With housing prices skyrocketing and record low inventory, innovators are coming up with new ways to develop affordable housing. In last weeks newsletter I discussed micro units and their benefit to the lack of affordable housing. Another recent idea was to convert outdated cruise ships into affordable housing!
Due to the pandemic, just about all cruise operations came to an abrupt halt. Thankfully, the industry is back up and running and booming, but one difficulty that has yet to be resolved is the growing number of ships that have been decommissioned. In September, 2020 alone, Carnival Cruise Line wanted to sell at least 18 of its less efficient cruise ships. The business of cruise ship dismantling was up 30% in 2020 as companies were taking heavy losses tearing apart the ships to scrap metal to cash in.
However, CallisonRTKL, a Washington-based architecture firm may have found a way to turn these ships into affordable housing. CallisonRTKL found a perfect opportunity to impact the housing market as well as the cruise industry in positive ways. They did a study of 362 Miami residents of which 88% said they would be open to living in a coastal housing scenario. They would build each unit to be fit for one person with a total of 900 units costing just $1,250 per month! They also have plans to combine units for families. This idea could also be used for housing workers working abroad or on islands. They could dock the boat up for the length of the job and the workers would have affordable housing for as long as they would need for the job to be finished.
Nothing is set in stone at the moment and it is more of a research study for the moment. However, it is refreshing to see innovators and architects coming together to solve important issues that the city of Miami and many other cities in the US face. “As we move closer to environmental decay and climate change, cities like Miami need to start coming up with solutions that are atypical and so I think taking decommissioned ships and not just using them for hospitality is something that should be happening now,” Desooky added.