The owners promote the resort as a learning center and place to “try before you buy”; they also have a dealership for purchasing blueprints or finished houses....The writer of the article emerges from the experience "feeling wistful, a tiny house fan wanting just a little more."
Guests either leave Caravan thinking “No way,” or their visit fortifies their dream. “Some are really here investigating and measuring,” Delman said, “or, they never thought about living in one, but staying here, they realize they can downsize.”
October 27, 2015
"People think nothing of spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars building a tiny house, but very few people have been inside a tiny house."
Says an owner of a tiny house hotel in Portland. She and her partner, a WaPo travel writer tells us, "seem more at ease as small-living activists and educators than hoteliers, regularly open the tiny houses for tours..."
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Can't help but be reminded of that Geico insurance ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S65sOut6Mt4
The "tiny house" movement is propaganda for the diminished expectations movement that is such a big part of the left. If they like "tiny houses" Why not a comfortable container in the Bay Area?
Have seen numerous shipping container housing projects over the years and none of them really took off. To make containers truly livable long term (combining multiple containers, decent finishes, buildout etc) it seems to cross a price threshold where a person who can afford to do it would likely build a traditional dwelling.
This is more about creative subdividing to me. Whether it's a tent or a shipping container.
Sure. You can even take it with you if you move.
What is a "small living activist"?
-Someone that lives in a small house?
-Someone that wants all of us to live in a small house?
-Someone that wants government to subsidize living is small houses?
-Someone that can only afford a small house because of bizarre zoning restrictions?
Back to the womb. It is warm and comfortable in there.
We had tiny houses when I was young. They were called trailer parks. Ask James Carville what you get when you drag a $100 bill through a trailer park. It's not good.
Great questions, Dan Hossley
We don't get judgmental of people wanting to live in more space, why do we get judgmental of people wanting to live in less space? The problem with trailer parks is not the size of the dwelling, Jim.
Pre-fab or mobile homes are inexpensive, useful and widely available.
This tiny house trend reminds me of people wanting SUVs instead of minivans.
I wait patiently for the tiny house criticisms to start, as criticisms of SUVs took a few years...
Michael K, there is a great shipping container house in Dallas. It was part of the AIA tour. The catch is that it was more than one. OK, maybe it was 3 stories and about 12 containers.
Once you've saved all the money by using containers, you start spending lots more on everything else. Welders get paid more than framers.
As for the article, I think it is a great idea. You will peel off some potential buyers, but until you actually spend large amounts of time in your tiny house, you will not experience the downside of such living. I once lived in a Buick. I once lived in a $95/mo mobile home. It gets old very fast.
I know someone who is about to get married and move into a tiny house, less than 400 sq. ft. I asked her how much of her life she wanted to spend living with a composting toilet.
I am not one for the mansion trend. Many years ago, when I was in college, some of my friends lived in typical California houses which were 700 square feet with two bedrooms and one bathroom. The "tiny house" thing is not the same as those were.
The Bay Area is the most extreme example but left wing run cities are the cause. Of course, Detroit and Baltimore have lower housing costs but those that have not yet collapsed in crime are still expensive due to zoning regulation.
The Bay Area has a crazy house market. If you are fortunate to own a home here, you are de facto rich. When we got married 20 years ago, after saving for a home, we put offers on 7 separate homes, and got rejected each time - the sales prices were going 20% over the asking price. Eventually, we bought a modest home for $350K -- which I thought was a ton of money at the time. Had way too many sleepless nights worrying about the mortgage, the taxes, the upkeep, etc, etc.
Today, $350K will afford you the luxury of a porta-potty in West Oakland, next to a crack house. It's practically like Manhattan here -- not good for young couples starting out.
"Eventually, we bought a modest home for $350K -- which I thought was a ton of money at the time."
I think that's a ton of money now.
Cook, as you know, that's maybe a 1BR in Manhattan.
And then you have the maintenance!
"not good for young couples starting out."
My daughter-in-law is here today because their power is out and we were talking about this topic. I bought my first house in South Pasadena in 1969, a couple of months before her husband was born, for $35,000. The first house we had made an offer on was two blocks away and the price was $19,000. We lived in the second house until 1972 when we moved to Orange County where we bought a house for $47,000. We sold the South Pasadena house for the price we had paid three years before.
About ten years later, a friend sent my wife a brochure from an open house on out old house. It was for sale for $595,000. That was 30 years ago. Here is a house across the street. Same size except only 2 bedrooms.
2029 Amherst Dr This Single-Family Home located at 2029 Amherst Drive, South Pasadena, CA sold for $1,340,000on Sep 1, 2015. 2029 Amherst Dr has 2 beds, 2 baths, and approximately 1,793 square feet. The property has a lot size of 5,358 sqft and was built in 1938.
Sarah Palin was correct about inflation when the left ridiculed her.
I think I'd like a small house. But what I really want, I think, is less clutter. A small house would make me do that.
Small houses also attract those who wish to live "off the grid" without connections to modern civilization - for reasons of self-sufficiency, survivalism, apocalyptic preparation, or antagonism towards other humans.
Here in Texas there used to be a wonderful collection of frontier houses in the town of Round Top, gathered there by a delightful woman who simply wanted to preserve these disappearing artifacts of Texas' early settlers. Many of them would qualify as "small houses" as defined today, although a comfortable single-holer out back would be the norm, rather than an indoors "composter." Built from solid oak and cedar logs, hand-cut and hand-fitted, the cabins served to raise entire families in, sometimes for multiple generations.
That collection of frontier era buildings, after the passing of their original collector, became a place to house boutique stores and restaurants that attract tourists and antique buyers from all over. And the frontier history is pretty much gone.
But small houses work, and have for a long, long time.
I lived and traveled in a modified VW Kombi for months on end in Eastern and Western Europe and throughout South America, sleeping in Buenos Aires, Rio, São Paulo, Campinas, Montevideo, Santiago, Curitiba, Camburiu, Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona, Malaga, Cádiz, Granada, Munich and others. We were three CLOSE friends in Europe and two in South America. We washed up in the countryside and in restaurants and often cooked outside with found firewood. It would be duck soup to live in a small house where one could stand up!
I'd like a small house. I'd put it out back, behind my big house, and let guests stay there when they visit.
Even the tiniest houses won't generate the same density as a high-rise; therefore, they're never going to do much for low-cost living in dense urban areas with high land prices. Even if you could bend zoning regulations to permit them.
And 120sf apartments in those high rises don't work so well either, at least not unless you can convince people to live without real windows (no, an electronic screen and HVAC just isn't the same) and even so tiny apartments will require two exits to meet building codes, and adequate sizing of common areas (such as corridors and stairs) relative to the number of expected occupants for fire safety. Although I suppose costs could be reduced somewhat if residents are willing to share bathrooms and kitchens (but who cleans them?) as was sometimes done in bygone days.
Something like a tiny house can work as a weekend/vacation cabin (like all those tiny A-frames that were built in the 1960s and '70s), but that use is more like temporarily inhabiting a motel room than living in a home.
...but very few people have been inside a tiny house.
'cause...you know...tiny.
What's the difference between a "tiny house" and an Airstream trailer?
"What's the difference between a "tiny house" and an Airstream trailer?"
I have spent weeks in a 40 foot sailboat and gave serious thought to going cruising for years at a time.
The "tiny house" thing is not real but is propaganda by lefties who want everyone to live in ant hills.
As some one who enjoys tiny house shows, mostly for the obliviousness of the participants, this article ignores many of the immediately obvious points.
The cost of the shacks is usually between 30K-50K, with the owner typically putting in hundreds if not over a thousand hours of their own labor for free. So that represents an opportunity cost of $10K or more. So all and all these shacks are fairly expensive.
Secondly I doubt you could get a mortgage on any of these things. Almost by definition anyone can hook up to your house and drive off with it while you are off at a raw juice bar.
Thirdly these things almost exclusively seem to be built on "borrowed" property- usually parents or a friend is letting them squat. So how sustainable is that. Its not like the neighbors are going to love having a composting toilet in the backyard for ever.
Finally what is the real sale of these rather considerable environment going to be? You have to find someone who wants a shack that has to be moved to other land. And who wants a tiny dwelling where you cant even sit upright in your bedroom. And who can self finance because they wont be able to get a mortgage. So that is going to be a pretty limited buyer pool.
My first house was small, not even 500 sq ft. Probably less. But the rooms were big enough, no weird shapes. It had a fenced yard, an old garage, and a cellar. God I loved that thing. It fit like a glove. You don't feel lonely in a house like that even when you live by yourself.
It really was small looking though. Most people would be embarrassed to buy a place like that except to use as a rental. I had a guy whose family lived in one of the worst trailer parks in town make fun of my house. His house would have been much bigger than mine, if he could have afforded to buy a house.
Thing is, tiny houses shouldn't have to be that small. Why not houses like my first? Because anyone who could actually buy one would not. It's either tiny houses, or something much more grand. No in between.
The ones buying the fancy yuppified tiny houses are hipsters who have been priced out of their outrageous preferred markets. Who would get a much bigger house, if they could afford to. But not some little apartment-on-a-lot like I had. They're too proud for that, and definitely too proud for trailer parks.
A tiny house (shack, cabin?) great for a vacation, or a great place to vacation from life, but not at $145 per night.
@Michael K
The "tiny house" thing is not real but is propaganda by lefties who want everyone to live in ant hills.
The Lefties are the strangest bunch, aren't they? They wants us all to live in a tiny house, drive a Prius, eat Vegan, and worship the spotted owl.
Around the third, maybe fourth tiny-house story I slogged through, I noticed what appeared to be a common denominator, though one most certainly never highlighted in any way: the owners/occupants of these tiny houses all seemed to have storage units. Into and out of which they rotated unseasonable clothing, furniture, cookware,toys, all the impedimenta they could not bring themselves to give up no matter how good a game they talked...so in effect the TinyHousers actually have TWO Tiny Houses -- one for them, and one for their Stuff. I'm assuming the Rules Committee has already passed on this one as an allowable loophole, but I can't help thinking it's rather a wee bit hypocritical. Just sayin', is all.
Nobody emerged from anything.
In fact, the idea of emerging has become something more than just an idea, but an obsession potentially, but, of course, potentially not too.
What a country! people buying their prison cells. At the least the one the State gives you can handle rough weather. No storm is going to cause a government prison cell to fly away.
I find the idea of a tiny house appealing like I find Walden (the original tiny house) appealing. I think it would force me to consider what really mattered about my life and get rid of everything else. But, just like with Walden, I'm not brave enough to actually try it out.
No
I do love the way today's tiny house trend and the new wave of organic farmers are not at all to be confused with people who live in trailers and/or people who are farmers. No way. They are so much chicer and never would have paid any attention to *those people* in high school.
I really hope the tiny house trend takes off. More space for MEEE!
While they're at it they should get tiny cars too. More parking for MEEE!
MayBee has it right (as do others). This is a snobbish gambit: "No, no, of course I'm not like those trailer trash! Not I! I'm fashionable."
Michael K makes a good point too: "Don't think of it as a shitty itty bitty little one room shovel. Think of it as hip! You'll get used to it... eventually. And it's green!"
Compare prices of tiny houses to double wide trailers. Seriously. They make some nice fuckin' double wides these days. Tiny houses simply do not compare. Same price, or actually less.
Urban hipsters! Sheesh!
Trailer trash or McMansion trash or even people who have Yuge Charity Scams and run for president. It don't matter. Good people is good people, and bad people suck. It's the same everwhere ya go.
And, one last comment: how 'bout them Royals!
Anytime the Heartland beats the snobs from New York or California is a good day!
First thing I'm going to do when I get my tiny house is add a family room.
"What is a "small living activist"?"
How about somebody who just wants the freedom from government interference to be able to live in a tiny house if she want to. I thought conservatives who hung around Althouse would be all in favor of the government NOT being able to tell people what they can or cannot do on their own land as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.
Here in Ann Arbor, there's a college kid living in a tiny house this year, and there have been a couple of newspaper articles it. BUT, he's been very careful not to reveal who's letting him park his house on their land because he (quite sensibly) fears some government agents or other would come and evict him. Do YOU think government agents should hunt him down and evict him?
MarkW said...
"What is a "small living activist"?"
Robert Reich
Imagine your bad marriage in one of these places, bad marriage people. The murder (or suicide) rate will rise if they proliferate.
This comment section always brings out the snobbery snobs: the people obsessed with proving their rural or suburban lifestyle is superior to an urban lifestyle, while pretending urbanites are actually the ones being snobby.
No one is forcing you to live in a tiny house. No one is forcing you to live in New York or San Francisco. Let people live where and how they want to live and stop pretending like other peoples' choices are a slight against your own.
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