If another
hits a year or three from now, few New Yorkers should have to call tent cities
and high school gymnasiums home.
Instead, they will be living inside shipping containers.
For the past five years, the Bloomberg administration has
been quietly developing a first-of-its-kind disaster housing program, creating
modular apartments uniquely designed for the challenges of urban living. Carved
out of shipping containers, these LEGO-like, stackable apartments offer all the
amenities of home. Or more, since they are bigger, and brighter, than the
typical
studio. It’s the FEMA trailer of the future, with Sea Box already building the
prototype.
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| Sea Box Demo House |
“It’s nicer than my apartment,” said David Burney, commissioner
of the Department of Design and Construction.
Along with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and at least a
dozen other city, state and federal agencies and private contractors, Mr.
Burney has been trying to figure out how best to house the tens or even
hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who could find themselves without a home
following a major disaster.
