OAKLAND, Calif. (KTVU) – Lake Merritt is often called the gem of Oakland. It’s home to the nation’s first and oldest bird sanctuary. It’s also home to at least 65 homeless people.
As a solution, the city is opening 20 community cabins, or ‘tuff sheds’, that will house 40 people at the Henry Kaiser Convention Parking lot. This is the third such community to be built in Oakland.
“I’ve moved around two times around here before I got to this spot and I just don’t really have another place to go,” said Andrew Flory.
This is a shipping container tiny home community experiment in Oakland, California.
When Luke Iseman and Heather Stewart got sick and tired of paying outrageous rents in San Francisco, they went on Craigslist and found a lot in Oakland they could rent and decided to turn it into an experimental shipping container tiny house community that’s now being called Countertopia. They started buying used shipping containers for $2,300 from the Port of Oakland and converting them into tiny cabins.