend purchased it... 3 lots and an old unplumbed church for $1).
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#85The interior reminded me of the magical tents in Harry Potter movies.
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#86This could also be used to provide housing to Sweden's rapidly increasing population of homeless beggars http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art...
The problem of housing in Stockholm isn't about how expensive it is to build; it is about zoning (and rent control on top of that).
Generally, third-world solutions (tents, shantytowns, container homes, or this) are a solution for how to build cheaply. First-world problems are mostly about zoning and permissions to build.
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#87If my wife and I had lived in one of those for our first two years of marriage, we could have saved up one heck of a down payment for our first house.
Likely but the real problem with doing so is actually land. Even if you own some many cities take issue with non-permanent domiciles that are lived in for long periods (not least of all because you escape housing tax, and aren't up to "code"). However several people have done what you're suggesting by: - Living on a boat (either out at sea, moored just off-shore, or at a marina). This can range from being cheaper, to…
> - Living in a foreign country. If you work remotely living abroad or in the middle of nowhere can cost a LOT less than living in a big expensive city.
You don't have to go abroad to solve that (unless you're from Singapore or something). Most (larger) countries have deprived areas where the local administration is perfectly happy to welcome anyone who works (in an "export" industry, selling something out of the area and this bringing in cash) and pays taxes.
And even combination of decent living and good telecom infrastructure is often possible.
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#88I'd love to see a similar approach to San Francisco homelessness problem. At $1000 per unit, housing costs for all homeless people in SF will be below $100M.
Congratulations you have re-invented slums!
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#89Nice to see the 28 billion dollar charity actually doing some. http://www.fastcodesign.com/3035734/infographic-of-the-day/i...
This cannot be said often enough: "non-profit" is a phrase relating to the tax situation of a corporation. It is not synonymous with "good", "charitable", or even "not greedy." On the flip side, "for-profit" is not necessarily synonymous with "evil" or "non-charitable".
I've noticed lately that a good portion of society views legal tax sheltering and legal reduction of tax burden as immoral.
The thought seems to be if you are making lots of money you are obligated to freely hand over a good chunk of it to the government.
IKEA is very creative in their tax avoidance. Interestingly enough, it may actually be a net gain for the countries where IKEA employs people. Because of their ultra-low tax burden and the fact that the profits mostly have to go back into the business, they are able to pay more employees AND pay their employees more. Those employees in turn pay taxes to support the government.
Re: Ikea's flat-pack refugee shelter is entering production
#90These units seem to be priced at $1,000 for anyone else who was curious. Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-09/thousand-do...
Last year on CNN there was a documentation about repurposing old shipping containers as temporary homes in Africa. I have no direct link, but this article is related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_container_architecture Due to the economic crisis, there are a lot of old shipping container in certain parts of the world (usually due to one-way shipping purpose "import-only").