Are You for Real? Rent a Brooklyn Dumpster for $1,200 a Month?
Want cheap(ish) rent in Brooklyn? Try a dumpster.
An ad on Craigslist, currently making the Internet rounds, claims to offer this “art deco hipster retro mini apt from a converted dumpster” for rent for $1,200 a month, or less reasonably, $200 per night. It’s in Williamsburg, the ad says, and is green-friendly and sustainable. It includes this photo:
The listing is, sadly, not impossible to believe, considering that the median rent for a 1-bedroom in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood is $2,600. Curbed New York deemed the dumpster listing “probably not a joke,” declaring in its headline, “yes, really.” (The blog 6sqft was a little more cautious, entertaining the possibility that it was a “spoof listing.”)
After all, in L.A., there really is an $850-a-month “1BR/1BA” in L.A. that’s actually a parked Winnebago surrounded by potted plants; some Google employees really do live in cars in the parking lot to save on rent; at least one pregnant single mom was raising her toddler in a Silicon Valley garage; and a Harry Potter-style under-the-stairs “bedroom” listing in London is all too real. In Brooklyn, it’ll cost you almost $2,000 a month to live with 18 roommates.
A dumpster house doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it?
Still, the credulity of Curbed notwithstanding, Yahoo Real Estate can confirm that the listing is a fake. The man who converted the green dumpster years ago, artist Gregory Kloehn, told Yahoo Real Estate in an email that it is not for rent: “It’s a joke. I don’t know who is doing it, but it has sparked a lot of interest.”
The photo on Craigslist turns out to be a cropped version of an Associated Press image that the Daily Mail ran in 2013. Here’s the picture full-frame:
(Photo of Gregory Kloehn and his dumpster house by John Minchillo, Associated Press)
So while the listing is fake, the dumpster is no joke. It’s a very real and very cool dumpster house. Kloehn bought the shell new for $2,000, then spent about six months designing and building the dwelling. It was featured on HGTV’s show “You Live in What?” and in this AP video in 2013:
There’s a lot more to the dumpster house than the Craigslist pic would lead you to believe, as Kloehn’s website makes clear:
The insulated dumpster includes a padded area for sleeping and a chest for clothes, as well as a sink, toaster oven, range and toilet:
A shower and barbecue grill attach to the outside, and a mini bar hides on the back of the door. The roof expands with a crank to open up windows, and then levels to act as a deck.
The home once sat in Kloehn’s hometown of Oakland, California, but was shipped to New York City a few years ago, to be used by Kloehn as a crash pad.
The remaining pictures were shot by John Minchillo in August 2013 for the Associated Press.
Below, the dumpster is shown in situ – in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, not Williamsburg, as the Craigslist ad claimed:
Kloehn takes shelter from a rain shower:
Kloehn enters the dumpster …
… kicks back …
… and fixes a meal:
More tiny homes and off-grid living on Yahoo Real Estate (these ones are all real, though):
• 300 Square Feet, Sleeps 8: Tiny Home/RV Hybrid Follows Wherever You Go (18 photos)
• In Off-the-Grid Yurt, Montana Couple Live ‘On Our Own Terms’ (50 photos)
• 1BR Rental for $850 in Trendy L.A.? The Catch: It Has Wheels
