To North American eyes, a shipping container is hardly a mansion, but to a homeless person it can be a palace they never dared dream would be theirs.
Former Kelowna youth pastor Bill Hebner and business partner Chad Smith came upon the idea of converting a shipping container into a home several years ago and their plan is catching on.
The 640-square-foot boxes can go from a container to a home with plumbing, electricity, kitchen and insulation for around $10,000 and can be built in a matter of days.
For years, Hebner – who at the time was with First Baptist Church in Kelowna - took teams of youths to Mexico where they would build brick homes for less fortunate families.
After taking hundreds of youths on the mission trip over the course of a decade, Hebner was asked if he wanted to expand his work into Africa, which he did.
He soon brought 15 South African church leaders to Mexico to see the homes being built there with the idea of setting up similar projects in the African nation. Which they did, but in 2010 Hebner struck upon the idea of converting shipping containers into homes as a simpler, cheaper and faster way to provide a house to those in need.
The first one took him and five unskilled companions five days to build.
“We were shocked at how fast, and at how little skill or energy this thing took to construct,” he said, adding today he could probably build one in 24 hours.
“You can actually build a school in under 10 days,” he said, adding he recently built a school for an village in Africa from shipping containers large enough to house 400 students. “I can build the school for $50,000 and hand it off to an NGO. It is very effective.”
As more homes were built, the idea began to take off and larger facilities have been constructed using the same basic premise.
“We've built some orphanages. We also built a half-way house for getting people out of the sex trade in Kenya,” said Smith.
Within the next few weeks, Smith and Hebner are hoping to open a facility in Johannesburg that can convert shipping containers into homes on a full-time, ongoing basis.
“We would then drop the home onto a site,” said Smith, adding all of the people working in the factory would be local.
There are currently 8.5 million homeless people in South Africa alone, 2.5 million of them are in Johannesburg. More than one billion people worldwide are homeless.
Smith said they also have contracts with Congo and Kenya to open similar factories in those countries.
Hebner added there are stock piles of containers in many port cities.
“My dream is to build half a million homes for the homeless,” said Hebner who is currently working out of the U.K.
“This all basically started in the basement of First Baptist Church,” said Hebner. “I never planned on doing this. It came by accident.”
Hepner wrote a book, How to Build a Simple Three Bedroom Shipping Container House available on Amazon.com, that can be used as a guide to building such a home.
There is no shortage of need for the homes, schools and orphanages Hebner is building and anyone wanting to donate can do so through the Trinity Baptist Legacy Foundation, 1905 Springfield Rd. Kelowna, B.C., V1Y 7V7, or email foundation@trinitybaptist.net.
To donate money specifically to complete the Kenyan safe house, designate the contribution to YL27.
For more information on Hebner and the projects being worked on, go to youthmissionproject.org.uk.
