Shipping container living

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Workers guide a recycled shipping container onto a lot where Canada's first multi-home recycled shipping container housing project is being constructed in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, B.C., on Friday November 30, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Shipping containers that likely would have been left to rust in Vancouver will instead be used to construct the first housing project of its kind in Canada.

Twelve containers will be converted into social and affordable housing for women in the city's Downtown Eastside, where construction got underway Friday.

The project that's slated to be completed by next April was developed by the Atira Women's Resource society, which bought a lot in 2009 to build traditional housing.

Atira CEO Janice Abbott says that changed the following year when the society submitted a winning proposal to BC Hydro, which was giving away two shipping containers to a non-profit group.

Two more shipping containers were donated, and Atira bought another eight from the Port of Vancouver.

Abbott says six of the 12 units will be occupied by women over age 55 at $375 a month in rent while the rest will be for younger women who will pay about 30 per cent of market rent.