One Option For Affordable Housing In Brooklyn? Upscale Dumpsters
That is, if you happen, to be an incredibly skilled designer and artist with a solid foundation of basic construction skills. If that’s the case, you maybe could make yourself a cozy, surprisingly adorable dumpster home like the one Gregory Kloehn just showed HGTV’s aptly-named show, You Live in What?
And if we choose to see this as an interesting twist on the whole “Tiny Houses” movement (and not, say, an indication of what will happen to all of us if rents keep rising at their current rate), it’s really pretty cool. Kloehn (who’s based on the West Coast but actually does stay in this dumpster when he’s in Brooklyn) told the show, “It just hit me, ‘hey, that’s a perfect shape for a home.’ It’s got a nice pitched roof, it’s small, you could really make a living space out of this.” In addition to rigging the $2,000 garbage bin to have windows (and an extendable roof that can open into a deck), the place has a barbecue, mini bar, shower, toilet, sink, and even a toaster oven, which is really the best kitchen tool regardless of space issues.
To skeptics worried that he’ll accidentally be swept up into the back of a garbage truck, Kloehn explains that having a dumpster emptied is actually a service you have to pay for, and that he’s largely been left alone. Comforting to know we always have options, I guess.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.