Once you add windows and a door to such a structure, it can no longer be used to ship goods, so it should not be tied to that purpose, Bob Aaron argues.
Are shipping containers a solution to Canada’s housing crisis? Should local bylaws prohibit their use in residential areas?
Praveen Kaur Koonar and Jaswinder Singh Koonar live and work in a residential property on 116th St. in Surrey, B.C. The area is zoned for single family residential use.
The Koonars placed a large shipping container on their property to use as a storage shed. It has a door and three windows cut into the long side. Painted on the exterior is typical shipping container language indicating it is nine feet six inches high, together with a serial number and wording to indicate its cubic capacity and the weight of goods it can hold.
As a result of the structural alterations it could no longer be used to ship commercial goods.
The Surrey zoning bylaw limits uses that can be made of properties within a residential zone. It says that shipping containers can only be used in an area zoned for industrial uses.
A shipping container is defined in the bylaw as an enclosed unit used or intended to be used for storing and transporting goods via ship, rail or truck, whether or not it is actually being used for that purpose.
The city of Surrey took the Koonars to court seeking an injunction to force them to remove the container and to prevent them from placing any other shipping container on the property.
The owners and representatives from the city appeared in court in New Westminster in February.
Coming down firmly on the side of the city, Justice Geoffrey Gomery ruled that the structure remained a prohibited shipping container despite its use as a storage shed. The substance of the matter, he wrote, “is that it satisfies the definition in the bylaw.”
In my opinion the decision is wrong. Once windows and a door are put in the container, in my view it no longer qualifies as one “used or intended to be used for storing and transporting goods via ship, rail or truck.”
With windows and a door, it cannot be used or intended to be used for transporting goods by ship, rail or truck. It became a storage shed, period.
The judge issued an order requiring the removal of the container and payment of costs of $1,000.
I compare the facts in this case to one where a homeowner might fill an old canoe, or wheelbarrow or bathtub with soil and use it as a planter on the front lawn. Using the judge’s logic, those items do not become planters but remain a canoe, a wheelbarrow or a bathtub because that was their original purpose. Clearly, that’s wrong.
Given the shortage of housing in much of Canada, shipping containers are an elegant solution for homeowners who might use them to create an auxiliary 280-square-foot in-law suite in their rear yards.
We need local bylaws to permit their use across the country.
Note: In the same vein, there are dozens of builders of tiny container homes in Ontario offering a multitude of options starting at around $100,000. More information is available at https://tinyhomesincanada.ca.