In the search for needed affordable housing, there can never be enough ideas. One of the challenges, however, is the ability and will to translate the good ideas into actual workable shelters. One intriguing option that bears watching: The conversion of shipping storage containers into short-term housing for farm workers — a proposal with potential to tackle homelessness, a bigger population in need.

Under a resolution passed unanimously by the Honolulu City Council last week, the city Department of Planning and Permitting is directed to draft a bill allowing up to five temporary shelters for farm workers on an agricultural lot for up to five years. Existing law limits only one dwelling on a farm lot anywhere on the island.

Livable containers, which would need to have a full bathroom and kitchen, cost $20,000-$22,000, minus the cost of a stand-alone septic disposal system, said John Rogers, owner of Affordable Portable Housing. A septic system can be about $14,000 — but with a proposed city law change to enable that cost to be spread among three or four containers, better affordability can be achieved.

Though at a fledgling stage here, this concept of reusing steel shipping containers as housing — "cargotecture" — is a niche trend in other parts of the world. Environmentally-leaning architects laud the dwellings’ recyclability and durability, and it’s indeed worth exploring on some scale here. SG BLOCKS, a New York-based shipping container builder, says fitting a container for housing takes just one-twentieth the amount of energy of reprocessing the same amount of steel.

In Amsterdam, builder Tempohousing was launched in 2002 because of the need for affordable student dorms in a crowded urban area. By 2004 the company was fitting out 40-foot-by-8-foot container homes at the rate of 40 per week in a Chinese factory.

In 2008, the hotel chain Travelodge opened a 300-room hotel built from recycled shipping containers in Uxbridge, West London. The containers were fitted with plumbing, ventilation, insulation, heating and air conditioning — then assembled on site in three weeks. Travelodge said building this hotel was 25 percent faster and 10 percent cheaper than more traditional construction.

In Cape Town, South Africa, the Simon’s Town High School Hostel opened in 1998, built almost entirely of 40 used shipping containers, and is able to accommodate 120 boarders.

Even mainstream home-building expert Bob Vila, in a fascinating May show, explored the conversion of steel shipping containers abandoned in U.S. ports, into intermodal steel building units. Some 700,000 containers are said to be clogging ports due to America’s turnaround from an exporting nation into an importing one.

In Hawaii, the supply of leg-up affordable housing simply has not kept up with demand. If converted shipping containers are deemed useful and successful for farm workers on a small scale, serious consideration should be given to erecting such shelters for people left homeless.

A city building official said shipping containers already are allowed as dwellings provided they meet standard building, housing and health criteria. Granted, it’s not a simple undertaking: the container must have windows and doors, anchoring to a foundation to withstand floods and hurricanes, and likely insulation against Hawaii’s heat. And certainly, there would be issues of land for such units.

But it’s not so far-fetched to imagine the fit here for decent transitional housing. Proponents say a container dwelling can house a family of four. Economies of scale, such as with several units using one septic disposal system, seem encouragingly possible. The homelessness of citizens struggling to make ends meet and the dearth of affordable housing requires out-of-the-box thinking — perhaps one solution can be found within the refurbished four walls of a 40-foot-by-8-foot container.