Repurposing Cruise Ships for A ordable Housing?

Repurposing Cruise Ships for Affordable Housing?

Reprinted with permission of Hakai magazine and Chris Craiker

I found this recent article in Hakai magazine and it struck a chord. Imagine one of these 4000 passenger fl oating communities docked in Gibsons Harbour or off shore Sechelt. Couuld this idea go a long way to resolving the affordable housing crisis here on the coast? Food for thought...

One especially hard-hit victim of the COVID-19 pandemic is the cruise ship industry. From their 2020 projected 32 million passengers to near-zero has crippled many lines. They were not equipped for this pandemic to spread so quickly and dangerously.

The cruise industry supports 1.17 million jobs around the world. The visions of passenger’s bodies being carried off the ships has damaged the industry immensely. People simply do not want to go on a cruise ship that could be contaminated.

Ironically, these ships are the only form of transportation that is equipped to care for passengers and crew in a medical calamity. The Cruise Industry Association requires all ships to be equipped with medical facilities including doctors and medical personnel to be available 24/7. But COVID-19 spread like wildfi re through poorly designed AC systems and lack of social distancing with virtually no masks made cruise ships death traps for the predominately senior cliental, often with health issues. The industry is not expected to bounce back to previous numbers for several years. Given the current state of affairs in the industry, the possibility to repurpose these decaying mammoths into much-needed housing becomes a real possibility.

This is not the fi rst time converting aging cruise ships to housing has been considered. In December 2019, the Oakland City Council negotiated to convert a cruise ship to house up to 1,000 homeless persons. In 2018, a Portland Maine nonprofi t pursued grants for a similar concept and in 2016 former SF Mayor Art Agnes suggested converting an aircraft carrier into a shelter.

Typically, there are three options for these maturing relics. They can be stripped for steel, offl oaded to third-world cruise lines or sold on the secondary market for “booze cruises”. Simple renovation still takes big bucks. These ships are ripe for conversion to housing in breathtaking locations.

Whether it be for the growing BabyBoomers population who want to downsize in a dignifi ed fashion or to house our growing population of low-income fi rst-time responders, many of these ships could have a second life as housing and living communities with all the amenities and options of a city.

Elizabeth English, an architect at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and founder of the Buoyant Foundation Project, who studies amphibious homes as a way to deal with sea-level rise, says the idea has some other potential benefi ts as well. When a fl ood or hurricane hits a coastal city, she says, a converted cruise liner could be deployed as temporary emergency housing. English notes that cruise ships, being boats, are resistant to the fl ooding that some coastal cities are grappling with.

“They accommodate sea-level rise by nature. That’s not an issue for them,” she says. “Maybe they could take on the people who are displaced by sea-level rise.”

Whether port cities will embark down this path remains to be seen. English, for one, is at least somewhat optimistic. “It could be very, very doable,” she says. “Finding the ship and fi nding the port: that’s the challenge.”