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Small World: The Tiny House Trend
- pxndx 8y agoTiny houses are just gentrified trailers.
- Flavius 8y agoNot necessarily. Look at this house for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUZcHeszQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUZcHeszQU It's amazing what you can do with 20sqm.
- nickbauman 8y agoThis house looks amazing! But it doesn't seem like a "tiny house". I thought tiny houses were by definition on wheels with a more flexible way to hook up and out of utilities?
- organsnyder 8y agoNot necessarily. Many are stationary, built on standard foundations. Though given their size, they are definitely easier to move than larger buildings.
- 0xffff2 8y agoI don't think so. Rather, typical zoning codes in the US don't really allow for permanent tiny homes, so they usually have to be built on trailers in order to be legal.
- jandrese 8y agoI've seen plenty of "tiny home" projects built out of old shipping containers for example.
- zachrose 8y agoBut where does that put manufactured homes?
- tomatotomato37 8y agoAs the economical choice being squeezed out by landlords who can make more money off of hipsters living in over-engineered sheds.
- jessaustin 8y agoHas that happened, like, anywhere?
- pxndx 8y agoHave you seen the prices of co-living spaces? When it was called "flatmates" it used to be half the price. Tiny homes is just the next step.
- bluGill 8y agogentrified is a useful feature - trailers have earned their bad quality reputation. There is no reason they can't be higher quality.
- lawlessone 8y agountil they push up the price of trailers and make them less affordable to poorer people that relied on them.
- bluGill 8y agoThough a used tiny house is probably competitive to a new trailer and still has the original quality. Or until trailer manufactures figure out that tiny house people are willing to pay a little extra for a superficial luxury look but they care about price more than quality overall. I don't know if the latter is true or not, only time will tell.
- crispyambulance 8y ago> ...gentrified trailers. So? It's a perfectly fine way to live for some folks in some circumstances. There's nothing wrong with that and more options in housing is better. One advantage of small houses is that they tend to encourage more diversity of design, materials and higher build quality than your typical trailer or tyvek/plywood mass development tract home.
- Just_Smith 8y agoHaving grown up in trailers, I wholly disagree. Every trailer I've lived in is larger than any tiny home that I've seen, as they're striving to be as close to a "normal" house as possible. Tiny homes come from a completely different design philosophy, and as result, give a completely different experience than a trailer. They're also more portable than trailers, though the latter's name makes it sound more moveable. You'd be more correct to say that tiny homes are gentrified RVs.
- fredgrott 8y agonot really there are some startups doing these designs for those with low income to promote financial stability among working poor in the US
- jdavis703 8y agoThe real problem with gentrification is displacement. Or at least that’s the problem we should be most concerned about at a socetietal level. Everyone needs a place to live, and if some middle class people find a smaller house is what works best for their financial situation then that is OK. What we really should be concerned about is whether everyone — especially lower class people — can afford a home.
- brobdingnagians 8y agoMore like a gentrified log cabin if you ask me... nearly everyone used to live in places about this size. Having a huge home for everyone and their dog is a rather modern development, and often people don't even use most of the space in their house, or don't use it well anyhow. I personally would want more space, but it's an interesting development in culture.
- mikestew 8y agoYour statement assumes trailers as a negative. Conceptually, I love trailers. All you’ve done is reveal your biases without making any kind of statement. “I hate trailers.” Yeah, cool story, bro.
- pxndx 8y agoI want to clarify that I don't necessarily think that this is a bad thing. The "american dream" where everyone owns a 4000sq ft home, a wife, 3 kids, a car for each person and a backyard with a pool and a trampoline is not sustainable even in the short term. It's important to make the sustainable choices cool. As an European I find it weird that these people decided to go live in a place with a backyard and no public transport though.
- tjr225 8y agoThe Tiny Home trend and the "Van Life" trend are slightly unsettling to me - I wonder which forces are at play who intend to convince us that lowering our standards of living is cool? No judgement from me if you do choose to do these things, though. I do see the appeal. Maybe there is no conspiracy, maybe it is a coping mechanism. Edited "deeply" to "slightly" upon further reflection.
- war1025 8y agoI think it's more that our standards of living were artificially inflated for the past 100 - 150 years. A person doesn't actually need that much room to live comfortably. Particularly if you make use of public spaces and the outdoors.
- JadeNB 8y ago> I think it's more that our standards of living were artificially inflated for the past 100 - 150 years. This kind of perhaps excessively long historical horizon reminds me of the old joke (http://www.challzine.net/23/23scientist.html http://www.challzine.net/23/23scientist.html): > [King's College] had gotten a large bequest to the College and were trying to decide how to invest it. The bursar said, “Certainly we ought to invest it in property, real property. That has stood the college very well for the last thousand years.” But the oldest senior fellow in the room shook his head and said, “Well, that is true enough. But the last thousand years have been atypical.”
- rb808 8y agoIts also a side effect of property taxes. Why pay 10-20k a year in property taxes when you can live in a mobile home.
- teekert 8y agoThe American dream of just getting by ;) [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbdKuDNIqGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbdKuDNIqGI
- epistasis 8y agoMaybe a bit of both? Housing has been systematically blocked in some areas of the country, leaving a severe shortage, and this is one way to cope. For others, bigger is not better. More maintenance, more cleaning, more bother comes with more house. Different people trade off in different ways.
- CydeWeys 8y agoThere's definitely an appeal to engineers in building your own house from scratch. As an example, I built an 8x12' shed (details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/2kof5x/i_built_an_8x12_shed_from_scratch_the_right_way/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/2kof5x/i_built_an_8x12... ) several years back. All it took was a few months' worth of weekends and a few trips with a borrowed full-size pickup and I had it together. Obviously you'd put more effort than that into making a house (you need insulation, utilities, and more interior construction and layout), but the point is, it's all within your grasp. And it was nice working with my hands for a change given that during the work week all I'm engineering is software. And at 96 sqft, that's well within the range of the homes being discussed in the article. If I were doing it to live in rather than as a shed, I'd build a 12x16 or a 16x16, for 192 or 256 sqft. 16' is the maximum length of dimensional lumber you can typically find at a hardware store, so the advantage there is that the house has structural members extending the entire length of the house, which means it's super sturdy. 8' and 12' are also common lengths of dimensional lumber, hence the size of my shed. Also no surprise that the height is simply 8' (uncut lumber) minus the height of the floor.
- dwater 8y agoYou probably know that you can find longer dimensional lumber at a lumber yard instead of a big box store. I am building my own 2-story 2-car garage, and was surprised at how many independent lumber yards there are tucked away around town. I needed long 2x8s for my rafters, no problem finding them up to 20'. And engineered lumber comes even longer. I'm making the upstairs into a finished living space with kitchen and bath. Everyone who sees it asks how I learned to do it, and it's the same as anything else. It's all out there on the internet if you want to take the time to read and watch. I've done everything except pour the concrete for the slab, and install the roofing. I'm currently finishing out the bathroom, then I'll lay the hardwood flooring and it'll be done. It's been very satisfying.
- cheeko1234 8y agoWow. Any resources you could link to?
- 8y ago
- organsnyder 8y agoI can understand the benefits of building tiny houses in spaces that wouldn't accommodate larger buildings (such as as accessory dwelling units [ADUs] in traditional single-family neighborhoods). But I don't understand the benefits of building clusters of them: why not build a standard apartment building instead? Construction costs will be cheaper, and shared walls reduce heating/cooling costs.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoShared walls often mean you know when your neighbours are in, when they're watching TV, when they argue and what they're arguing about, when the dog is barking or the toddler having a tantrum, and even when they're walking to the other room. Even insulation benefits can't be relied on as shared walls are often uninsulated and overall insulation in apartment blocks often bare minimum to code rather than adequate. Last, but not least, I would take a small garden over an apartment without that's twice or three times the size. You're even likely to see neighbours a lot more if you have a garden to potter in, and the dog has somewhere. :)
- moosey 8y agoAs we blunder our way into the Anthropocene, discussions like this will be looked upon in terror by people living in far more cramped and efficient conditions. Why didn't you live in more efficient housing, they might ask. Oh, because I was mildly inconvenienced by my neighbors. Because I wanted a garden to grow my own food. The insulation might not be perfect. These things are not important or, in the case of the insulation, can be adjusted with aggressive regulation. We are going to force future generations to do it, because of our wasteful lifestyles. The least we can do is start working towards living like them, in honor of those whom we imprison in a hell of our making.
- rimliu 8y agoThere will be nothing of the sort.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
- useful 8y agoSome of the most fun I've had was company team building at habitat for humanity. I basically learned how to frame, insulate, and finish a home in 2 days. I think most engineers love this stuff.
- rb808 8y ago"Tiny house" AKA a normal house in the rest of the world.
- alistairSH 8y agoIs that really true? Most of the trendy tiny homes are 200-300sqft with a loft bedroom. My townhouse is modest by US standards at 1500sqft and 3 bedrooms. I believe this was about average in the early-70s (when the home was constructed). The average new home in the US is now about 2600sqft and 4-5 bedrooms.
- rb808 8y agoOK UK is perhaps smaller than average but: > The average house dimensions in UK is 91 sq m. which is a bit under 1000 sq ft. http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/average-house-dimensions-in-uk/ http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/average-house-dimensions-in-uk... > The average UK one-bedroom home is 46 sq m (495 sq ft), https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22152622 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22152622
- baybal2 8y ago"Most of the world" is almost about half living in apartment buildings, not detached houses.
- jlokier 8y agoIn the UK. The flat I live in is the _largest_ place I've lived in 28 years. Lived in quite a few different places, maybe 15. It's a two bedroom flat. Total floor area 36sqm, aka. 390sqft. It's not a "tinyhouse". It's a typical rented flat, about average for the area. I would love a larger place. I dream of storage, of a workshop room. But when I see people reporting US sizes, it's hard to even imagine that much floor area. To think, my biggest place is the same size as a specially-named "tiny house" in the US!
- vidanay 8y agoI'd be more impressed by "tiny" houses (~20% of normal size by my own definition) if they didn't cost 50%-60% of a full size house.
- ilovetux 8y agoI agree with this. The main reason is that there are a number of fixed costs mostly relating to building codes which are a good thing (IMO). Building materials are not the main cost (though they are considerable) of building a home.
- jandrese 8y agoAlso the land. The price of the home is often a fairly small part of the price of the property. That's why you see a lot of these tiny homes built in the parents backyard.
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoThe article doesn't really get into it, but there are some weird pressures in the US that really work against tiny houses, namely: our crumbling infrastructure nationwide and our system of paying for that infrasture and other civic responsibilities with property taxes. If a municipality is looking at two competing development plans for a couple acres of town: 1. 10 new $500k - 3,000sq ft McMansions = 5 million dollar base and 48 people (estimating 4 people / family) 2. 30 much smaller houses at $100k each = 3 million dollar base and 100ish new people (estimating fewer / house) In the small house scenario (if they were built on foundations and tied into city water/sewer) you also end up with 3x as many connections to install and support, significantly more kids that need educated at the local overcrowded school system, etc.
- zozbot123 8y agoThese pressures would work in favor of small housing spaces, not against them. 3 small houses would in fact be worth quite a bit more than 1 house that's 3 times as large, especially in high-cost-of-living areas.
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoThe math is highly location dependent, but _in general_ the rise of the McMansion across the US is deeply linked with the property tax pressure. It's not just the price of the home, but that more people == more services that need provided (school, water, roads, etc.)
- alistairSH 8y agoProbably related... There are also zoning constraints. Most districts have a minimum home size - anything smaller is a mobile home - and many neighborhoods don't allow mobile homes. So, you can build/buy a tiny home and use it like a mobile home, but that limits where you can put it. Or, you can try to get the county/city/whatever to allow it as a permanent home (with whatever zoning variance is required).
- sborra 8y agoSurely more people are an asset for the local government, not a liability? You'd have 3x the tax revenue, 3x the purchasing power, plus the logistic efficiency that allows for local business to spring up and mass transportation to be viable.
- jerf 8y agoTiny house retention seems to be fairly poor. Search a bit for "give up tiny house" or something and you'll get a lot of people giving up the lifestyle, and it seems hard to come by people who have been doing it for a long time. Not impossible, because nothing is impossible, but not easy. It makes journalists swoon, but I don't see it as something that has a lot of future to it. Seems like something that sounds a lot better in people's heads than in reality. Edit: FWIW, I don't disagree that a lot of people have more house than they may "need" and may benefit from downsizing. (Certainly we've got more "stuff" than we need; my wife and I all but wage a constant war on the "stuff" that seems at times to spontaneously generate from the ether.) But I rather suspect the optimum is not in the 150sqft range for very many people, and indeed, not even particularly near it.
- marktangotango 8y agoAsk anyone who grew up in a decrepit mobile home park or a rotting old farmhouse in rural poverty or tiny crumbling 60+ year old housing in impoverished urban areas about the appeal of “tiny house”. I did and I find the entire concept confounding.
- skosch 8y ago1. Tiny houses are nothing like what you are comparing them to. 2. For sure, 150sqft is unreasonably small, even if it's a very luxurious 150sqft. But that's a strawman. If all of the sensationalism around this extreme end of the spectrum inspires Joe Public to reconsider his American dream of owning a 2600sqft home, and maybe opt for 700sqft instead, then that's a massive win both on the sustainability and on the household debt fronts. We should be celebrating, celebrating, celebrating anyone stretching the Overton window on this topic.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThere is a big difference between decrepit, crumbling or rotting versus a clean tiny house with quality interior.
- chrisco255 8y agoUhh...I grew up in an rural area with a lot of trailers and many of my relatives still live in them. They're proud of their homes and they find tiny houses pretty novel. Yeah there's some decrepit mobile home parks out there, but most of these communities are not decrepit at all. By the way, modern mobile homes (built in the 90s and later) get pretty big, many of them have 4 bedroom floor plans and stylish interiors.
- seedie 8y agoToday I stumbled over another tiny house article and there I learned about Paulownia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia Despite being very light its a very stable hard-wood used in mobile tiny houses as wood for the interior
- ahallock 8y agoMy friend spent 10 years, off and on, building a tiny house. While he learned a great deal about construction, he sold the house before ever using it and in retrospect thought it was a huge waste of time and money. I think people have fantasies that don't match reality. I think he saw himself living a nomadic, environmentally-friendly lifestyle, but you can't have your house within city limits and you end up living far away from the action in a cramped space. I thought the idea was ridiculous myself and wish I'd talked my friend out of it.
- galfarragem 8y agoA tiny house doesn't mean only a small space: tiny house = tiny house + large yard - maintenance - mortgage - noise I'm actually planning to build one, 36m2/400sf in a 2 acres property. Regardless, I will have plenty of space: outdoors.
- sf_rob 8y agoSeems that the overlap of tiny homes and lite homesteading is large, whether that be for pragmatic or romantic reasons.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoDo you have a family? And you must have a shed the size of your house to hold the lawnmower you'll need for all that.
- galfarragem 8y agoThis house will have only a small bedroom, a wc and a living/kitchen/dining room. However I'll assure the possibility of easily extending 1 or 2 small bedrooms and a garage if/when I get kids. For now I just plan to use it on weekends and holydays. And no lawns. Maybe a vegetable garden.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoIs the expansion a matter of tearing the connecting walls down to the studs and building back up? The idea of a truly modular home, where you can expand or shrink it with relatively little effort (I'm thinking requiring no contractors - hookups are all plug and play) really intrigues me. Of course, that's a nightmare when considering any sort of centralized heat source or utility, but that's a really fun idea.
- galfarragem 8y agoIs the expansion a matter of tearing the connecting walls down to the studs and building back up? Making it as a 'lego' would require a lot of research. That would only pay if I would open a business based on that. So, for now, I'm only making the main entrance near a corner. This door will connect with the second module (if I ever build it). The heat source will be near this corner also. I'm slowly making the project and planning to build it myself as much as possible. It helps that I'm originally an architect (buildings not IT) and used to help my father on trades.
- test1235 8y agoAs eloquently as they describe the houses, I feel a photo or two would've been worth a few thousand words here.
- rsync 8y agoI highly recommend Believer Magazine and encourage you to subscribe to the print version. It changed hands about two years ago and is now published out of UNLV (or something ?) but the content is still the same old Believer content and has not suffered at all.
- stu2010 8y agoI don't understand why these are so chic, but manufactured housing isn't. For these quoted build costs, you could do a pretty highly upgraded singlewide, and it would age better than any of these and can actually be permanently installed onto a foundation.
- war1025 8y agoI would guess it's because most people's experience with manufactured housing is the base model kind, where everything is super shoddy. Also lack of exposure to some extent. People can only dream about what they know.
- WalterSear 8y agoManufactured housing comes without the desired social signaling.
- systemtest 8y agoThe problem in the Netherlands is that land is expensive. A 40 square meter tiny house in Almere was for sale at €200.000, while a nearby 3 bedroom family house was for sale at €220.000. They both had a garden but the family house was a row home. They both used about the same amount of land. Houses are cheap enough that the price difference between a tiny house and a regular house is negligible when you add the price of land onto it. And the fact that a tiny house sometimes needs more land because it's detached. Also, if you really care about the environment and population, live in an apartment building. It is better for the environment, because you share each others heating. You can have scale advantages when you do solar on the shared roof. You don't use as much land because you can go up in the air, which means more people can live in a popular area.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoAmerican apartments often don’t share heat very well, each unit is heavily insulated from each other and it’s not using piped hot water from a central heating plant like in Europe and Asia. Still probably a bit more efficient overall.
- metildaa 8y agoDespite heavy insulation, quite a bit of heat still migrates upward in new apartments and condos. Your neighbors are also nearly perfect insulation compared to your exterior walls too :P
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoI’m currently in a top floor apartment actually and we quickly hit outside temperatures in the winter if we don’t run the heater. This is Seattle where heat is mostly electric, radiators would probably be very different.
- metildaa 8y agoHow new is the building? Are the exterior walls properly insulated and sealed? My friends in a 3 year old building in Ballard have had to open their windows through the last few weeks, and they're only near the top floor. Another friend of mine had a similar experience in Mill Creek when on the top floor.
- f_allwein 8y agoI like the idea of making do with less, but I don't get how tiny houses can be the solution. What if your whole city/ the whole world was living in tiny houses? Would be impractical and use a lot of space. Seems that apartment blocks (with good quality, small/ flexible apartments) would make much more sense.
- driverdan 8y agoI've been living in a shuttle bus I converted for about 20 months. I built it to be like a high end RV, with everything you'd expect in an RV but with lithium batteries and a solar array. I did it for two reasons, so I could own a home with minimal expenses and so I could take my home and dog when I travel. My cost of living is significantly lower than living in conventional housing. I estimate I've spent around $50k on it. I don't understand spending $100k on a tiny home trailer. You can buy a regular house for that much and the trailer will depreciate. I don't have plans on moving into something else in the near future. With all the money I'm saving I'm paying off debts and growing my savings. I wouldn't mind owning some land and building a workshop but it's hard to find land at a reasonable price in a place I'd like to live. I do this entirely by choice. I'm fortunate enough to have a well paying, remote job. I constantly see and think about people who are forced into being houseless. One project I'd like to do is a sub-$1000 trailer home anyone could build with basic tools and a few weekends. Design and build one then put full instructions with videos online for free. Unfortunately I don't have the time right now. Feel free to ask me anything.
- BlameKaneda 8y agoHey! 1. Is it weird inviting guests over? What extra steps do you do to make them feel more comfortable, especially if they're not used to the limited space? 2. How do you store your food, specifically perishables? 3. About how much do you spend on gas per month? 4. Do you ever feel unsafe, such as when you park the bus in a public lot? Do you carry a baseball bat/etc onboard? 5. How do you wash your clothes? Do you take them to a laundromat or wash them yourself? Thanks!
- driverdan 8y ago> Is it weird inviting guests over? A few people are fine but more than that and it's crowded. I usually visit others or meet friends other places, like at a restaurant. Going to a park or campground and having a cookout works great. > How do you store your food, specifically perishables? I have a fridge. > About how much do you spend on gas per month? It varies. If I'm not traveling it's in the range of $150-275/m. If I travel it's 10mpg so roughly $0.28/mi. > Do you ever feel unsafe, such as when you park the bus in a public lot? Do you carry a baseball bat/etc onboard? No. I don't park places I'd feel unsafe. I typically park on the street. I avoid bad areas. I have pepper spray, a stun gun, knives, and blunt objects I could use for personal defense if necessary. > How do you wash your clothes? Do you take them to a laundromat or wash them yourself? Laundromat. I may add a washer / drier combo at some point. I'd have to give up a decent amount of space for it though.
- thisisweirdok 8y agoI think the tiny house trend is the symptom of growing wealth gaps in many places (especially the US). People are finding themselves unable to afford traditional housing, and therefore want something that doesn't require a large amount of debt (on top of an already likely student debt). My grandparents for example, could afford a traditional ranch style house on a single apprentice plumber salary back in the 60s. Good luck finding that today.
- bellerose 8y agoI'm a millennial and I don't see a house in my future. I wouldn't want one of these tiny homes. The market for them is trying to sell the environmental friendly niche and it's just nonsense to me. The person who lives in the homes are the ones that make the impact or not. Similar, I haven't heard of other millennials desiring these tiny places to call one's own. The few persons I know who like to watch youtube videos about them, are my parents generation and who own what I consider a mansion with a lot of land. Life is filled with irony.
- megaman8 8y agoI don't mind living in a small house (maybe not that small). But, the problem with most houses I see today, is that they're designed incredibly Ugly. I'm talking about the classic 2 car garage in front with an enormous concrete slab in-front (3 or 4 cars wide!!), and a little L shape next to it on a lot that's too small to accomodate such a layout and as a result, the neighbors house is 2 feet on each side. Why can't they simply build a smaller footprint at the bottom, say half the size. make it two stories that way the neighbors house is further away and place the garage in the back somewhere and put a nice stone paved driveway (not too wide) leading to the back where the garage is. The key to making these houses look nice whether it's small or large, is the ratio of height to width and length, as wells the features: such as a small tower, the slope of the roof, etc.
- bluGill 8y agoThey can build what you propose, but there is a downside: cost. A 2 story house costs more to build. Towers cost a lot of money for what you get, and are hard to insulate well. The driveway your propose actually takes up more of the lot than the one you hate (it is cheaper, but there are downsides to stone that makes most people willing to pay a lot more for something hard). You can get the nice house you propose if you are willing to pay. However most people who build decide that pretty isn't worth paying that much extra for when a cheaper house gives them the space they want/need. When they realize that a square box with the garage out front is cheap to build but too ugly they ask was can be done and the builder offers a few features that don't cost that much extra to break things up. Which is why you see a lot of bay windows and dormers, but fewer two stories.
- megaman8 8y agopersonally, I'd rather have something that's smaller and better looking than large and ugly.
- bluGill 8y agoThat is you, and is your right. Some people are more concerned about space and don't care about looks, other care about looks over space. There are thousands of other considerations, and for the most part this is a continuum with many in between choices and trade offs that each makes.
- Quequau 8y agoI've been planing a major move myself and one of things that is important to me is downsizing the heated living area, so that I can maximize my workshop space. (e.g. something sized like a 3 bedroom 2 bath home with a 2 car garage, only with the area devoted to living space and garage space flipped). As far as I can tell these tiny homes are more expensive per square foot than small single-wide mobile homes and offer few advantages: you can pull them with a truck the size that most people can drive and as most have lofts there's more usable space per square foot. In any event finding places put either a tiny or mobile home that winds up costing less than renting an apartment in a major corporate owned complex is not easy.
- vram22 8y agoSince it's sort of related and likely of interest (although this is not a tiny house), I'll share again my HN comment about an earthship I saw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18487704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18487704 See downthread from that comment for links to the place, the guy who built it, photos, etc.
- boxcardavin 8y agoI've lived in a ~250sqft 1940's era wood train car for the past 9 years, with my wife and now a newborn. It is doable if you enjoy the constraints and how it affects your decision making. I live about 5 miles from Seattle in a very rich neighborhood (a few blocks from the Paul Allen estate) on a large piece of land that is set aside as a reserve, while most of my neighbors have 5000sqft houses. As long as you have amenities (washer, dryer, full kitchen, shower, dishwasher) like I do then it's not some sort of struggle, it's more a set of limits to optimize against. My neighbors can't tell if I'm eclectic and rich or weird and poor. It's a good thing.
- haldora 8y agoHave you documented this somewhere online, and do you have pictures? Using an old train car sounds very interesting and unique! I'd enjoy reading more.
- irrational 8y agoBased on the description and OP's username, I think this might be it: https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/1949-railroad-boxcar-on-mercer-105019 https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/1949-railroad-boxcar-on-mer...
- nyolfen 8y agoop said he's lived in it for 9 years, this says 30. also first name doesn't match his username.
- snazz 8y agoDo you spend less time in your house as a result of its size? I have a feeling this is where your username came from. :)
- CydeWeys 8y agoI imagine it'd be easier to do it in a place with a nice year-round climate and no mosquitoes. And you could put up some outdoor shade pretty easily if you have the space and not have it count against your indoor square footage, and effectively get a living room that you can use most of the time.
- fipple 8y agoTiny houses work if you substitute the lack of space with close access to friends and family. That’s how nomadic people live and it works. But if you live the modern isolated American life, 250 sq ft isn’t going to cut it except for a certain personality type.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago> Tiny homes usually sell for $40,000 to $90,000 without land, and buyers typically pay cash or finance them with a property loan. Home Depot sells a 12X18 "shed" with a loft area for $10K. If you're handy, I can image you'd be able to fit this out and make a nice tiny home for much less than $40K.
- Bjorkbat 8y agoI really wish there was more diversity in offerings when it came to manufactured/trailer homes. To clarify, I'm not talking about RVs. I like tiny houses, but really only in the sense that I'm fascinated by unusually small things. Otherwise I think they're actually kind of ridiculous if your motives are to downsize and not pay $300,000+ on a house Trailer homes are pretty incredible when you think about it. They're the closest we've come yet to building houses on an assembly line in a factory. The entire thing ships in one piece. Just plunk it down on the property, hook up the utilities, and there you go. And the kicker is, they're competitive with tiny homes in terms of cost, but they're not tiny. They're small, certainly, but not tiny. This is because trailer home manufacturers have got it all figured out, whereas most tiny houses are these bespoke, custom numbers. Alas, if you live in a trailer home then you're considered "trailer trash". I wish some brave soul would undertake the task of creating, I don't know, the VW bug of trailer homes. Doesn't have to be a luxury thing, just something with character and identity. Something you can be proud of because it has a personality, just like the millions of others like it. Until then, if you want a break from the norm of homeownership, then it's either a condo, a tiny house, or a refurbished bus.
- stcredzero 8y agoTrailer homes are pretty incredible when you think about it. They're the closest we've come yet to building houses on an assembly line in a factory. People are already building house components on an assembly line in a factory. By components, I mean entire rooms and sections of houses. I wish some brave soul would undertake the task of creating, I don't know, the VW bug of trailer homes. Doesn't have to be a luxury thing, just something with character and identity. Something you can be proud of because it has a personality, just like the millions of others like it. If "the VW Bug of" means a willingness of the manufacturer to modify the traditional chassis and body layout to better accomplish design goals, then GMC did build something along the lines of what you describe. ("something with character and identity. Something you can be proud of because it has a personality, just like the millions of others like it.") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMC_motorhome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMC_motorhome
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- jdlyga 8y agoMost people living in Manhattan are already doing this. It's really not that bad. You just treat the outside as part of your living room. I go on walks all the time, and hang out in coffee shops a lot.
- dawhizkid 8y agoThe cheapest market rate condo in SF (at least, that I could find) today is a ~270 sq ft "microstudio" in SoMa for $445k.
- dbancajas 8y agoPersonally, I think at 1k-1.5K sqft is where it starts to get attractive. Price for tiny house is also around 200$/sqft so it's like a big house w/c I don't understand. I'd rather build my own house at that pricepoint.
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- ArtDev 8y agoApparently, they are not allowed in Bend Oregon even though there is a housing shortage: https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/02/family-of-4-evicted-from-272-square-foot-tiny-home-in-bend.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/02/family-of-4-evic... Absurd!
- marttt 8y agoAn archetypal Soviet-era garage box recently got converted to a Tiny House in Tartu, Estonia: https://g1.nh.ee/images/pix/iseloomuga-maja-muidu-paksude-kardinate-taha-varjuvate-eestlaste-argio-84785975.jpg https://g1.nh.ee/images/pix/iseloomuga-maja-muidu-paksude-ka... Blocks of garages like these are a common part of Soviet heritage in Estonia, so they're essentially everywhere. Not quite sure, but due to its tiny size (probably ~215 sqft or ~20 m2) one may not need an extra building permit for doing something like ths.
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- devy 8y agoStrangely relevant, I found Alexander Payne's 2017 movie "Downsizing" (starring Matt Damon) [1] interesting. Too bad, critics' reviews are mixed. [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389072/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389072/
- justboxing 8y agoTiny House = Millenial Trailer Park Home.
- arosier 8y agoMy experience, living in 375 SF in the middle of downtown SF with my wife and 1 year old is pretty awesome!
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- aooeeu 8y agoPhotos and more info at https://www.peak-view-park.com/ https://www.peak-view-park.com/. My impression is most of these houses are small not tiny (not that there's anything wrong with that).
- voltagex_ 8y agoWonder if anyone's tried to build a tiny home that's wheelchair accessible.
- stevenicr 8y agocouple years ago I spoke with the gentleman behind these: https://www.countryliving.com/home-design/a37788/granny-pods/ https://www.countryliving.com/home-design/a37788/granny-pods... and I think I remember correctly that they were designed to be ADA compliant and such.
- jeffdavis 8y agoWhat problem is this really solving? In dense areas, large buildings with small apartments make sense. Otherwise, just build normal-sized homes. What am I missing?
- car 8y agoIn Sweden these are named Attefallshus, legally permitted up to 25 square meters.
- danans 8y ago"Living Big in a Tiny House" is a great Youtube channel produced by Bryce Langston which takes viewers on tours of tiny houses around the world. I watch it weekly with the kids, to normalize, and even romanticize the idea of small space living in them, so that in case is the reality of their future, they look at it in a positive, productive way. https://www.youtube.com/user/livingbigtinyhouse https://www.youtube.com/user/livingbigtinyhouse
- captainbland 8y agoI'm not sure smaller accommodation can be considered a trend so much as a sign of reduced access (or higher costs) to more desirable accommodation. This more or less sums it up for me: 'Though he doesn’t opt for tiny-home living himself, LaBarre is enthusiastic about the trend'