From the NY Observer:
For the past five years, the Bloomberg administration has been quietly developing a first-of-its-kind disaster housing program, creating modular apartments uniquely designed for the challenges of urban living. Carved out of shipping containers, these LEGO-like, stackable apartments offer all the amenities of home. Or more, since they are bigger, and brighter, than the typical Manhattan studio. It’s the FEMA trailer of the future, built with the Dwell reader in mind.
“It’s nicer than my apartment,” David Burney, commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction, said in a phone interview last week. Along with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and at least a dozen other city, state and federal agencies and private contractors, Mr. Burney has been trying to figure out how best to house the tens or even hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who could find themselves without a home following a major disaster.
Like Hurricane Sandy. Initial estimates of those forced into long-term homelessness—from months to years—are 20,000 in the five boroughs alone. Over the weekend, Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri told the Times that at least 400 homes would have to be demolished along the coast, with 500 more still to be evaluated.
“There’s nobody who wouldn’t like to see a deployable solution available now,” said Lance Jay Brown, an architecture professor at CUNY who has been advising the city on its plans. “But nobody has this, nobody. I think the Japanese are working on something, given all they’ve gone through, but I can tell you, New York is really ahead of the curve when it comes to long-term disaster housing.”
9 comments:
Mr. Brown of CUNY says "NY is ahead of the curve in disaster housing".....Really!!! Tell that to all the NY'ers homeless due to Sandy...if FEMA cant provide these units NOW, they are behind the curve....Its easy to spew nonsense talk like that when you still have your home intact.
The pols have destroyed our faith in government and the nitwits in the media, by following the pols, are destroying our faith in them.
A model home for a rebuilt Breezy Point luxury village.
“But nobody has this, nobody. I think the Japanese are working on something, given all they’ve gone through, but I can tell you, New York is really ahead of the curve when it comes to long-term disaster housing.”
No wonder the city is so screwed up. Consultants that make statements like this show both their ignorance and their arrogance.
This idea has been around for 20 years, and has been tested and used in Florida and Haiti amongst other places.
I had Prof. Lance Brown when I studied at CCNY. Sounds good to me, looks more attractive than a Winnebago.
Ahead of the curve? Hhahhhahhahahaa.
Thats has to be one of the funniest things I've e er heard.
nyc was warned decades ago, about this type of storm and did nothing. NOTHING!
No surge gates, no subway tunnel plugs, no emergency housing. All of whic you can find in most third world countries today.
Keep speaking how wonderful that ny machine is. You get the goverment you deserve.
What happened to the billions that ny was given after 9-11the for emergency preparations?
They worry about importaunt things in ny, like not drinking 20 oz. Sodas.
Good luck, your going to need it.
Whatever comes out of this disaster, the building codes need to be changed.
NO MORE wooden crap houses in dense tracts.
If Breezy Point tells us only one lesson it is that if these houses had been built of brick, cinder block, steel studs, cement and sheetrock a fire in one would not have cause this tragic conflagration.
It doesn't cost that much more to build with modern, quality materials and lower insurance costs mean you recoup the difference within a decade.
I'd rather be living in one of those inflatable indoor tennis bubbles.
Just provide me with a good bottle of bourbon to console myself until conditions improve.
Most large corporations cannot fire nitwits like Mr. Brown, so they promote them up, and out of their department. This is what has happened with this numbskull at CUNY. Mr. Brown should stop talking.
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