Now that I have explained the common sense solution, here's why the RE bizness will never allow it to even start.

As soon as you start offering these FREE Universal Basic Shelter containers, everybody who is in one of the many tiny cramped NY studio or 1 bedroom apts that are no bigger than this (and sometimes smaller) but is paying rent of $3000/month will want one.  So it's not just the currently homeless who need shelter that you have to provide for, it's everyone with a low income who wants to start saving money and will take what amounts to a very small drop in standard of living to move into a free container home.

No kid just graduating HS is gonna want to stay at home and live with Mom & Dad when they can have their own little box to play video games and vape.  They don't have sex anymore, but in the old days having your own pad was how you finally graduated from 3rd base in the back seat of your car and got laid.

Free shelter, even very basic like this totally undermines the current RE market.  All the housing currently used for low income people becomes worthless.  I wouldn't move out of my container size free dwelling until I was making big money.  It's not worth it if it takes up 1/3rd or more of your monthly income.

The solution to this might be to have a 25% Housing Tax on all incomes.  So once you start making $10K/mo, it might be worth it to leave the system, although you still have to pay the tax in addition to your for pay home costs.

Besides this, as soon as you start offering this, the demand would be so great they never could supply the containers and places to drop them fast enough.  How do you you decide who gets them first?  A lottery?

Anyhow, it's not gonna happen.  Free Basic Shelter is pretty much an impossible dream to get rolling, except perhaps after collapse and a significant die off.  Then there sshould be plenty of excess housing around.

RE