One of my favorite shows on HGTV involves people building homes out of shipping containers. It’s the newest craze after “tiny houses” to hit the yuppie crowd. It seems like every Silicon Valley brat is building one of these things. They’re very hip and trendy.
But it’s not good enough for immigrants in England who are asking for free housing. In that case, shipping containers are garbage.
'This is a place for animals – not for human beings.'
Lulu Akubaker tells Sky News the converted shipping container she lives in is not fit for her family. She was offered it as temporary accommodation by the local council.
More here: https://t.co/THhDUeWpwO pic.twitter.com/JItMPqHxPD
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 21, 2019
Lulu Abubaker and her four children are not happy with their free container home. In fact, Abubaker compares being given a free place to live to being treated like an “animal.” She’s surviving in misery because her kitchen is small and three of her children have to share a room. (This made my husband, who shared a tiny bedroom with three of his siblings on two sets of bunk beds, snort with laughter.)
“It’s a prison having children here,” Abubaker told Sky News. “For over eight years now we’ve been moving from one property to another – coming here is just a mental torture.”
In the multiple interviews she has given to news stations, no husband has appeared to voice his opinions, leaving one to wonder where the hell he is. Perhaps her life choice to have multiple children with an absent father (or multiple absent fathers) has something to do with her living condition. Nothing seems to be stopping this woman from getting a job to improve her situation, but that doesn’t seem to be an option she wants to exercise.
In Abubaker’s case, she isn’t even new to the country, but has been there twenty years. Two decades have gone by, and she still can’t support herself and her family and apparently still qualifies for free housing! (Sidenote: this is the same crowd the left wants us to import to America.)
Strangely, only days after this story broke, the New York Times came out hard against container homes, calling them “sinister.” An article titled “The Sinister Brutality of Shipping Container Architecture” echoed almost the exact same phrasing used by Abubaker, proving that the minute a woman in a hijab complains about something it is no longer hip or cool.
“Dark, damp and airless, boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter, they’re hopeless living and working spaces… so unremittingly bleak in its aspect that it makes you wonder whether the architects had humans in mind. Or live humans anyway.”
This comes as a surprise to the entire cast of Container Homes on HGTV and NYT readers from 2017 who remember this article, “Coming Home to a Shipping Container,” where the newspaper of record described the houses as “eco-friendly” and “affordable.”
“Containers are loved by the hip and the practical, artisans and DIY-ers, engineers and construction foremen, as they are both sustainable and affordable. And used 20- or 40-foot containers can be obtained for as little as several hundred dollars apiece, so it’s not surprising that some industry professionals consider them the future of home building,” the newspaper wrote.
The “future of home building” has run up against political incorrectness and government incompetence. While it isn’t surprising that a government has provided less-than-comfortable homes for free, what is surprising is that people have the nerve to complain about it. They’re free. Shouldn’t public housing be a little uncomfortable so you don’t want to stay on the public dole forever? Shouldn’t supporting oneself be slightly more attractive than living off the hard work of your neighbors? Has Ms. Abubaker ever seen public housing in Chicago? I can assure her it’s far worse than anything she has experienced in her shipping container.
It’s confusing how a woman has been living off this system for twenty years and hasn’t found a way to improve her situation by her own power in that huge stretch of time. Something they’re doing isn’t working. But by all means, let’s import more of these people who can’t figure out how to care for themselves.
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