[Answered ]-A pip install to include template/static files in actually app directory (not just in the site-packages dir)

There is no point doing this. Both the template system and the static asset system already support running directly from site-packages, without any extra configuration steps: in fact that is exactly what the built-in admin app does.

As you already know, collectstatic collects static files from directories inside each app and puts them in a central place for deployment. But for templates, you don’t even need that step: the default TEMPLATE_LOADERS includes a loader that loads templates from a templates directory inside the app itself. There is absolutely no extra step required.