#HTE

How To Make Affordable Student Housing: Stick It In the Bay?

How do we deal with skyrocketing rent and housing shortages? Housing start-up Urban Rigger wants to build more low cost apartments on fancy boats. Their first freshly finished Copenhagen project was designed by Bjarke Ingels and it offers a few slick twists on the traditional dorm. The boat apartments are modular buildings, constructed from shipping containers, and located in industrial waterways. The 12-person buildings feature private bedrooms, baths and kitchens, with shared living spaces. And, most crucially, rent is set to be just $600 a month.

Copenhagen, like most popular post-industrial cities, is gripped by a rising cost of living and housing options that can’t keep up with demand. This intense housing market leaves low income but high-value residents like university students with so few options as to discourage staying, or moving to the city at all. This uninviting market for students can have lasting negative effects on a city’s economy. To address this, Urban Rigger has examined the frustrating housing economics, considered the common proximity of city centers to trade hubs, and rolled out their aquatic alternative.

Urban Rigger found that some 80% of European universities are located within the urban core of large cities, while the majority of students who live off campus are forced to dwell far outside. City center and waterfront property is almost universally inhabited by upper class citizens, so Urban Rigger hopes to move into underutilized water spaces left over or not needed by industry. Giving students an option to live closer to central neighborhoods creates greater opportunity for social connection and community building, and cuts down the opportunity costs of commuting. 

Like the beloved lofts and warehouses that jumped the shark before it, low income use of waterfront (water-on?) property could provide room for lower income citizens in areas they can’t normally afford. This type of intentional inclusion of creatives and students in central areas is seen as provably beneficial as large cities shift to more “knowledge-based” economies and enrollment remains high. 

The floating apartments are built in Hungary and wind up costing just $700-800 per square foot, thanks to the structural leg up from the shipping containers. While the appeal of shipping container homes is largely an optimistic aesthetic, traditional dorm life is cramped, expensive and depressing, so a nice view and lower rent sounds fine. The start-up is currently independently paying for its own access and mooring, but anticipates greater municipal support and land will be offered as the project proves viable. 

Urban Rigger, like the Bjarke Ingels Group, hopes to harness resources seen as negative or neutral, to build social resilience. The fact that the homes are floating is hardly coincidental. As environmental instability looms, making value out of cheap real estate that stays valuable is a boon. In this case, houseboats might literally float above the turmoil. 

Ingels is quoted as saying “It’s the only building type that will never flood.” Though I appreciate the sentiment, I’d recommend a hearty chat with anyone who’s ever lived on a houseboat as to how strong that “never” really is. It’s just as fair to say that most apartment buildings can’t sink. Or make you seasick if your neighbor is throwing a rager.

The novelty and success of this particular project aside, I’m fascinated by the long term impact of residentializing industrial areas, particularly for lower income use. Adding density is clearly necessary, but sometimes it takes more than building. Houseboats may skirt the issue of topsoil contamination, and most students probably won’t be fishing for a mercury-eating fish dinner, but ports have long been the site and source of pollution. Hip mixed-industrial neighborhoods in places as eco-conscious as Portland, OR regularly make the news for slowly poisoning residents with both old uncleared waste and fresh poorly-regulated contamination. To say nothing of the dangerously low environmental standards held for public and low income housing.

That said, this type of start-up is entirely unlike the austerity measures and homeless camp sweeps currently happening in America’s largest cities. So what do I know? Efforts to incentivize and beautify mixed income housing in urban areas are vital to cities’ long term stability, and I hope to see more momentum around this type of project, both privately and publicly.