Why Shipping Container homeless shelters FAIL

Because shipping containers are structurally weak once cut into, are often contaminated in ways which defy (cheap) cleaning, are expensive compared to alternatives, and represent the least good choice, of the least-worse choices being explored.

That said, they can and have been successfully repurposed and used, and can be used, e.g. as they were in Christchurch as a pop-up town centre after the earthquake. In this case they simply represented an architectural choice for "demountable" structures, and very probably were curated, selected as clean strong instances.

Architecture is called "the school of the built environment" for some contexts. I think this is a good neologism because it encompasses the "environment" word which really does have force here: What kind of environment for people are we trying to build, suggesting containers for emergency housing? What kind of environmental hazards do we encounter, and what other choices did we have?

If you happen to be homeless next to a huge supply of containers and have windows, sinks, showers, toilets, PVC plumbing, steel framing, staircases, fire alarms, interior lining sheetrock, wood, plywood, electric cables, switches, emergency stuff, leak repair kit: sure they're a really good choice of initial fabric to work with. (most of what you have, can be used to make a house from scratch, without the container)