Bob Vila

Bob Vila, who some people think invented home improvement, visited St. Petersburg recently to film the premier episode of the second season of Bob Vila, his syndicated show about home improvement.

What's in St. Petersburg you ask?

Askia Muhammad Aquil (right) to start. Aquil is executive director of one of the hippest, coolest housing advocacy agencies in Florida, the St. Petersburg Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc. (SPNHS) NeighborWorks® HomeOwnership Center.

They don't just advocate, they build homes, and teach people how to buy, maintain and love them. They build families.

Aquil is the first to say he's not the force behind SPNHS. And his staff of eight dedicated professionals would claim they aren't either. Ditto their board of directors and most of the hundreds of local volunteers. That's how democracy works. And that's what makes this group so special.

But that's not what Vila's TV show is about. Vila was in St. Pete to shoot the story of one of SPNHS's very brilliant housing ideas - recycling Intermodal Steel Building Units (ISBU's, right)---otherwise known as steel shipping containers---into liveable, even stylish homes.

That maybe sounds a little crazy. But a $250,000 median-priced Florida house sounded plenty crazy 10 years ago. You take these steel containers, add a whole lot of thought and work, much of it by volunteers, and pretty soon you have the makings of a gorgeous little cottage home that's maybe not the pricey Craftsman style Taylor Woodrow and WCI like to think of as "variety" but solid, sure, and safe housing for working families.

We've written about SPNHS before. To be sure, recycled steel shipping crates isn't THE answer to housing affordability. SPNHS has helped 500 families find affordble housing since 1999, and so far steel shipping crates account for three of them. But a hundred SPNHS's in communities throughout Fla. would do more to solve Florida's critical workforce housing shortage than a hundred Marco Rubio tax scams.

Aquia and his staff have convinced the Home Depot Foundation, Tampa Armature Works (TAW), and the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH) to join them in their effort to create affordable, energy-efficient, storm-ready homes from recycled steel shipping containers.

If you can't wait to see the Vila show's new season premier, click here to see a video highlight. We couldn't get the video to work, it likes PC's more than Apple.

You can buy a $39.00 video of last season's Bob Vila show episode on an earlier SPNHS steel container house, or you can visit the SPNHS web site and view their fully-functioning Flash slide show, click here to watch it.

Hat-tips to Tess Tomasi, Marketing and Resource Development Manager at St. Petersburg Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc., for the email alerting us to the Vila show. Way to go, guys.