YMCA and Roger Stirk architects reveal £30,000 flatpack houses for homeless people
'Y-cube' one bedroom flats would be built off site and craned into place
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Your support makes all the difference.Architects Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners and the YMCA have unveiled £30,000 flatpack 'move-on' homes that could be trialled next month.
The ‘Y-Cube’ flat has its own bathroom, living room and kitchen squeezed into each 26 sq m unit.
It is built and assembled in a factory for £30,000 and then craned into blocks on site.
The flats have been designed for the YMCA by architects Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners to provide the first step towards housing for people in urgent need of accommodation who are ready to move on from their hostels.
The units work as a "plug and play" modular system stacking on top, or next to, each other, so "each build is unique and bespoke to the site that it's built on".
"Where sites are leased at the end of the lease period the accommodation will be removed and relocated onto another site," the YMCA said. "The construction costs and professional fees are low enough for a scheme to clear all capital finance within 10 years."
Andy Redfearn, the Director of Housing and Development at the YMCA has been working with Rogers Stirk for the last three years to design the house.
He told The Guardian: “The aim was to provide a truly affordable move-on scheme for our residents, which didn’t require a grant to build.
“The real issue is what happens when people leave our hostels. The only option is often poor quality shared accommodation managed by private landlords, who require large deposits and rent in advance.”
The flats will take eight weeks to build off site and a week to install on site, Mr Redfearn told the newspaper. Each flat will be rented out for £140 per week.
“The beauty is that the units can be moved off site as quickly as they are installed", he said, "as we operate on short-term leases – we expect people to stay for between three to five years, giving them time to skill up and save for a deposit.”
Each home is also cheap to heat. A three-week test found it can be lit and heated all day for £7 a week.
The YMCA will test the system at a site in Micham after it submits an application to build 36 units around a shared garden, where residents can grow their own vegetables.
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