‘Tiny House Hunters’ and the shrinking American dream
October 29, 2017 2:02 AM   Subscribe

It all started with House Hunters, an HGTV franchise where couples, generally in terrible marriages, pretend to look for a new home even though to appear on the show, the participants must have already purchased a new home. When I am sitting on my couch, probably pretending to work, there is something soothing about the implausible yet aspirational sheen of this show where everyone wants an open floorplan and ground-floor master bedroom with en suite bathroom and ceiling fans they can swing from or whatever. Roxane Gay for Curbed.
posted by ellieBOA (113 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
When one aspires to own a tiny home, they have a corresponding tiny American dream.

Interesting point that a tiny home is very specifically not a mobile home, and hence more permissible in terms of class. Though there's also #vanlife, which is living in a mobile home, but again, carefully re-cast as a quirky independent life decision.
posted by Zarkonnen at 2:32 AM on October 29, 2017 [31 favorites]


I had a bit of an addition to this show, albeit I watched like the author did, with incredulity and disbelief. It's like one person collects pigments from butterflies, and the other does artistic pencil sharpening, and their budget is half a million, and they're buying places smaller than any manufactured home in the market. It's insane.

I mean, I want to downsize with kiddo goes to college, it's too much work to maintain, but good lord, I don't want to move into my garden shed.

But I hadn't considered the class issue when I've said to the tv, why are you spending twice what a doublewide would cost? Or one of those kit homes. I mean, or you don't want a trailer in Oklahoma, but in the woods of the Pacific northwest, it seems more logical than a 200 square foot closet with a toilet.

I gave up on the show when a cute couple settled on a place with no running water, that looked like a trailer with shingles on the side, for a quarter of a million dollars. It's just absurd that living like I did when I was a juggler on the Ren faire circuit 30 years ago is being sold to kids as aspirational.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 2:43 AM on October 29, 2017 [74 favorites]


All of this. I frequent a waiting room always on HGTV, and can't wear earphones for fear of missing the nurse call. So I'm effectively forced to listen/watch these idiots. That economic pressure NEVER comes into play is absurd.
posted by EinAtlanta at 2:46 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I like the idea of tiny houses in the way I liked the idea of my grandparents' summer cottage on a lake: A scaled-down place for occasional or periodic use, not the one place you'd live indefinitely. The little tiny houses have always struck me as a great sort of arrangement to have for a home office. For a guest room. To stick on a vacation property where you intend to occasionally spend a weekend. I can see the appeal as an escape, but I think a lot of the people who fantasize about them are not actually envisioning what it'll be like to climb down that ladder for the 200th morning in a row, because some of the people who I know who talk about it are not exactly the young, childless, skinny people with no pets who you actually see doing it.
posted by Sequence at 3:18 AM on October 29, 2017 [12 favorites]


I'm reading this in a long queue at Ikea in Singapore, where I've just taken a photograph of a tiny soaking tub as a possibility if/when I move to a slightly bigger flat. I currently share 1200 sq ft with four people, and hope to move to a less central area to get 1600 sq ft as I expect we will need to share with another two adults, bringing total bedrooms needed to 5. I know families in tighter spaces, and it's just normal. It changes how you do interior design and treat community spaces. But 1300 sq ft for one adult seems extremely large to me, lavish.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:27 AM on October 29, 2017 [19 favorites]


one person collects pigments from butterflies, and the other does artistic pencil sharpening, and their budget is half a million

You might like this Twitter bot.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:37 AM on October 29, 2017 [29 favorites]


Calling it a tiny home makes it more socially acceptable and means that they can ask double the price of a mobile home. But most actual mobile homes I've seen are far better designed than the so called tiny homes which seem to be made for quirky value rather than actual practical living.

I guess this trend will last simply out of necessities sake, rather than because large amounts of the population yearn to squeeze two people and a dog into one tiny room. It would be novel for a night or two then I imagine that would wear off once you can see your partner peeing from every angle of that room.
posted by Jubey at 4:17 AM on October 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


Now I want ceiling fans I can swing from.
posted by 4ster at 4:28 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


One thing that I have found myself yelling at the TV on the rare occasions that I have watched this show is that these homes look like death traps. I just can't see how, if the place caught on fire and filled with smoke, a couple could get out of the tiny "bedroom" loft and climb down the ladder they used to get up there in time to save their lives.
posted by 4ster at 4:40 AM on October 29, 2017 [14 favorites]


The charm of doll houses is a wonderful thing.

My study is my "tiny house" and if the rooms of my house suddenly separated, I could live in it.

But realistically, all of us will end up in even smaller footprints; some of the charm of simplifying, reducing, decluttering, and making everything compact is about jettisoning possessions, about making the choice to abandon sprawl, as a way of forestalling the involuntary loss that comes with age and death.
posted by Peach at 4:59 AM on October 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


Wife: "I design whimsical paint schemes for tiny houses."

Husband: "I build scaled-down replicas of classic mid-century furniture."

"Our budget is $4.6 million."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:03 AM on October 29, 2017 [20 favorites]


Yesterday we drove two hours to attend the Tiny House Expo. When we got there at noon, they we over capacity for the fairgrounds and were not selling any more ticket the entire weekend. So we drove 2 hours back home. Fun day!

The Tiny House Expo was short on space.

Note - I have no interest in living in a Tiny Home. It just seemed like a fun way to spend an afternoon.
posted by COD at 5:22 AM on October 29, 2017 [26 favorites]


I imagine that would wear off once you can see your partner peeing from every angle of that room

You might get tired of it, but some people pay extra for that.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:29 AM on October 29, 2017 [22 favorites]


I often think of this quote from Brian Eno - "Go to an extreme then retreat to a more usable position." Whenever I watch those tiny house shows, I'm always wondering why the houses can't be just 20% bigger.
posted by davebush at 5:29 AM on October 29, 2017 [17 favorites]


I really really relate to the larger point of Gay's article--that for most of our generation (she's 2 years older than me), home ownership will never be a thing that we can do (to quote Violent Femmes "The American Dream's so full full full of it"). So rather than drool over the nonsense for idiots on HGTV, let's celebrate the good things about renting and enjoy the lives that we can afford to have and be glad we have the space for a comfortable bed and room for all our books.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:50 AM on October 29, 2017 [22 favorites]


After a week or so of being forced to watch HGTV at my sister's house and my mother's house, I officially renamed the channel "People with More Money than Brains Buy Real Estate." Please refer to it from now on as "PWMMTBBRE." Thank you.
posted by JanetLand at 6:16 AM on October 29, 2017 [11 favorites]


Moving into a tiny home allows people to hold firm to their "middle-class sensibilities" meaning middle-class snobbery
posted by serena15221 at 6:31 AM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Interesting point that a tiny home is very specifically not a mobile home, and hence more permissible in terms of class. Though there's also #vanlife, which is living in a mobile home, but again, carefully re-cast as a quirky independent life decision.

However, van life, RV life etc. is much different from living in a mobile home because you are actually mobile. Few mobile homes are actually worth the trouble it takes to move them.
posted by serena15221 at 6:37 AM on October 29, 2017 [9 favorites]


I thought the problems with mobile homes are that you still need to rent the land (and thus deal with predatory landlords, etc). so you have the cost of homeownership but also the instability of renting.
posted by jb at 6:44 AM on October 29, 2017 [12 favorites]


I used to be super into tiny homes "before it was cool". I have books about boat houses and Japanese apts and other homes that were tiny before it was a thing. I don't think I ever intended to live in one, but I loved the creativity it took to use space as economically as possible. Otherwise creative homes tended to be egregious uses of money and just were not as interesting.

I think I will spend my entire life in American apts and would love if just once someone made that seem cool or aspirational. We had Friends, but that's about it.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:45 AM on October 29, 2017 [19 favorites]


Excellent point about tiny homes not being mobile homes. It is exactly what has bothered me about the trend but couldn’t put me finger on. (i do think the article just got firing on all cylinders when it ended though!).

I admit to really liking tiny house design as a challenge. I would enjoy a tiny home project as a way to get shelter in the woods as hunting cabins do or summer farm grazing cabins do.

What bugs me as this trend is sold to us now is as primary housing. I’m not mad at the buyers, i’m mad at the sellers for pushing the idea that getting less space for the same money as a mobile home is committing to something virtuous, as opposed to either getting taken for a ride, or refusing to come to terms with the facts in the article; that other more comfortable options would mean resetting a lot of feels. Some of these tinies cost a lot and the resale value is probably not high so when a young couple sinks all that money I’m like “I hope my man already has a vascectomy.”

We need a Rockford Files remake to offset Trailer Park Boys or something.
posted by drowsy at 7:00 AM on October 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


really really relate to the larger point of Gay's article--that for most of our generation (she's 2 years older than me), home ownership will never be a thing that we can do

I guess, but most of the budgets of the people on Tiny House Hunters are, like, 5 times the cost of my 3 bedroom, 1200 square foot home. Even people who are renting are paying less money for more space than what the people on the show are looking to do. I understand escapist entertainment but I don't really know why people want to watch other people spend more money on less space.
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:07 AM on October 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


Calling it a tiny home makes it more socially acceptable and means that they can ask double the price of a mobile home.

The class thing is a big deal. The ironic thing is that calling them tiny houses and designing them in quirky ways that make them neither mobile homes nor RVs makes it even harder to find a place to legally place a tiny house, since both RV parks and mobile home courts usually have aesthetic and/or size standards that tiny houses don't meet.

But the economic pressures of stagnating opportunity and rising housing costs are pressing people to create (and legalize) options like tiny houses, subdivided/shared housing, and "microapartments" that are smaller than the current building code allows. I like the creativity, but wish we, as a society, were applying it to making housing accessible rather than relaxing occupancy standards.

Every so often I'll see a tiny house on a trailer going down the freeway. They usually look new, like they were just built and are being delivered. I haven't seen people pulling them around like RV trailers, and I suspect most of them move only once or twice.

The article is good, though I agree that the last third is where she makes her real points.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:19 AM on October 29, 2017 [12 favorites]


I was once a member of a home decor forum that experienced a huge drama flare-up because someone wanted to start a "movement" around tiny homes and minimalist living. I said that I thought the class implications were a little, well, gross--making an ostentatious and usually a very expensive show of not needing things. Like the wealthy parents who buy their children only wood toys made by Waldorf elves that will last generations, rather than plastic. Because lower class people have houses full of plastic.

Then again, I live in a 2300-square foot 4 bedroom house full of my child's plastic toys. I guess I feel a little defensive about it. But before this, we lived in an 800-square foot apartment and I frequently felt like my life was falling apart, a constant tetris of books and toys.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:26 AM on October 29, 2017 [16 favorites]


I'm glad to hear that it's not just my wife and I who actively and vocally holler at the television during these shows. Well, holler at the Hulu/Netflix/Amazon Prime.
It's slightly more exhausting because we don't have commercials to catch our breath and take a sip of water before the next round of hollering at these idiots begins.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 7:26 AM on October 29, 2017 [14 favorites]


There's a huge difference between a tiny house and a small house. When I was a kid for a period of time we (two adults, two kids and dog) lived in a house that was about 800 sf. It seemed (from a 4-year old's perspective) to be huge, although I know in retrospect that it wasn't. Somehow it managed to have five rooms, the largest being a combined kitchen/dining/laundry area.
posted by lagomorphius at 7:27 AM on October 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


Because zoning laws often don't accommodate these tiny houses, they have to be technically mobile anyway, so it's not like they're choosing these homes over trailers for additional protection from natural disasters. I think this is a side effect of a kind of "economic anxiety", the kind that comes with being downwardly mobile compared to one's parents and not being able to hit those marks of middle-class adulthood at the same times, with the same confidence and enthusiasm. Has anyone seen an episode where a couple had a child or expressed an intention to raise a child in one of these?
posted by Selena777 at 7:49 AM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


I thought the problems with mobile homes are that you still need to rent the land (and thus deal with predatory landlords, etc). so you have the cost of homeownership but also the instability of renting.

You can buy a mobile home and a piece of land and avoid that.

(Note: I am speaking in the context of these overpriced tiny homes and the people who buy them. I'm well aware that buying property and making sure that it has the utilities required for a mobile home is not simple or inexpensive.)
posted by elsietheeel at 7:52 AM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Has anyone seen an episode where a couple had a child or expressed an intention to raise a child in one of these?

Yes, several. One is discussed in the article.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:55 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


That was just one man and a girl old enough to not hurt herself on all of the things, though.
posted by Selena777 at 8:04 AM on October 29, 2017


Y'know, as someone who lives with his partner in a small 1 bedroom apartment, I could honestly see living in a space, or the equivalent "tiny house" like this for the rest of my life. Admittedly, we don't want kids, but even if we decided to reproduce, a two bedroom would be fine provided we could find one we can afford. Yes, a larger space would be nice, but for how we live, we don't really need it.
posted by SansPoint at 8:27 AM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


For about 6 months (the difference between when her lease was up and when mine was) Mrs. Eustscescrubb and I shared my single room in a 2 bedroom apartment along with my long suffering housemate who had the other room. We, miraculously, stayed together and then got married, and it was kind of cozy and kind of fun but I wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.
posted by eustacescrubb at 8:34 AM on October 29, 2017


I think these tiny houses give us a great way to visualize an alternative to the McMansion lifestyle.

More practically, they show us how to use space more effectively, so if you have a "small" home by US standards (1,100-1,300 if you bought a1930s-1950s three bedroom home, for instance) you can maximize the utility of your space using similar techniques.

Really, though, I think large landowners will start building these in their backyards as zoning allows, then rent 'em out for high rents, kind of like coach houses. When I was growing up in Chicago, getting a coach house rental was the dream; they were tiny, but you didn't have to share common walls and so you could make noise and feel like you had a "real" house.
posted by davejay at 8:45 AM on October 29, 2017 [12 favorites]


More practically, they show us how to us space more effectively, so if you have a "small" home by US standards (1,100-1,300 if you bought a1930s-1950s the bedroom home, for instance) you can maximize the utility of your space using similar techniques.
I guess, but there's something much less glamorous about living in one of those houses. Are there any Cute Midcentury Bungalow Hunters TV shows? Gay herself says that she lives in a 1300-square-foot, 3 bedroom apartment, which is a big apartment but hardly a McMansion. I think part of the problem with the Tiny House discourse is that it makes it seem like there's no middle-ground between living in a McMansion and living in a repurposed shipping crate.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:50 AM on October 29, 2017 [13 favorites]


I often think of this quote from Brian Eno - "Go to an extreme then retreat to a more usable position." Whenever I watch those tiny house shows, I'm always wondering why the houses can't be just 20% bigger.
posted by davebush at 5:29 AM on October 29 [4 favorites +] [!]


So, like an RV or mobile home? The class distortions of this movement are very apparent when one considers that there is a whole industry that has been designing and engineering around these problem, and that industry is mostly ignored. (Mostly, i think tiny houses take all their appliances from RV s)

I watched one video of a disappointed tiny house builder who expressed so much disappointment that this tiny house would not be up to municipal codes. Those codes were written to establish minimum standards for living quarters. At least he didn' t attack those codes--I know my apartment would be much smaller without them.
posted by eustatic at 8:54 AM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]


You can buy a mobile home and a piece of land and avoid that.

Only if, and it can be a big if, the zoning rules allow you to put a mobile home on that piece of land. In many cases the zoning explicitly bans mobile homes, and tiny houses tend to get categorized the same (because small, able to be moved, etc). A lot of the efforts to change the rules to allow tiny houses are about navigating that nuanced class distinction where a "tiny house" can be seen as upmarket enough to be allowed in the neighborhood, while still providing tools to keep out "mobile homes" with their low-class connotations.

The move in many cities to encourage accessory dwelling units (i.e., what used to be called "mother in law apartments") is probably the easiest path for tiny houses in a lot of situations. But that requires someone owning the main or "real" house wanting to rent the tiny house space and deal with the zoning issues; it's not a path for someone who wants to own both a tiny house and land.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:55 AM on October 29, 2017 [19 favorites]


I often wonder if these people will ever discover boats.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 8:58 AM on October 29, 2017 [15 favorites]


Only if, and it can be a big if, the zoning rules allow you to put a mobile home on that piece of land.

True. In my dreams I'm always on a piece of land at least 5 acres in a rural area where zoning isn't as much of a concern. I tend to forget that people want these tiny homes in cities.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:00 AM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Really, though, I think large landowners will start building these in their backyards as zoning allows, then rent 'em out for high rents, kind of like coach houses.

I'm always disappointed whenever I think about it that whichever former owner designed and built our garage did not think to include having a small apartment above the garage (or have built it to allow the possibility down the road). I would love to have that space for renting out, using for guests, or having as office/studio space. Adding an apartment now to that structure would be complicated and expensive and probably wouldn't pencil out even at AirBnB pricing, but if housing costs keep going up that may change.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:07 AM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


I think part of the problem with the Tiny House discourse is that it makes it seem like there's no middle-ground between living in a McMansion and living in a repurposed shipping crate.

I feel like this is a subject that gets problematized far more than it deserves.

Most people who look at diagrams of tiny houses don't really want tiny houses. Many people who look at tiny houses aren't doing so because they're somehow fantasizing about home ownership in an era where they can only afford to rent, or because they somehow need to be educated about all the problems associated with them. Many people who look at tiny houses and fantasize about tiny houses are doing so because they're a clear contrast with the McMansions and suburbs they grew up in.

And yes, that makes it sound like there's no middle ground. Just like if you look at many people's Pinterest pages, it doesn't seem like there's a middle ground between a from-scratch, home-grown, all-organic three course dinner and Chinese takeout. Or between prepackaged Halloween costumes and hand sewn cosplay costumes.

If you don't get why people are interested in something, it's okay to not get it. But these discussions always turn into endless arguments about how people don't really want to live in these spaces, and how classist the whole movement is, all mixed with defensive discussions about how you and your family really need your 3000 sq ft home (and how those of us who don't want one will change our minds one day).
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:11 AM on October 29, 2017 [22 favorites]


I think there's absolutely a lot that is valid in the point about the classism of tiny homes vs. mobile homes, but personally, what initially appealed to me about tiny homes is that many of them are trading space for high quality materials and thoughtful designs that make spaces pleasant and cozy.

Most of the mobile homes I have been in (and I've been in quite a few and lived in one too) are of poor build quality. I've definitely been in cozy and pleasant mobile homes, but it's an uphill battle to make a cozy home when you have chunks knocked out of the flimsy doors, soft spots in the floors, peeling vinyl tiles, paper thin walls and rooms with poor natural light.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if we've started to see that level of quality with tiny homes too-- I don't really follow tiny homes closely so I have no idea but capitalism gonna capitalism I'd assume. It's also possible that there are really high quality mobile homes out there that I haven't come in contact with.
posted by geegollygosh at 9:12 AM on October 29, 2017 [14 favorites]


I like tiny homes/houses, and the main distinction for me between that and a mobile home is, I'd want permanent plumbing; water and septic. The size issue-- honestly, I don't use that much space in any regular house. A place to sleep. A place to cook simple meals. Bathroom. And... a place to sit down with my computer, and that's really all I need. Everything else, I go outside. I see no need for a living room, study, game room, library, TV room, studio, etc, when my computer does all of that in a 3x3 footprint.
posted by The otter lady at 9:22 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've lived in some small goddamn houses. 400 square ft. The first house we bought was 800 square ft. We recently upgraded to 1200 and that is plenty. One thing about small houses: they're impossible to keep clean. Not in the disinfecting surfaces angle, but from the fact that there is no away to put things. When we added 400 square ft on our recent move, I was amazed at how easy cleaning became when I didn't have to relocate the entire contents of a room to another room just to sweep the floor or dust the surfaces.

I seriously do not understand the whole tiny house thing. Get an efficiency apartment. Buy a small post-war bungalow in the rust belt. They built a new "tiny house" here as a spec and it wound up costing double what buying an existing house in the same damn neighborhood would. Not everywhere has the real estate market of San Francisco or Seattle.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:22 AM on October 29, 2017 [20 favorites]


There are some nice prefab houses available now. They're certainly not as inexpensive as a standard mobile or manufactured home, but they're not too far off when you consider that they're energy efficient, often solar powered, and have higher quality fixtures and appliances.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:31 AM on October 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


Really, though, I think large landowners will start building these in their backyards as zoning allows, then rent 'em out for high rents,

"Honestly, Percy, it's never been easier to find peasants since we've started referring to our south lawn as an artisinal, minimalist community. They seem so satsified, the poor dears. They even sometimes bring us the most adorable baked goods they make on those attractive, yet utterly substandard appliances we installed when we added the asymmetrical corrugated roof to the old garden shed and called it a modern cottage. Really, it just warms the heart to see them so content with their sad plight."
posted by thivaia at 9:37 AM on October 29, 2017 [13 favorites]


A couple of years ago, there was a "Tiny House Festival" in Somerville, MA, which is one of the most densely populated cities of its size in the US. The Somerville zoning laws doesn't allow people to live in mobile homes in the city and there's basically no undeveloped land in the city limits, either, so it seemed an odd location to have it. (Plenty of young folks who feel they won't be able to afford to buy a traditional home/condo, however, so that made it a good location for the festival, I guess.) Around that time, there were people on some local mailing list (next door? local group's list? something like that) putting forth how much more efficient it is to house people in tiny houses. But if you want to push past existing zoning requirements, I suspect that building more traditional high density housing is going to be way WAY more efficient, but it's not the sort of quirky stunt housing that's going to catch headlines.

On the flip side, I'm quite disappointed that the town of Dennisport, MA, has been trying to push out actual old small house owners and existing mobile home parks and replace them with things like this, which is very expensive and very densely packed. (the location had been a mobile home park for decades)
posted by rmd1023 at 9:54 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't really know why people want to watch other people spend more money on less space.

Schadenfreude, same as it ever was. I the viewer may live in an insane housing market where starter homes are a non-starter and rents are through the roof, but at least I'm not paying $500K to live in 200 sqft with that jerk!
posted by Flannery Culp at 10:00 AM on October 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


I can kind of understand the fascination with the engineering of the tiny homes. Back in the 80's my parents took advantage of Reaganomics to buy a boat that had a queen stateroom and a V-berth with two beds, a convertible table that became a double bed, galley complete with fridge and microwave, and two "wet" heads that converted the entire bathroom into a shower. That 32 foot boat somehow had more storage than seemed physically possible. Not only could we, a family of four, live on it for an entire summer, we could also store coils of rope and dock bumpers and emergency kits and giant nautical charts and all sorts of nonsense. Everything inside had a double use or a neat little functionality, including a cool little cover for the sink that allowed you to expand your counter space and a couple of chairs that could be removed from their bases and stored on the bridge to allow for more standing room for a party/gathering. There were speakers throughout the entire place that could play the radio or be used as an intercom to allow for conversation between the captain on the bridge (my dad) and the galley slave (my mom.) My brother would spend hours opening every panel and examining the mechanisms behind these wonders of storage and ingenuity. It was pretty fun and comfortable, considering that I was easily entertained with a stack of Clive Cussler and James Michener novels and a walkman with a case for 120 cassettes.
posted by xyzzy at 10:34 AM on October 29, 2017 [18 favorites]


The "movement" has been online more than a decade. I remember occasional features in Dwell magazine before that though. Here is one surviving website I had visited, even as shelter rags pitching creative decorative effects in small spaces proliferated online.

In my recollection it coincided with early, international interest in carbon-reducing strategies, a period when the COP* mission was beginning to penetrate OECD imagination. And construction of "average" residential home size and value in the USA was approaching McMansion apex. Some people estimated that average area (m2 per 2+ person per HH) was running one quarter of that, 600 sf or 55 m2. That is tiny by god-given standards of well-being and RE available for sale. Accordingly, after the US housing crash, of course, business and shelter press did a weak U-turn to flog luxury "micro-apartments" in San Francisco, for example, until the dust settled.

It's interesting to me that one would now perceive "HGTV Tiny House" to be the tip of a spear in US lifestyle changes. The cost of construction and material per sf hasn't budged off the high. Median rent for "affordable" 1BR (285 sf -773 sf) clocks in ~ $789. But interest rates are comparatively low to historic mean. So there's that. Convert that garage AND in-law suite!
posted by marycatherine at 10:38 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


I adore sheds and tiny buildings...as away-spaces, rooms of one's own, mountain escapes, and places to putter around and write fine literature.

What this "movement" is, besides a ridiculous misunderstanding of what a movement is, is a bizarre attempt to preserve the idiotic stupidity of suburban living by adjusting the scale of its stupidity to the budgets now accessible to younger folks. They call it ecologically beneficial, but it's not, they call is thrifty, but $60k for a shed on a cheap trailer just isn't, and it's supposed to be some post-materialist focusing experience, but it's not that, either, because it replaces a clutter fetish with a fetish for bespoke simplicity.

And don't even mention all the "recycled" and "repurposed" claims, which just don't work as anything but virtue signaling on one's ventures in conspicuous anti-consumption.

I've lived in a two-room apartment in a five-unit apartment building for thirty years now. It forces me to control my acquisitions, lets me live in a nice neighborhood I'd never be able to afford otherwise, and my energy footprint is compact. My space is just under 600 square feet and it's perfect for a grumpy dude and a dog. When I have guests, we can sit in a room that's not a Chinese puzzle box. Even better, when one takes a crap in the bathroom, there's a buffer space between the front room and kitchenette so you're not hotboxing in a methane-filled faux sweat lodge of intestinal atrocities.

Cities are economical, ecological, and social, particularly when you realize that there are more than just three in your country to choose from. Tiny houses, on the other hand, are all of Frank Lloyd Wright's worst exurb white-flight fantasias perched on lousy trailers to dodge perfectly reasonable standards for life safety. I get the fascination, because tiny things are always cute, but ultimately, tiny houses serve a much different master than reclaiming our urbanity.
posted by sonascope at 10:44 AM on October 29, 2017 [15 favorites]


I seriously do not understand the whole tiny house thing. Get an efficiency apartment. Buy a small post-war bungalow in the rust belt.

This. My 25 year old co-worker just closed on a 60s suburban split-entry ranch out here in Western PA. I don't know exactly what he paid, but I'd be surprised if was significantly more than $100K. Not everywhere is NYC or SF. There's the whole rest of the country out here.
posted by octothorpe at 10:45 AM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yeah, I too have lived on a good size boat, and I'm fascinated by how efficiently ship builders can use space. Some tiny homes are that efficient, but most are not. But, by the same token, a new boat with three bedrooms has a price point near seven figures, vs six.

Our little town has recently been inundated by Dallas commuters as they move farther out from city central. We've gone from 5k ish people to over 50k ish people in a decade. Recently, the town outlawed any house construction less than 2000 square feet, which means there is virtually no house for sale now at less than a few hundred thousand dollars. Which is miniscule cost compared to the west coast, but for Texas, that's a lot of money to be an hour away from where the jobs are. The trailer parks where the migrant workers lived are being bulldozed, because the ranches have all turned into mcmansion zero lot developments. Meanwhile, our property has tripled in taxable value, and most of the older residents are being forced to sell because they can't afford taxes. Example, my property taxes have gone from $2500 a year when I bought the place six years ago to $10,000 this year. I pay more towards taxes each mortgage payment than I do principle or interest. And there is zero chance I could sell for the appraised value. It's an old ranch house with almost no modern updates. When the house had to be rebuilt after the 2016 storm, the kitchen was the one room left untouched by the storm, and so it has twenty year old appliances, and horrid Formica counters, and is generally hideous, but when I bought the place with intentions to remodel, I had no idea it was going to cost $50k to fix the kitchen, so I just live with it. But I sure as fuck can't sell it at the price point of a new mansion with fancy appliances. But I have to pay taxes like it's the same kind of property. (No, fighting the tax appraisal hasn't worked. I've fought it every year, even hiring an attorney last year. The tax commission does not care if they force people out.)
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:53 AM on October 29, 2017 [10 favorites]


References indicated in my prior comment
How much space the average rent gets you 2015 data
OECD | Better Life Index | Housing 2015 data
posted by marycatherine at 10:58 AM on October 29, 2017


Interesting point that a tiny home is very specifically not a mobile home, and hence more permissible in terms of class.

They're not poor. They're temporarily embarrassed gentrifiers.
posted by non canadian guy at 11:03 AM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


Recently, the town outlawed any house construction less than 2000 square feet

That's fucking appalling. Should people who want smaller spaces just live in apartments? I bet all the apartments being built are massive as well. It's so irresponsible.

The house I grew up in was 950 square feet. It had three bedrooms and a bathroom. The house I live in now is 1200 sqft and it's a 3/2. Would I like a bit more space? Sure, but it's not a necessity. I just have a lot of hobby-related junk. And I live by alone, so I'm kind of appalling myself. (I'd be happy with a much smaller house if I had a workshop. Woodworking takes up a lot of space.)
posted by elsietheeel at 11:11 AM on October 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


vocally holler

Is there another way to holler that I'm not aware of?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:12 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


tiny-homes-talk is fractal dimensional moral panic, each panic contains a tinier panic hidden tastefully within.
posted by I hate nature. at 11:18 AM on October 29, 2017 [9 favorites]


This. My 25 year old co-worker just closed on a 60s suburban split-entry ranch out here in Western PA. I don't know exactly what he paid, but I'd be surprised if was significantly more than $100K. Not everywhere is NYC or SF. There's the whole rest of the country out here.

I mean, deep in the midwest even dreaded McMansions are going to be way way more affordable than property in, say, New Jersey. They're positioned as artifacts of excess but I'm not sure they are any more than an apartment in Manhattan?

Anyway, people have different spaces for their needs. We're a pair of homebodies who also work from home, who like toys and have hobbies that take up space, so a house where each adult can have an office and a kid can have her own bedroom is great for us. Some people are hardly home and don't enjoy rehabbing dollhouses in their spare time*, so they don't need the space. The moral positioning around tiny homes, though, is what bothers me. You see it a lot on Tiny House Hunters--we don't need stuff, we want to focus on the things that matter like family and the outdoors. And, ouch!


*As a person who loves tiny things generally, I do appreciate this part of tiny homes, and would love to have one in my backyard someday as a writer's shed. But not as a place to live.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:49 AM on October 29, 2017 [10 favorites]


So I used to love home renovation shows, but I haven't been able to watch them since I realized I had to sell my house (the aforementioned house I grew up in) due to debt from illness and unemployment.

Now that the house is finally on the market I thought I'd give Tiny House Hunters a shot, but Hulu distracted me with Extreme Homes and after one episode I'm just disgusted by everything.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:51 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe the whole "I yell at the TV during these ridiculous shows!" isn't a bug, but a feature...?
posted by youthenrage at 12:34 PM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


It does depend on perspective, most are bigger than my first apartment and so vastly larger than any sailboat I dream of living on. Some seem pretty stupid and over designed, I saw one show and the kicker was "make it work for my two huge dogs", well here's a standing bet that that family didn't last long in one. The fadishness is very silly but in certain locations smaller size makes sense and the build up of standardized infrastructure will allow good smaller designs work even if not exactly tiny. And when the fad fades, great bargains!
posted by sammyo at 12:47 PM on October 29, 2017


I can tell you that selling a house with a mother-in-law second house is PAINFUL. I live in a great transportation location and proximity to a major university and it has sat on the market for over 8 months. For people who want the 800 Sq ft house, there are other factors that do not allow for a smaller footprint.
posted by jadepearl at 12:55 PM on October 29, 2017


My 25 year old co-worker just closed on a 60s suburban split-entry ranch out here in Western PA. I don't know exactly what he paid, but I'd be surprised if was significantly more than $100K. Not everywhere is NYC or SF. There's the whole rest of the country out here.

Not everyone gets to pick where they live. Academic job searches are by definition limited to the few jobs that one is qualified for in the year one is applying for jobs. Gay teaches at Purdue. I teach at the job that I have here in Atlanta. I'm sure that for <$200K I could find a 1980s split-level somewhere in suburban Atlanta or a terribly constructed early 2000s McMansion in the exurbs that someone can't wait to unload just before the foundation crumbles and the roof fails. But for those of us who are constrained by our jobs to a certain area, we at least can choose to live in a part of that area that provides higher quality of life. And for me, that currently continues to mean renting. At least when the furnace goes out, it's not my responsibility.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:09 PM on October 29, 2017 [11 favorites]


Hey all, you want to know what else is classist?

Assuming that everyone has the option to rent.

Many people don't, because they are on a fixed income or because of debt or prior rental history. I have a couple of family members nearing retirement who are in this predicament who are exploring tiny houses or RV living because they can't get a decent, affordable apartment on their limited incomes. Mobile living provides the option to have some measure of control over their housing which would provide a huge amount of satisfaction and a major boost to their sense of self worth. But I'll make sure to tell them that the internet has decided they are smug assholes, and like *eye rolls*, why don't they just rent an efficiency or buy a rust belt house instead?
posted by scantee at 2:36 PM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]


When I was a kid for a period of time we (two adults, two kids and dog) lived in a house that was about 800 sf

That's got to be a huge percentage of houses in L.A. When they were new they were just called houses. The San Fernando Valley is full of them, but they're not cheap.

Maybe the whole "I yell at the TV during these ridiculous shows!" isn't a bug, but a feature...?

For most of the shows I'm pretty sure it is.
posted by bongo_x at 2:40 PM on October 29, 2017


I love watching Tiny House Hunters. I watch it for the ingenuity of the designs because let's face it, most older or builder-built new houses have inconvenient layouts or wasted space or both. I too read the Japanese design books which showed the under-stair-tread storage, and the under-floor storage blew my mind. I'm also a former live-aboard and a Tayana 37 is my ideal but a lot of marinas restrict liveaboards.

One thing I haven't read yet, do Tiny Homes depreciate? I imagine like mobile homes and boats, they will but right now they are riding the bubble.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 3:07 PM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


The thing about trying to do apartment living based on having watched a bunch of Tiny House stuff is that most apartments won't allow you to do much in the way of modifications, so a lot of what makes a Tiny House kind of work is stuff that is not going to work at all in an efficiency apartment. I did a bit of looking at them once hoping it'd help, but I'm not sure if it did.

One thing I haven't read yet, do Tiny Homes depreciate? I imagine like mobile homes and boats, they will but right now they are riding the bubble.

All houses depreciate. The land underneath them in some places appreciates substantially enough to cover the difference in the actual house value. Foundations don't last forever, either. Tiny Houses are going to need ongoing maintenance to keep up their value, but so do regular houses in most circumstances. Mobile homes and boats just depreciate much more quickly, and a lot of people don't put in the maintenance effort. The original batch of Tiny House people I think were in a good position as far as depreciation: Many of them built their own houses and therefore were going to have no trouble with maintenance. The people now who're going out and buying land with a TIny House on it instead of buying land and then building are going to be in a much worse place, I expect.
posted by Sequence at 3:22 PM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


Efforts to break through the red tape and raise money to house the homeless almost always pay off for a community. Even the most expensive tiny-house projects—such as a new, ambitious $6-million campaign to build a 200-person tiny-house park this year in Austin, Texas—can't rival the cost of homelessness to taxpayers, which was more than $10 million per year in Austin, for example, as YES! reported in December 2013.

And at the other end of the spectrum. Tiny house villages are turning out to be a viable - and significantly cheaper - way to get chronically homeless people housed. I wonder if HGTV would do an episode on that!
posted by bendy at 4:23 PM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


One of my high-school friends had a tiny house in her backyard, where her grandmother had lived out her final years. Her parents had given it to her to use as a sewing room/study area. But it also had a bathroom and bedroom if she wanted to spend the night out there. It was six kinds of awesome.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:46 PM on October 29, 2017


You want to hate watch something, try those shows with people buying log cabins in MT and AK. Ye gods, my wife will watch four or five of those in a row just to scream at each and every couple.
posted by Ber at 6:32 PM on October 29, 2017


There is a big push on this in my town.
posted by worldswalker at 6:48 PM on October 29, 2017


Hey all, you want to know what else is classist?

Assuming that everyone has the option to rent.

Many people don't, because they are on a fixed income or because of debt or prior rental history. I have a couple of family members nearing retirement who are in this predicament who are exploring tiny houses or RV living because they can't get a decent, affordable apartment on their limited incomes.


Wait, wait, wait. In what scenario does one have sufficient income and good enough credit to get the mortgage to buy even a tiny house (and then pay property taxes and maintain the property on top of the mortgage going forward) but not good enough to rent? (A person with good credit but a lot of debt is far more likely to be rejected for a mortgage than for a residential lease.) If your family members are thinking of moving to an actual mobile home park, they are effectively going to be renters anyway, just of the land rather than of the house. And they really should read Evicted, which has a terrifying narrative thread about a mobile home park, first.

If you don't have the option to rent for financial reasons, the next step is generally doubling up/shelters/homelessness, not buying.
posted by praemunire at 7:25 PM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


So I've watched like 18 episodes of Tiny House Hunters since I last commented (I've yelled at the TV a lot this evening) and it seems like the majority of these tiny house owners are deliberately choosing mobile houses and parking them on an obliging friend or parents' property. No rent or credit rating needed.
posted by elsietheeel at 7:41 PM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


I wouldn't mind living in a spite house, but they tend to be several stories high to counteract the small footprint.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:52 PM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Has anyone seen an episode where a couple had a child or expressed an intention to raise a child in one of these?"

I follow like a billion tiny house blogs (because I am an addict with a problem!), and yes! There's a robust little subculture of homeschoolers with tiny houses (or skoolie conversions), some of whom travel, some of whom stay put. There's another group of parents where one parent is finishing graduate or professional school, and they have usually one or two very small children, and they sell their house when school begins and move to the school location, then buy a tiny house in preference to renting at school and live very cheaply with very little stuff, and then move with the tiny house to the work location when school is finished. (Then have the leisure to get comfortable with the location and look for a house without being rushed, and sell the tiny.) I've seen a few parents whose work has them travel a lot -- traveling performers (circus arts type of thing), a single mom who's a nurse who takes temporary assignments which are lucrative but involve moving every six months -- where they have a tiny house specifically so their kids have a stable HOME, generally with their own room, instead of living in temporary accommodations constantly. (Why a tiny home instead of a motorhome? Just personal preference, and if it's going to be your home for several years while you travel, personal preference is important! It's also easy to find a tiny house builder who will do a custom build.)

In general most families don't consider these permanent homes they'll live in forever, but a home for the time it makes sense for their family, and then they move on -- like most of us do with apartments or houses or whatever. People sometimes act like it's not "real" that they live with their kids there because "they won't still live there with three teenagers!" Well, no, they won't. They're living there for three years while dad finishes med school, or they're living there while mom's job requires relocation every six months. Later, when the family situation changes, they'll live somewhere else.

(Some parents do go in profoundly convinced they're going to live their children's entire life in a converted school bus, but usually they do give up after a couple years.)

Regarding moving the houses, some people do, some people don't. The traveling nurse I talked about above moves here every six months. I had a friend who worked winters as a ski instructor and summers leading outward bound sorts of things, and he had a tiny house he drove to his winter and summer locations. Usually the ski resort had a place where employees could park trailers, tiny houses, and motorhomes -- hella cheaper than trying to rent in Vail! -- and in summers he parked on the campground where he was working. He bought a basic Tumbleweed (whatever their first model was) and he and some friends finished the inside to his custom needs -- lots of storage for his gear, couch that converted to a bed for friends to sleep. He just didn't own that much stuff and led a very nomadic lifestyle, which he figured he'd probably do through his 20s and then eventually find something more settled, at which point he'd sell the tiny house to another ski bum.

"More practically, they show us how to us space more effectively, so if you have a "small" home by US standards (1,100-1,300 if you bought a1930s-1950s the bedroom home, for instance) you can maximize the utility of your space using similar techniques."

Yeah, this is what I find very addictive about tiny house blogs (and, for that matter, small house blogs and apartment living blogs)! I'm fascinated by good storage and multipurpose fixtures and clever use of space and so on, and honestly the growth in popularity of tiny houses has resulted in an increase of small fixtures that suit pre-1960 houses. Finding a sink and sink cabinet to fit in my little 1950 cottage was a pain in the ass because everything was sized for McMansion bathrooms the size of bedrooms; now there are more smaller options available. Similarly, smaller-scale kitchen appliances are more widely available, which can fit in smaller, older appliance holes in older kitchens. Multipurpose furniture, smaller-scale furniture, etc., is more available. It's great to have more choices. And just devoted reading of these kinds of blogs has made me a lot more clever about space. (I just moved with my family of 5 from a small 1950 "starter home" with 1500 square feet to an EVEN SMALLER 1950 starter home with 1100 square feet! I have to be 400 square feet more clever now!)

And I'm as big an advocate for moving to small Midwestern Rust Belt cities as anyone, I love it, people should do it, but people have to go where the jobs are, and that can be tough in these smaller cities. It's not practical for a lot of people.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:29 PM on October 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


Oh but HGTV is totally hate-watch fodder full of painfully clueless rich people. What they show is part of the tiny-house movement, for sure, but not the whole of it ... and definitely the more expensive, aspirational end of it, with fancier design. There's other parts that are more economical, or more artistic, or more craftsmanship oriented, or whatever.

(My favorite thing is binge-watching House Hunters International so you can vicariously experience why other countries hate "Ugly Americans" because OH MY GOD it's like they get these people from central casting for terribleness.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:34 PM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


House Hunters International

"No, this two hundred year old courtyard estate in Casablanca is not open-concept"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:57 PM on October 29, 2017 [6 favorites]


"What do you MEAN I can't fit an American-sized washer and dryer in this charming Swedish flat in a 500-year-old building that's listed way under market? HOW WILL I WASH AND DRY MY CLOTHES?"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:01 PM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


Similar to what bendy posted, affordable tiny homes for low-income first time home buyers in Detroit.
posted by BinGregory at 9:18 PM on October 29, 2017


I love the people that need an open concept to entertain, when they are moving to a county where they don't know anyone and done even speak the language. I'm pretty sure the final scene party is hired actors much of time.
posted by COD at 9:30 PM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


OH MY GOD it's like they get these people from central casting for terribleness.

I do think the producers look for that, and have read that they edit for terribleness.
posted by bongo_x at 10:09 PM on October 29, 2017


maybe we should start to remove housing, something you need to live, from a dangerously speculative marketplace.
posted by The Whelk at 10:16 PM on October 29, 2017 [9 favorites]


I just wish it was legal to put tiny houses on tiny lots in most cities (including mine, Seattle). I'd love to own my own patch of dirt again, if only for the price stability. If somebody would sell me a 1,000sqft lot in town where I could build a 600sqft building, I'd do it tomorrow.

One of my biggest concerns with the "density plus ownership means condos"—I have zero problems with condos, I live in a small condo building myself—movement is that there's nothing preventing condo dues from spiraling out of affordability. At least property taxes have some upper bound, if only politically, but the condo association can charge whatever it wants with no rise cap. Even if I manage to pay off this mortgage (not likely but I can dream), I'm still on the hook for, as of right now, $300/month in dues plus all of the other stuff that homeowners pay.
posted by fireoyster at 10:52 PM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


If somebody would sell me a 1,000sqft lot in town where I could build a 600sqft building, I'd do it tomorrow.

This is the part where this starts to really worry me. I think it's certainly possible to have tiny houses that are perfectly nice, at some level this is like the minimum wage: I dislike the idea of just ditching code and saying, sure, do this. Because a few people who are reasonably comfortable financially will do this. But it also becomes a giant opportunity to take advantage of people and put people into subpar houses that cost just slightly less than adequate houses do, and that's a deep rabbit hole to fall down. There's not "nothing" to prevent condo dues from spiraling out of affordability. Regulation of condo dues is absolutely possible and in some places exists already, and basically doesn't require any statutory changes more significant than a major city making an enormous building code change would be.

I'm not bothered by the idea of this in smaller markets or rural areas, but I don't think decreasing regulation is a good way to solve current housing issues in larger markets.
posted by Sequence at 11:24 PM on October 29, 2017


Nobody is suggesting ditching the building code, just amend it to allow for smaller homes.
posted by elsietheeel at 11:53 PM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


"I just wish it was legal to put tiny houses on tiny lots in most cities (including mine, Seattle). I'd love to own my own patch of dirt again, if only for the price stability. If somebody would sell me a 1,000sqft lot in town where I could build a 600sqft building, I'd do it tomorrow."

I was batting this idea around with some of my civic activist friends in Peoria. There are a bunch of very small lots in older neighborhoods that were built as streetcar neighborhoods. The lots are 30 feet wide (generally 100 to 120 feet deep, with alley access), which makes it difficult to build to code at all on those lots, and they're generally in quite poor areas of the city where you can buy a whole house (a falling down one, but a house) for $6,000. Anyway, a bunch of these very small lots are empty after the houses on them were condemned and torn down and the lots are too narrow to build new under current code. There a fair amount of pent-up demand for tiny house locations and a number of people who move in to any city that makes those locations available. We thought permitting tiny houses in certain districts could be a big benefit, drawing homeowners to the area, putting houses on empty lots, bringing investment dollars and small businesses and arty people to a struggling neighborhood. You'd create limits, like "no more than 5% of the lots on any block may be occupied by movable tiny homes," require them to pass fire inspection and to have adequate winter insulation, and require them to look like houses (rather than like RVs -- and the city already had "form based" zoning codes that allow buildings in some districts to stray from strict residential/commercial/industrial uses and allow other code variances, but require them to suit the visual look of the area). Probably restrict it to people who bought the lots (huge slumlord problem; plus lots go as cheap as $2000) during the pilot. But it'd be a cool way to repurpose these very small lots that are empty and hard to build on, while maintaining the character of the neighborhood.

There was also a big push for the city to adopt the latest building code adjustments, which reduce the mandatory size of rooms (I think 7 x 10 was the old minimum?) and have less-strict rules about kitchens (you could have a "great room" now with the kitchen in the sitting area without a wall or counter separating it), which really opened up possibilities for smaller and more flexible homes. Instead of a teeny kitchen and a teeny living room, you can have a kitchen/living room. You can have a teeny bedroom if you want to, just big enough to be an office, or maybe to serve as a bunkroom if you're a parent with part-time custody or a grandparent whose grandkids visit and you don't need a whole BEDROOM but you want the kids to have their own little space with a door that shuts. There were extant houses in Peoria as small as 300 square feet, and entire neighborhoods where the houses would be illegal to build today (and are complicated to renovate because the building code is so overexcited about space), and there's demand for those houses, and there's demand for new and modern versions of those houses, and there are entire neighborhoods where teeny new houses would fit the lots, suit the neighborhood, and infuse some much-needed cash.

Not that every house should be a tiny house. But when these super-small, sub-600-square-foot houses came on the market in Peoria, even in bad neighborhoods, they sold FAST. There are people for whom that's the right amount of space at the right price, and it's a niche that is underserved. I had a lot of people say, "Now that the kids have all moved out, I'd love to move to something smaller, but the only stuff coming on the market is family housing unless I want to move halfway across town. I want to stay in my own neighborhood." If there were a greater diversity of housing choices in individual neighborhoods, that'd be good for everyone -- my widowed friend who had a house she bought when she had a husband and four kids, and now all the kids were grown, was sick of housekeeping it, but there wasn't anything smaller that wouldn't require her to leave the neighborhood she'd lived in almost her entire life, and on the rare occasions something smaller came on the market in her neighborhood, it was typically in pretty bad repair. If she could have bought a newer-built, small house -- nice big kitchen/living room for family gatherings, bedroom for her, loft for the grandkids -- she would have snapped that up in an instant, and lowered her taxes and maintenance costs, and freed up her big house for a family with kids who needed the space.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:57 PM on October 29, 2017 [7 favorites]


Wait, wait, wait. In what scenario does one have sufficient income and good enough credit to get the mortgage to buy even a tiny house (and then pay property taxes and maintain the property on top of the mortgage going forward) but not good enough to rent?

I think it makes sense if you think about how rent tends to climb and never stops. Plus you don't get a lot of stability. Lots of places don't have strong tenants rights. So your landlord decides to sell the place in 30 days and since you got this place all the other available places climbed out of your price range and/or 30 other people are vying for them. If you have some money or enough credit to buy the smallest thing you can afford, you're making a bet that you can provide yourself more stability with this asset. Keeping it running is just up to you and you're not dependent on someone else's business being viable. It's a very alluring idea.
posted by bleep at 12:10 AM on October 30, 2017


Nobody is suggesting ditching the building code, just amend it to allow for smaller homes.

I'm not saying this change is a bad idea everywhere; I think it's fine in smaller markets and rural areas and as add-on buildings to freestanding homes. I just think there's a lot of risk involved to taking an under-regulated market and then letting the developers parcel it up even smaller and smaller, particularly if it involves other code compromises. And once you're to the point of writing very, very specific laws that are intended to let only a very small number of people do this, people are better served by effort put into improving the regulations for example on HOAs. It's not that I don't want to see this at all, it's just that I don't want to see it put forth as something to solve the major city affordable housing crisis. If you allow very small houses before you fix the other stuff, all you end up with is very small houses with terrible HOAs, or very small houses being rented out by terrible landlords, the same as apartments or condos. There's nothing inherent about these that saves them from the problems already seen with multi-tenant dwellings, and there's some stuff that can be worse, because you're not creating vertical density and because of the chance of things in the code being relaxed that aren't just square footage requirements.
posted by Sequence at 1:36 AM on October 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


The lots are 30 feet wide (generally 100 to 120 feet deep, with alley access

Wait, hang on. This is the exact size of my lot, upon which sits a brick 1200 square ft 3/2. I have a nice front and back yard (with chickens and a vegetable garden). This is not a small lot that warrants building a glorified garden shed.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:28 AM on October 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


Those lots sound perfect for rowhouses and, yeah, are not that tiny. Portland does the “skinny house” thing (which I also think should be rowhouses/townhouses, dammit) and those lots are generally 25x100. We have a bias in our code against apartments, rowhouses, townhouses that has made overall housing unaffordable. Portland finally adopted some new rules that made it a bit easier to build duplexes.

A number of my clients are gaga for ADUs, rentable units made from converted basements, garages, or new construction, separate from the main house. But the economics of it are tricky. The city recently put forth an idea of putting in funds/grants (can’t remember the exact financial incentive) to get people to build an ADU on their property and require for a fixed time (5 years) that they rent to folks who are currently in desperate need of housing. The rending of garments on this has been typical.
posted by amanda at 6:54 AM on October 30, 2017


Here’s an article on that idea. I get the occasional HGTV-inspired client and they can be tough because they feel (sometimes) like they are educated about the process but they are usually way too starry-eyed and have not dug in on the financials which can really put a damper on the party.
posted by amanda at 6:59 AM on October 30, 2017


I kind of assumed the cost of tiny houses would scale proportionally to their size. Come to find out, they're generally twice as expensive per square foot compared to traditional homes plus the cost of land to put it on.

Is this movement a scam? Is this a niche grift by developers to spend half as much on labor and materials while charging the same amount?
posted by FakeFreyja at 7:02 AM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


30 feet is fine for a row house but this is zoned single family detached with a significant setback on the sides, and the building code in Peoria makes it very difficult to build those lots. None of the existing houses -- about that 1200 square foot size -- would be legal to build today. Sometimes they are not legal to renovate.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:09 AM on October 30, 2017


A lot of construction costs don't really break down per-square-foot. Permits cost the same. Demolition of whatever is on the lot already, installation of utilities, labor costs. The materials aren't really the main expense, so cutting them in half or a quarter doesn't cut the cost of the entire project by a half or a quarter.

Sounds like Peoria needs to change their building code. We have a single-family detached on that 30x100 lot and it's... normal? It's a normal house in a normal neighborhood where all the lots are about that size and it's very pleasant. Who is benefiting from these weird zoning laws that prevent the exact type of idyllic 50's suburb that everyone seems salivating to return to?
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:13 AM on October 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


A few weeks ago, at a local farmers market, a company brought in a tiny house to show off to people who are looking to "get away from it all" as a vacation option in one of the scenically-rustic-but-hardly-roughing-it areas where these things are deployed.

This, presumably, is meant to be considered a novel and welcome change for those living in three-story brownstones or even larger properties in NW DC.

The Smiling Young Person who was vectoring the monied into this mini-structure saw me watching and asked if I'd be interested. I replied that I live in a studio apartment, which is much the same experience but without the twee.

Parenthetically, has "tweehouse" been used to describe these things? If not, I call dibs.
posted by the sobsister at 7:46 AM on October 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


Is this where I say that I've lived for 10 years in ~500sqft apartments with my daughter and (for most of those years) my mother? (And ~500 books?) And we're fine?

I read somewhere that the original Levittown houses - the ones that launched the postwar suburban boom, out of the cramped spaces of the city - were 700sqft plus attic. And people were baby-booming in those houses. 5 people in 700sqft was the American Dream.

I will say that I'd really like to have a tiny garage, though, for bikes and projects. It took a while before I realized that we were all getting itchy because of sawdust from the shelving I was making.

Anyway, I don't have much useful to add to discussion, other than that if you want to live in a small space it helps if everyone is a quiet minimalist.
posted by clawsoon at 8:26 AM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is an interesting thread to juxtapose against the 'open office floorplan' one. I've heard so many complaints about sharing walls and hearing neighbors that I get tiny detached houses. Not interested in it for myself, but I get it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've lived in trailer houses too, and those things are terrible. Low ceilings, lousy build quality. I can see why people with some funds wouldn't be interested.

I have a friend who has anecdotally said his family wants something in the middle ground between a popup camper and tiny house or RV (also insanely expensive) and the product doesn't currently exist.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:42 AM on October 30, 2017


The thing I find hilarious about my neighborhood (late 40s, early 50s, all built at the same time on land that had previously been a golf course) is that the garages are TINY. Like, think about a car from 1950. Is it a small car? No, it is a huge fucking land yacht with fins, right? Me getting into my garage with my 2010 Outback requires Crisco. My husband is nearly unable to manage the geometry required. All the streets in the neighborhood are lined with cars not because no one has garages, it's because everyone has a garage so small that they just went, "Fuck it, turn it into a rec room."

And yeah, all the houses are small. Our first house was right around the corner from our current one, an 800 sq ft 2/1 (and yes, the garage had been turned into a den). All the houses on my street top out at about 1200-1400 and all the lots are 3000-4000 sq ft.

There's a couple houses built by Frank Lloyd Wright disciples in the neighborhood and one of them is currently on the market (for about 3x what all the houses around it are worth, but it's got a plaque, so). It's a Usonian typed home and they built an addition while rehabbing in order to sell it because TINY.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:49 AM on October 30, 2017


I read somewhere that the original Levittown houses - the ones that launched the postwar suburban boom, out of the cramped spaces of the city - were 700sqft plus attic. And people were baby-booming in those houses. 5 people in 700sqft was the American Dream.

Having an attic full of storage space is huge! So much of livability depends on things like layout and storage. And I fear these are areas where livability buck up against modern design trends. I watched an episode of Tiny House Hunters last night where a dad of a family of five kept harping about how he wanted his sub-500 square foot space to be an open floor plan. Which means there goes any semblance of privacy or say, containing bathroom or kitchen smells.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:02 AM on October 30, 2017


Those lots in Peoria sound great for shotgun-style houses. They tend to be no more than twelve feet or so wide, but they make up for it and length. With a finished basement, a second story, and a porch, you’d have a good bit of room in there without building right up to the edge of your lot.

However, I do also see the benefit of opening those lots for tiny movable houses, especially since Workforce Mobility is becoming more and more of an issue in the United States even for professional people.

Zoning can be a real double-edged sword sometimes.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:47 AM on October 30, 2017


And yes, I get so sick of the obsession with "open plan" on HGTV shows! If your whole house is open plan, where do you shove all the clutter when people are coming over in a hurry? You'd have to keep your kitchen perfectly spotless all the time!

It's perfectly fine to like an open plan if an open plan is what you like. But they act as if it's a basic necessity of life or something. If the house doesn't have it, their reaction is the same as if it didn't have wndows or indoor plumbing.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:59 AM on October 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


I live in a row house, and it's not noisy. It is incredibly cheap to heat (I once lived in a similar row for several months without heat because I ran out of money for oil), quiet, and spacious, with light in every room except the laundry. The downside is the possibility of fire jumping from building to building; my next door neighbor for a long time was an alcoholic who smoked in bed and I worried.
posted by Peach at 12:42 PM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


COD: that Tiny Home Expo thing set up shop on our town square and the wife and I thought it would be a swell way to spend the afternoon as well. Until we found out the tickets were $60. To look at tiny, laughably overpriced houses. On wheels. That someone was going to try and sell us on. Screw. That.

We had cocktails and tapas on a patio and pondered tiny houses from afar. For less than $60.
posted by kjs3 at 12:46 PM on October 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


We are currently in the process of putting a small 300 sq ft addition on our 900 sq ft 1950's 2-bedroom bungalow. It was getting cramped with 2 adults and 2 kids now that the kids are getting bigger. Maybe we just have too much crap. The addition will give us another small bedroom, a bigger dining room, a bigger master bedroom and closet, and some extra storage.

I find the tiny house thing fascinating even though I would never subject myself to living in a glorified RV trailer, much less with a family. I personally don't get why anyone would put up with all the compromises and inadequate toilet and bathing facilities when you could just rent a small apartment, which is much more efficient and environmentally-friendly then everyone living in a tiny stand-alone box on wheels. Lots of interesting ideas for space saving though.

A couple of my buddies who have a lot of house building experience have been throwing around the idea of building these things and selling them to suckers who want to live in them. From what we can see the profit margins on pre-built tine crapshacks on wheels looks pretty high.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:25 PM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


i'm all for americans shifting from mcmansions the size of a medieval french village to something more sustainable but the tiny home thing really seems like a toxic blend of late stage capitalism, class tourism, and look-at-me minimalism
posted by entropicamericana at 1:29 PM on October 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


There's a couple houses built by Frank Lloyd Wright disciples in the neighborhood and one of them is currently on the market

@soren_lorenson, I clicked out of curiosity and now I need to curl into a very small ball under my (open-plan!) desk and contemplate the state of my life because that historic house costs less than a mediocre 2-bedroom condo here in DC. I don't think I can read real-estate-related MeFi threads while apartment hunting!
posted by bowtiesarecool at 12:32 PM on October 31, 2017


I clicked on soren_lorenson's link and thought, "$350k for a house in Stanton Heights? What the hell? Who's going to pay that much?" But then I'm still amazed that the median house price here is over $100K.
posted by octothorpe at 12:41 PM on October 31, 2017


30 feet is fine for a row house but this is zoned single family detached with a significant setback on the sides, and the building code in Peoria makes it very difficult to build those lots. None of the existing houses -- about that 1200 square foot size -- would be legal to build today. Sometimes they are not legal to renovate.

Our lot in DC is 20 x 74.25 (and with a corner cut off of it in the alley, at that). We will have to request a zoning variance for lot occupancy if we do so much as rebuild the deck that's already on the back of the house. Such a variance is almost, but not quite, pro forma in neighborhoods in DC that predate the current zoning code, but it's still a hoop we have to jump through.

Peoria needs to get with the row houses already or streamline its variance process (or both).
posted by fedward at 5:21 PM on October 31, 2017


I want to know more about tiny yards. Even if zoning ordinances changed, I imagine the romance of a tiny house does not include having a 10x10 patch of grass with a neighbor staring at you 11 feet away on both sides. So while the house may take up less space, what does it really mean in a city or suburb?
posted by nakedmolerats at 5:22 PM on October 31, 2017


what does it really mean in a city or suburb?

I feel pretty qualified to answer this, since our total outdoor space is about 600 square feet, and part of that is actually our front porch. A little bit of space is a lot better than none at all (like in an apartment). Our front yard is what DC people call a "postage stamp." We have a paved walk to our front porch. On one side of it is a holly separating our postage stamp from the next door neighbor's postage stamp; on the other was a 10x12 plot of grass (mostly weeds) until this spring, when I tilled it using a fork and spade (about four hours very muddy work). We now have a flower garden and we're getting a tree put in today. Our front yard (well, garden as of this year), however, is actually public land (in DC code it's called "public parking"), so there are restrictions about how we could landscape and fence it (if we wanted a fence, which we don't, it would be limited both in height and opacity – chain link is OK, some lattice is allowable, but a solid wood fence would not be).

Our back "yard" opens up into an alley and mostly consists of a busted concrete driveway with a small strip of grass next to it. Previous owners have prioritized car parking so there's no back fence and there's a concrete cutout where we could have had more grass, which presumably made it easier to pull a car in and out of the driveway. When we have money to spare we will install a fence at the property line and landscape our tiny yard into a more private garden to make it hospitable to humans instead of cars. We don't own a car, but we will probably still replace the driveway with permeable pavers so we have something we can use as a seating area for the 360 days a year we have no need to put a car back there, but still have a place to unload big Costco runs. We also have a back deck that butts up against our next door neighbor's back deck. It doesn't feel extremely private, but it does feel like ours.

From what we have: it's nice to have the space that's ours, and depending on our summer work and travel schedules we have done a little bit of vegetable and herb gardening. The strangest thing about it is that we still have to own yard tools like a mower for our very tiny lot. The mower lost a critical part last year, and getting rid of the yard in front also meant I could just use a string trimmer instead of replacing the mower. When we landscape the back I won't even have that little plot of grass to maintain either, since the whole thing will be either paved or planted.
posted by fedward at 9:22 AM on November 1, 2017


We have a narrow linear yard running along the side of our townhouse that was grass when we moved in but is now all flowers and ground cover. There's also a 15x15 or so brick patio in the back between the house and the garage. It's not much land but it really changes the nature of living in the city when you can sit on your porch next to the garden during the warm months. I'd never want to live somewhere without a little outdoor space.

We do have neighbors 11 feet away in the next townhouse but they're just lovely and come over and hang out and drink beer with us on the porch.
posted by octothorpe at 10:04 AM on November 1, 2017


So while the house may take up less space, what does it really mean in a city or suburb?

I'm not sure what this means? You're living exactly like every other person in the city except your house is super small. Big, private yards aren't generally a thing in the urban landscape no matter what size your house is.

Though I get the impression that a lot of Tiny House Hunters want to have that thing on some land in the hinters to ~~get away from it all. Which, ok cool, but you know you can buy like an actual house way out in the boonies for the same price, so I continue to not get it.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:46 PM on November 1, 2017 [3 favorites]


« Older Hack More Nazis   |   Looking for Surprises in Senegal Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments