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Comment by roymurdock | Hacker News Reader

In Ghana they are used extensively as shops/storefronts, but no one lives in shipping containers. Even in the most rural areas, people make houses literally brick by brick (buying 1-2 bricks at a time) instead of using shipping containers for housing. I think it's for the reason you suggest, and for the additional reason that I imagine living in a shipping container to be somewhat akin to living in a big metal dumpster.

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Why would anyone buy bricks in such small numbers, instead of saving up? A wall with two extra bricks on it isn't more useful.

Is it just impossible to save money safely?

Maybe because of transportation? They probably need to walk those bricks to the house.

In this [1] excellent book, it is said that they do it as form of saving. Basically, they don't have bank accounts, and they know that if they don't buy those 1-2 bricks right away after they get paid, they'll spend the money on something else.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Pove...

This is a large part of the reason. Money that gets earned gets spent pretty quickly on one thing or another, and it would be next to impossible for a family to save up enough to buy all the materials to build a house in one go.

Another reason is that they don't have easy access to credit markets, so they can't just get a mortgage and move into a home and start paying it off.

One more part of the reason is that they usually build the homes themselves, and its rewarding to see the house go up brick by brick - visual progress is being made.

I'm not an expert, but these are my informed observations and learnings.

Inflation? Spend X amount now and get 3 bricks or wait a year and only get 2?

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