Canada unveiled its first container houses this week as part of a social housing development project designed to help women "at risk" on Vancouver's troubled downtown eastside.

The 12 studio units constructed in 12 used shipping containers have been built at a cost of 82,500 Canadian dollars (79,395 U.S. dollars) each and are about 27 square meters in size. The first residents will move in on Sept. 1.

Janice Abbott, CEO of Atira Women's Resource Society, an organization that built the units on a narrow lot where an old house previously sat, said the project was a cost-effective and environmentally-sensitive option to address a demand for affordable housing.

In Vancouver, the most expensive housing market in Canada, the median price for a standard two-story house was 1.15 million dollars in the second quarter of the year, according to the Royal LePage quarterly house price survey. The average condominium cost was 490,475 dollars, a price unaffordable to many.

Abbott said the container homes, which feature self-contained kitchens, a bathroom and in-suite laundry, made sense as their construction was less than half the price per unit compared to a traditional building Atira constructed nearby two years earlier.

"The big environmental benefit, I think, is there are 25 million vacant shipping containers languishing in yards around the world. So they are decommissioned, they're no longer going to sea and this is a way of reusing them and also solving a really thorny social problem which is affordable housing," he said.

While container homes have been built in Europe for years, often for student housing, what makes the Atira project unique is the premise in which they have been set up to create, namely a sense of community for the residents.

Six of the units will be rented to older women in the area at housing income limit rates. This means they can't earn more than 34,000 dollars annually and their rent will be equal to 30 percent of their gross annual income.

The other six units will be rented to younger women considered at risk for the maximum shelter allowance of 375 dollars provided under the local government's welfare program. All the residents will participate in an "intergenerational mentor program" under the leadership of the older women.

"My experience, not only my experience, but research also shows that especially for women it's relationships that move us forward," Abbott noted. "So when we have damaged relationships or no relationships, when we don't believe that we're cared about or that we're loved, it really impedes our ability to progress or our ability to develop as human beings."

In Vancouver's poor downtown eastside, an area where substance abuse, homelessness and mental illness are rife, City Councilor Kerry Jang said the Atira housing initiative was a positive step in helping women at risk get back to being contributing members of the society.

The container homes are part of an overall 3.3-million-dollar project that includes the restoration of the 19-unit Imouto Housing for Young Women next door. Funding for the project came from private and corporate sponsors, a mortgage, and a 92,000-dollar grant from the City of Vancouver.

"Four years ago when we had the concept of building housing out of shipping containers, people said it couldn't be done. They said it would be inhuman because it wouldn't be very livable," said Jang, who holds a doctorate in personality psychology.

"So we made sure, we made it very clear, if you're going to use shipping containers it has to be as good a place that I would live in myself. And as we see today, they are very livable; they are cheap to build. And especially for folks who are in recovery, this is a godsend," he said.

Jang added that in Vancouver, a city with limited land for housing, he would like to see more container homes built.

"This is a great alternative. One of the great things about this type of housing is that it can be used on lots that are funny shaped or odd sizes," he said. "We don't have a lot of big tracks of land. I mean this was very innovative here." Endi

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