23 ms·

I hate living in my tiny house (2019)

116 points by fortran77 4y ago

Obsnold 4y ago
Ye
jmathai 4y ago
We recently remodeled our 1.2k sqft house to a 2.1k sqft one. My wife and I have 4 kids and 2 dogs. Our kids are 12, 10 an d 2x 1.5 (twins). That gives some context. Before the remodel, we had 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. We made it work but it felt a bit small. By American standards, 2.1k sqft for a family of 6 is not large by any means. When remodeling, we spent a lot of time on the final layout, drawing inspiration from homes we felt good being in. My wife is an interior designer which played the largest role in our decisions. Interior designers have very technical backgrounds and a lot of knowledge in space planning. Our remodeled house feels the right size. Not because of the sqft, but because of the layout. We looked at 3k sqft houses prior to remodeling and they felt smaller than our 2.1k sqft one despite an extra 50% of floor space. All that is a way of saying that “space” matters. It’s not “bigger is better” and you can’t Marie Kondo your way out of tiny spaces. There’s an optimal space + layout that can reduce stress in your life.
- et-al 4y ago
  To your point, I've noticed open floor plans often offer less flexibility. E.g. having a formal dining room allows you to turn it into an office or another bedroom much more easily.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Old houses are larger even when smaller - often because they have these things called “walls” and “doors” that make “rooms” out of open concept spaces. I do get amused about how everyone hates cube farms but loves open concept.
    - digitalsushi 4y ago
      kind of a gesellschaft vs gemeinschaft situation though
    - azemetre 4y ago
      Do people (the workers) actually hate cube farms? Between open floors and your own cubicle, I'd take a cubicle every time. I thought open floors only became a thing because companies realized they can save money and workers would put up with it, which doesn't seem to be wrong.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Oh open floors is even worse. The best is tiny little rooms - offices. Cube farms at least you can customize and claim “your space”.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Yes. I still hear other people talking. Either give me an office or let me WFH.
        hnzix 4y ago
        At least give me a high partition so I don't have to watch my cow orker sloppily eating food with their mouth open and gesticulating wildly all day. I can put on noise cancelling headphones but I can't visually block out physical shenanigans, my monkey brain is tracking for threats.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Noise cancelling headphones will help ambient noise. But it won’t help when you are being actively interrupted for “just one question”. When I’m at home, I can block time on my calendar for “deep work”, shut down Outlook and Slack. I set my Slack status to “doing deep work until X:00”
      - zikduruqe 4y ago
- danans 4y ago
  > Our remodeled house feels the right size. Not because of the sqft, but because of the layout. We looked at 3k sqft houses prior to remodeling and they felt smaller than our 2.1k sqft one despite an extra 50% of floor space. I'll echo this. We (family of 4) remodeled our 1500sqft 3BD/2BA to a 1600sqft 4BD/3BA, but the house feels larger than some 2k sqft houses because of the clever space design, because of a double height atrium and a large open kitchen.
denkmoon 4y ago
Who could have imagined that taking something to the extreme isn't compatible with a regular human lifestyle. As someone outside the landed gentry, I see having an appropriately sized (small) home as my entry point. Most of my extended family have these monstrosity homes that serve mostly as storage space for dusty boxes and extra rooms that are utilised poorly, and took on significant debt to have it. Seems insane to me. This, however, is the polar opposite and just as insane.
- serf 4y ago
  > Who could have imagined that taking something to the extreme isn't compatible with a regular human lifestyle. the problem is when some extreme style of living becomes a well known trend, then you get lots of people that would otherwise be incompatible with an idea that try to cope with it anyway... ... then you get articles like "I hate Living in My Tiny House" side : these types of articles rarely hit the real point of "Maybe I shouldn't blindly follow every trend.". Rather than that bit of truth they just list the reasons why the idea is stupid from their perspective and conclude it with why no one should ever try it.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    If you read the fine article, you'll note that the author isn't following a trend. He simply can't afford rent otherwise.
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
      He also works full time from home, begging the question...why not move somewhere cheaper?
      - thwayunion 4y ago
        Particularly in the USA and childless. Especially if you don't need access to the best public schools, there are so many extraordinarily vibrant metro areas with really cheap housing.
wizwit999 4y ago
His bathroom doesn't have a basin so he goes to the loo and washes his hands in the kitchen sink over his dishes... that's disgusting.
- quantified 4y ago
  More so than washing poultry over the dishes? When you go #1, that can't be a big deal. When you go #2, well, your hands aren't going to be worse off than the food you got from the garden that wandering birds may have shit on, and if you're washing the dishes you're taking care of that too. If you're not washing anything well, then that's the issue.
  - digitalsushi 4y ago
    making someone cross a door handle boundary without a plausible opportunity to wash their poopy hands is a deal breaker to me, even if only 1/3 of people are actually bothering to really soap up
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Not sure about other countries, but it's extremely common in France for the toilet to be in its own room, and then the washbasin and shower in another. Not just in multi-residential either. Dunno the history (gives a bit more flexibility: a showerer doesn't constrain the toilet), but could also be an aversion to not clean yourself in the same place you poop.
    - quantified 4y ago
      Lots of bars and restaurants do this in the USA. Not something the health department worries about.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    You shouldn’t be washing poultry
    - 4y ago
adam_arthur 4y ago
I lived in a 250sqft studio with my wife for a couple of years… it was worth it for the cost savings at the time. To each their own
- rightbyte 4y ago
  250sqft makes 23m2 sound so big.
  - lost_tourist 4y ago
    It's all contextual, if you were raised with sqft it sounds extremely small.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    23 square meters is ~243 square feet. They're almost the same.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      > 23 square meters is ~243 square feet. They're almost the same. 243sqft is a room 15.5ft per side. 23m^2 is 5,694sqft, nearly 23 times more floorspace than 250sqft.
      - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        Quit being pedantic. Everyone with an IQ that isn't also an acceptable temperature for refrigerating meat knows that a square with 23m on a side is not relevant to a discussion of tiny houses or apartments and he was talking about a space of 23 square meters. And since I apparently can't get away with not spelling it out. A room that's 15ft on a side (or in the ballpark of 250 square feet) is roughly equivalent in interior space to a trailer that has external dimensions of 8.5ft by 20-something feet long which is not an odd size for a tiny house.
      - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
        Exponentiation has higher precedence than multiplication. It's 23(m^2), not (23m)^2.
rpgbr 4y ago
I really enjoy all Never Too Small[1] videos, but as a fascinating curiosity. Having lived quite a few years in apartments ~400 ft sq apartments, can't think any other reason but necessity to do so. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@nevertoosmall https://www.youtube.com/@nevertoosmall
- rzzzt 4y ago
  Kirsten Dirksen and Bryce Langston also have great videos of peculiar housing: - https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen - https://www.youtube.com/@livingbig https://www.youtube.com/@livingbig
neighbour 4y ago
While I was still living with my parents, I romanticised the concept of a tiny house. It wasn't until I bought my own (normal) three bedroom house and went on my honeymoon, which was a stay in a tiny house, that I realised how valuable the extra space is.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 4y ago
  I find that many of the people who “fantasize” about a tiny house have trouble keeping any size house clutter-free, and assume that having a tiny house would fix it.
  - incanus77 4y ago
    I think this is the case with a lot of "escapes" (tiny house, van life, moving across country/world, starting to work for yourself). Particularly when compromise is the name of the game, not having enough positive reasons to go into a situation is not going to fix the negatives.
  - cultofmetatron 4y ago
    I'm pretty clutter free these days. Then again, I've taken it a step further. everything I own fits in a luggage and I change airbnbs every month. can't buy what you can't fit in the bag!
- Fricken 4y ago
  I'm single, with 3 bedrooms. That's 2 bedrooms and a living room that I don't use except to accumulate junk that I also don't use.
  - dymk 4y ago
    Get two roommates?
    - 4y ago
mozman 4y ago
I value my personal space, and so does my fiancé. Having our own personal space to decompress separately has been a game changer. We are much closer as a result. I suspect most people connected to the internet and social media can be subject to overstimulation. An easily accessible mini retreat has really been helpful.
TedShiller 4y ago
> “There’s no silver bullet to solving the housing crisis” Luckily, there IS a silver bullet: live in areas with low cost of living, which is most areas in the country
- mjevans 4y ago
  There aren't enough dwellings near the jobs. That's the whole problem.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    In many places there are. But they aren’t in the best places or where someone thinks they deserve to live. I’m not saying we don’t need to build more, but people need to come to grips with what they can afford and what that means for their location.
  - dymk 4y ago
    The author works from home, that’s not a problem here
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    I kinda not jokingly would suggest that there are available jobs because there is not enough housing. I.e. there is a big worker churn due to untenable living costs. It is easier to get jobs since a lot of people give up and move. Dunno how strong this effect is though ...
    - lmm 4y ago
      Churn doesn't create new jobs. In depopulated places like the rust belt, the problem isn't that all the jobs are filled by people with stable 20-year careers, the problem is there aren't any jobs period.
- layoric 4y ago
  That might work for some but moving away from common infrastructure creates other problems. I found this video [0] a decent dive into issues and possible long term solutions. None quick or easy but I think are most likely to succeed in a lot of places. [0] https://youtu.be/sKudSeqHSJk https://youtu.be/sKudSeqHSJk
hk1337 4y ago
I like some of the ideas in a tiny home but I couldn’t see myself enjoying it long term. I definitely would want it on a slab foundation instead of a trailer and maybe expand it out a little bit. I’d really like it outside of the city, have a simple kitchen and living room inside and more elaborate outdoor kitchen and living space outside. Build a barn big enough to house my truck, piddle in, storage for lawn and garden, and an office to work from home.
- walrus01 4y ago
  Most of the "tiny house" that are on a trailer are because it's legally registered as an RV, same as a real travel trailer. With a trailer title for the underlying frame registered in your state with a license plate in exactly the same legal way as if you bought a boat trailer or a flatbed cargo trailer. Theoretically this means it doesn't need to meet building code and go through the approval process in whatever rural location you put one on land as its only dwelling, or as an ADU. It's an attempt at a legal workaround saying to the local government "this is totally NOT A HOUSE it's my RV trailer!". But by the time you hook it up to water supply, electricity and sewage disposal it effectively becomes fixed in place.
  - hk1337 4y ago
    Yeah, what I have heard is that it’s technically not a “tiny house” if it’s not built on a trailer. Which I’m okay with but I guess it also means there might be other housing regulations from whatever city I setup in.
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      In the US, there are basically two categories of building codes. Local codes for normal permanent buildings (which differ from town to town). And the federal HUD code for mobile homes (of which tiny homes are a subset - basically just trendy/stylish mobile homes). A mobile home is different from an RV in that an RV is not generally intended for full-time living. It also isn’t meant to be permanently/semi-permanently placed in one location, as mobile homes are. It’s pretty common to have a mobile home placed such that it’s externally indistinguishable from a permanent home of similar size. The interior layout is the tell. Or the fact that it’s located in a trailer park. The “problem” is most local zoning (different from the building code) in urban/suburban bans mobile homes and also bans permanent homes smaller than some arbitrary size. So, without a carve-out for ADUs or some other change in zoning, you can’t actually live in a tiny home, small permanent home, or anything in between. Apart for the rare urban mobile home park, it’s not until you get well outside most metro areas that you can drop a mobile home on your own land without a zoning problem.
cobertos 4y ago
I have one slightly smaller one (180sqft) and while I still have yet to live in it full time (it's a WIP) it already feels claustrophobic sometimes. Every inch counts, but it's also important to have open-ness outside the tiny home too. What I really wanted was the ability to experiment with so many things I would not be allowed to do in a traditional home, without worrying about blowing a bunch of money or hurting a $200k+ home I don't own/have a mortgage on. There's a lot I inherited from the previous owner, but it'll have custom automation and control software for the climate (dehumifier, heat exchanger, monitoring of power usage, etc), my dream programming space (converting the previous owner's "balcony" into a sort of indoor/outdoor deck with a massive transparent rollup door), and integrating more screens into my life (controlled by me, not loaded with any proprietary stuff that will inevitably hurt me). But it's also just me and my cat. I've told partners already that I don't think I could live in this with anything more than that.
- symlinkk 4y ago
  Where does your cat take a shit? Do you smell it?
  - cobertos 4y ago
    I have a space that's sorta 1/2 inside 1/2 outside the cat can walk to on his own. I haven't brought the car down yet but that's where the litter box will go. I've lived in a small space before with my cat and as long as you clean the box frequently (at least daily), it's not an issue.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Needs a (2019) in the title
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
design-of-homes 4y ago
"I also question how well tiny homes make sense as a solution for long-term housing" I also agree. This article is one of the few examples of a tiny house situated in what seems like a dense urban environment. In contrast, many tiny homes are placed among open space. The tiny homes don't feel cramped because they're surrounded by nature, with beautiful long uninterrupted views out of the windows. No noisy neighbours or traffic nearby either. But take away the countryside location of these tiny homes and could the tiny house work in an urban environment? I doubt it. The future for housing for most people on the planet (including the US) is in cities and urban environments. Can you live in a tiny home where you don't have long, uninterrupted views out of your windows? Or where you only have windows along one side of your dwelling (e.g. single-aspect apartments). Do you feel you have enough privacy when your apartment or house is joined with your neighbour's home? Millions of people already live in homes like this and have to contend with these issues. Can we have small or modest-sized homes that give us light, space, privacy, quiet and comfort in a noisy urban setting? It's one of the most pressing and important issues in housing design - and one that architects and home builders have failed to address. Also, space can be 'modest' in size rather than 'tiny' and still be sustainable or amenable to high density. For example, London has it's own housing design guide that recommends new one bedroom apartments for two people to be a minimum of 50 square metres (538 square feet). That's still less than space standards in continental Europe but it's enough space to live comfortably even if it doesn't count as tiny by Western standards.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  Another advantage of tiny homes in rural settings is they're generally optimized for outdoor living, thus dramatically increasing the usable space by using the abundant outdoor space. Urban settings generally lack that option.
- somishere 4y ago
  Agree, esp. regards a clarification around 'tiny'. Personally (controversially?) I've always questioned the idea of a tiny house in the countryside. In dense urban (and otherwise restrictive) environments focusing on size makes some sense. But in a rural setting? Emphasizing 'tiny' over e.g the UN-Habitat's mantra of "fast, affordable and absolutely green" feels like a misinterpretation and unnecessary burden ('fast' might be switched out in this context too). I'm not advocating for sprawling mansions by any means, but certainly a more holistic consideration of space and its effects on mental health.
jrsj 4y ago
This is only tangentially related but at some point we need to get over the desire of homeowners in large cities to continue to increase the value of their million dollar homes. This doesn't seem possible at the local level, so maybe the federal government needs to step in and force housing development to happen.
- foogazi 4y ago
  > but at some point we need to get over the desire of homeowners in large cities to continue to increase the value of their million dollar homes. I don’t see the two being opposed. I have ingrained NIMBY tendencies but have recently come around to “more housing / dense housing” idea Some cities have taken a path towards sprawl that can be corrected by state / federal intervention. A mega city planned redevelopment would be interesting to see
jackcosgrove 4y ago
I lived in an ADU for a grand total of three months before moving out for more space in a typical apartment. I had to pay more but it was worth it to escape the claustrophobia. I've also lived in a duplex that occupied the same lot footprint as the bungalow + ADU, yet had much more space for both parties to enjoy because simply building up and adding a second floor was a more efficient use of the lot. I think ADUs are at best a stopgap but are so far from an optimal solution that they shouldn't be taken seriously by policymakers. I simply do not understand the aversion to multi-story construction in some places.
- brewdad 4y ago
  Multi-story can make it difficult to age in place as the population grows older. I'm not quite 50 and in reasonably good health for my age but already find trips up and down the stairs multiple times a day unappealing. My first descent in the morning frequently reminds me that I no longer have a 30 years old's legs.
  - novok 4y ago
    IMO you should take that as a warning to improve your health before it gets even harder and have a pretty bad time in your 60s and 70s. You should be able to climb stairs with no problem in your late 40s and there are many who do fine in their 70s if they keep up their fitness. Like looks at this MRI comparing a 40 year old triathlete, a 74 year old and a 74 year sedentary man. Sarcopenia is a choice in many ways! https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-Typical-quadriceps-and-hamstrings-Magnetic-Resonance-Image-of-a-40-year-old_fig1_338446940 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-Typical-quadricep...
    - badpun 4y ago
      There are also joint issues, and they can actually be accelerated via keeping fit. Walking up the stairs with an aching knee or hip is no fun.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Huh? Multi-story is the best thing for aging; an apartment block full of single floor apartments with a lift is easy and natural, a house without stairs is pretty hard to make viable.
presentation 4y ago
It’s useful to have small apartments even for people who don’t intend to live there for life. Like students or fresh graduates getting their careers together, minimalists who don’t care for accumulating stuff, and so on. Living in Tokyo, it’s awesome how, if you want to live centrally, you can still do it on a budget. Separately, Americans don’t know how to make space efficient homes, I loved my tiny 23m2 apartment in Tokyo and found it quite livable. I’ve never seen American apartments that use space in a remotely efficient way like those ones do.
- potatototoo99 4y ago
  Tokyo gets a bad rep, but on average apartments are smaller in London than Tokyo for instance.
- novok 4y ago
  On top of that, these tiny houses are talked about in an american context, where cities and lifestyles are designed for the suburbs, cars and the fact you have so much space for storage. Cities like tokyo provide a lot of stuff within walking distance so you don't need to have it yourself, like gym equipment, close by groceries, a lot of good restaurants / bakeries and so on. Because you need to get into a car, go on a +10m drive, etc, everything is designed for the 'costco lifestyle', buying 20 packs of everything and recreating many of the services of the city within your own house, because otherwise it is too expensive and inconvenient to have them. If you want quality baking and meals too, you need to make it in your own house, because you probably surrounded by boring american chain stores otherwise.
nemo44x 4y ago
One of the nice things about having a larger house is different rooms have different moods at different times of day and times of year. You’re not just in the same space every day. Some days a certain room just calls to you and time is well spent in it.
dave333 4y ago
The original idea for tiny homes was to avoid the mortgage rat race and retire early. An alternate solution that is almost as inexpensive but that doesn't involve living in a shoebox is a mobile home in a good old fashioned mobile home park. For seniors looking to downsize/economize their retirement a MH in a quiet senior 55+ community can solve the financial problem while still allowing them a single family home dwelling that you can park next to (unlike an apartment) and that is cheap enough to live near you grandchildren in a metro area. Senoir parks also have many community benefits for retirees. The one downside is the space rent that you have to pay to the park that is not under your control. Some parks such as Natural Bridges on the Pacific Ocean near Santa Cruz, CA have astronomical space rents ($5000+/month). Other places such as San Jose have rent control ordinances that limit increases in space rent to 3%/year. A few parks are set up where the residents own the park and so the rent they pay is to themselves and they have democratic control over any increases. In most cases space rent is comparable to property taxes in a normal single family home. Construction of new mobile homes is very adequate and at the same time affordable generally in the range of $100k-$150k. MHPs have been socially maligned but they are a great housing solution and a much better option than most people think.
- thinkmcfly 4y ago
  I'd advise against a mh for older people. As soon as your knee or hip goes the mh is useless
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    I think they're mostly describing the immobile kind that's basically a pre-fab home trucked to the spot. Sometimes double-wide.
  - dave333 4y ago
    Not true - MHs can have special shallow stairs that are easier on the knees or even a wheelchair ramp or lift if necessary. All three of these options exist on houses on my street. Also my wife has bad knees but had knee joint replacement surgery on one pre-Covid and is scheduling the other knee post-Covid and she is happy with normal stairs.
CMCDragonkai 4y ago
This reminds me of the van life trend. Seems attractive on the outside. Until you actually try it and realise it's like living like a hobo.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Matt Foley was never intended as a positive role model, that was sort of the whole point.
  - geoduck14 4y ago
    >Matt Foley was never intended as a positive role model, that was sort of the whole point. It sounds great until YOU ARE LIVING IN A VAN, DOWN NEAR THE RIVER. Great skit. I miss him.
- jamincan 4y ago
  The Youtube algorithm recommended a "top ten" list awhile ago about things the youtuber hated about van life. I had been watching quite a feel tiny homes videos, mostly out of curiousity about how people made efficient use of their space more than a desire to move into a small home. In any case, it's a pretty honest breakdown of the challenges of van life, from someone who seemed to be making bank on the whole trend. Interestingly, going back and looking at the titles of subsequent videos, it sounds like it's becoming more of a struggle for her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4QQTfIvzv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4QQTfIvzv4
chiefalchemist 4y ago
What I think would be ideal, and I've fantasizfantasized about, is a tiny home community. A larger shared "community" space at the hub, with 4 to 6 to 8 "spoke" tiny homes. The hub gives you space to entertain, and you retreat to your TH as you see fit. The hub would function Air BB style in that aside from shared hours, each TH unit can schedule X hours per month. Something like that.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  A few modifications: 1. attach the units and TH's together so that you don't have to go outside (more relevant in non-temperate climates I suppose) 2. Put a high-quality kitchen in the common area (they don't work well in THs anyways -- not enough space for eg prepping and cooking and storing a meal for the week) 3. Move bathrooms and showers to the main area (they don't work well in THs anyways -- wet rooms are gross) Aka, a shared house with room mates. I lived in these for years and would much prefer a shared house to a TH...
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    That's the general idea. But not #1. I think privacy trumps comfort.
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  I know "shared community" sounds great to some, but to me it would be a living hell. I hate nosy neighbors. I tried with one neighbor, he and his family seemed nice enough, and he was new and getting to know people. After a few months I had a semi-retired cousin who likes to travel a lot stay with me for a month or so as my guest. After a couple weeks my neighbor waves me over, I figure it was just to say hi, and starts asking nosy questions about who that "man" staying at my house is, and I refuse to answer him because, well, it's nosy and none of his business. I was nice at first about my refusal because he didn't give me any reason why he was asking, but then he got angry. So I just walked away and haven't talked to him since. The best neighbor is a fence.
  - 4y ago
asiachick 4y ago
This sounds pretty whiny given there are plenty of apartments much smaller that people live in just fine in places like Japan, Hong Kong and I'm sure more. Here's 12000 apartments the same size or smaller within a 40 minute commute of Shibuya Tokyo https://www.chintai.net/list/?cf=0&ct=0&m=0&m=1&m=2&m=3&jk=0&jl=0&sf=0&st=25&b=1&b=2&b=3&h=99&k=1&st=25&ks=4&wd=%E6%B8%8B%E8%B0%B7&sj=50&tc=1&tm=0&rt=3&p=50&o=10&&i=1 https://www.chintai.net/list/?cf=0&ct=0&m=0&m=1&m=2&m=3&jk=0... People live in them just fine because their expectations are different. It's like most students don't complain when living in dorms. Yes it's not the same, but the point is the expectation is different so it's fine. Similarly, I lived in hotels for 1~3 months at a time several times, often one after another (no larger place in between). Not a problem because my expectations matched.
michaelwww 4y ago
I didn't really get what they hate about it. I read some mild annoyances, which I had a hard time understanding because I grew up in an 800 sq ft house with 2 parents and 5 kids, then served on a submarine in the US Navy. I'm probably an outlier in the low direction in terms of Americans and their space requirements.
_Wintermute 4y ago
Just for reference for those in the US, the "tiny house" in the article would be a small but fairly standard sized apartment in Paris. I think the US just such a warped view on house sizes compared to much of the rest of the world.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  At 22 square meters, it looks like it's on the small side for Paris, based on some Googling, and smaller than my studio in NYC.
  - fold3 4y ago
    It is indeed. Also I want to add that in a city like Paris, you have access to high quality public facilities like open acceas library study room, squares and parks with comfortable chairs so that you don't need to stay home for much more than fix a quick meal and sleep. That said, it is a precarious lifestyle and not something people do by choice.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  From what I have seen, the "tiny house" trend typically is located in the middle of nowhere though where there is plenty of space to build a much bigger one. A small apartment is pretty good and workable when it's in a city where you can make use of external facilities. I just don't see the point when you have space for 50 houses on the land but you build this one shipping container sized one right in the middle.
PontifexMinimus 4y ago
According to the article: > Node, which builds tiny homes in factories to reduce construction cost These cost >=$150k (source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90381454/these-flatpack-homes-can-be-fully-assembled-in-less-than-three-months https://www.fastcompany.com/90381454/these-flatpack-homes-ca...). > Node’s smallest unit, at 400 square feet, is $150,000 This seems expensive to me given that in Kenya a 40x8 foot container home costs between 950,000 and 1,400,000 Ksh (c. $8000-$11500, so less that a tenth Node's price). (source: https://premiumcontainers.co.ke/current-cost-of-shipping-container-homes-in-kenya/ https://premiumcontainers.co.ke/current-cost-of-shipping-con...) There's absolutely no reason technologically that housing has to be expensive. If it is, it's because of social/regulatory reasons.
- allendoerfer 4y ago
  Quick googling showed, that the average salary in Kenya is about 1/10 of that in the US. So the prices are the same to the respective people living there. Technology doesn‘t matter much here, economics are the reason why prices have to be different.
  - tinus_hn 4y ago
    The typical reason why the price is whatever people are able or willing to pay for an item, is a lack of competition.
    - snoot 4y ago
      Right. If you want to buy a house in a desirable place, you’ll have to compete with other people who want it.
      - tinus_hn 4y ago
        It’s not about buying a house in a place. These are the construction costs if you already have the place.
      - PontifexMinimus 4y ago
Eleison23 4y ago
I live in a 1BR apartment and it's huge; much too large for me. I moved here 7 years ago, from a small studio (efficiency) place. The last place had a dorm-size refrigerator, a non-walk-in closet, no tub, etc. Between there and here, I've accumulated a lot of stuff, and for a while it seemed like I could never downsize again because I needed a separate working space, and this was a dealbreaker for entertaining thoughts of a roommate or going back to a studio at all. However, I've downsized, got rid of plenty of stuff including some storage furniture and my desktop computer(!) and I feel ready to downsize again. And eventually, I will need to. I'm 50 and living independently with mental illness. Every year I have a nervous breakdown, because managing my own household is a Herculean effort I can barely sustain. If I prepare all my own meals and clean up after myself, I'm exhausted. If I don't, then I'm broke and fat. It's not a winning situation. Eventually I'll need to work something out where I give up my independence of living and rely on some sort of caregivers, and I may also need to admit a roommate to the mix. This will not be enjoyable. It reminds me of our grandmother who, 50 years ago, lived in a 5BR-2BA house with about 6 apartments in back. She was a landlady and head of household. And eventually it was just way, way too much for her to maintain, even with Mom and Dad's help. The space we take up as Americans is unconscionable. Either have a large family and share that space, or give it up, or share it with other adults equitably. We just don't need these McMansions all over the place. We also don't need pedestrian-hostile suburbs!!!
TedShiller 4y ago
People who think more housing lowers housing prices have never been to a big city. Waiting for the “But Tokyo!” guy.
- lmm 4y ago
  More housing lowers housing prices and makes the city better, which attracts more people, which raises housing prices. It's hard to separate the two effects, but if you compare a city that builds more with a city that builds less, building less has little to recommend it. And yes, Tokyo is a good example.
  - TedShiller 4y ago
    Problem solved. Tokyo.
    - linksnapzz 4y ago
      That also requires ~30 million Japanese, without which you might end up with a very different city.
  - cultofmetatron 4y ago
    more people in a city making more efficient use of global resources doesn't sound like a worst case scenario
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Price is supply/demand. More housing usually came because of a huge population causing more demand. Population is almost like a force of gravity where dense places can never build enough because more always want to come.
  - TedShiller 4y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand The answer is actually less housing.
harmmonica 4y ago
We've been building tiny houses for the past year and a half (4 houses total, two of which we've sold). After talking to a couple of hundred people interested in tiny houses, here's what we've learned: The wheels/trailers are "dumb" because almost nobody wants to move them once they get them in place. So as far as we can tell the only reason to build on a trailer is to avoid regulations in many locations throughout the US (an example: where we are in New Mexico if you build a house on a foundation you need to hire licensed plumbers and electricians whereas if you build on a trailer you can DIY; needless to say licensed professionals are far more expensive that doing it yourself so there are significant savings when you DIY). The people interested in tiny houses seem to fall into three buckets (maybe 4): 1. people who want an Airbnb on their existing property (these are usually well-to-do folks who don't bat an eye at the pricing) 2. older folks who don't have the means to retire in a normal-sized house 3. younger folks who don't have the means to live in a normal house 4. if there's a 4th, it's younger folks who want a vacation house that they can Airbnb when they're not using it. These 4 markets seem quite large based on the number of people who have reached out to us when we do pretty minimal marketing. And the reason we started doing this in the first place was to build below-market-rate housing (i.e., targeting groups 2 and 3 above), but there's a bit of a paradox going on here that we're trying to solve: groups 2 and 3 do not have the means to buy houses (tiny or not) outright so the only way we're going to crack this nut is if you can finance the purchase. We think we've found a way to do that, at least in our local market of Northern New Mexico, and we're just going through the proper channels with our local county to test this concept because lenders of course require that what you're building is legitimate. We're still hopeful that this will be a good solution locally, if not more broadly. Btw, we have never given a thought to trying to do this in an urban area. Doesn't seem sensible given land values where cheaper housing is almost by definition multifamily (i.e., >=2 units on a lot). Edit: Oh, duh, here's a link to the house we build: https://santafe.craigslist.org/reo/d/el-prado-brand-new-fully-outfitted-tiny/7546789523.html https://santafe.craigslist.org/reo/d/el-prado-brand-new-full...
- dsalzman 4y ago
  Isn’t the biggest reason to build on wheels is to register the tiny house as a vehicle and not pay property taxes on the house value?
6510 4y ago
I see pretty much no effort to decorate. What a depressing space.
- 6510 4y ago
  look at gypsy wagons, [expensive] custom campers and [high end] small sail boats. Not having a lot of space allows for an almost infinite budget per m2.
Havoc 4y ago
It’s just cramped apartment living with a sprinkling of influencer cool
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

116 points by fortran77 4y ago

We recently remodeled our 1.2k sqft house to a 2.1k sqft one. My wife and I have 4 kids and 2 dogs. Our kids are 12, 10 an d 2x 1.5 (twins). That gives some context. Before the remodel, we had 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. We made it work but it felt a bit small. By American standards, 2.1k sqft for a family of 6 is not large by any means. When remodeling, we spent a lot of time on the final layout, drawing inspiration from homes we felt good being in. My wife is an interior designer which played the largest role in our decisions. Interior designers have very technical backgrounds and a lot of knowledge in space planning. Our remodeled house feels the right size. Not because of the sqft, but because of the layout. We looked at 3k sqft houses prior to remodeling and they felt smaller than our 2.1k sqft one despite an extra 50% of floor space. All that is a way of saying that “space” matters. It’s not “bigger is better” and you can’t Marie Kondo your way out of tiny spaces. There’s an optimal space + layout that can reduce stress in your life.

et-al 4y ago
To your point, I've noticed open floor plans often offer less flexibility. E.g. having a formal dining room allows you to turn it into an office or another bedroom much more easily.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Old houses are larger even when smaller - often because they have these things called “walls” and “doors” that make “rooms” out of open concept spaces. I do get amused about how everyone hates cube farms but loves open concept.
  - digitalsushi 4y ago
    kind of a gesellschaft vs gemeinschaft situation though
  - azemetre 4y ago
    Do people (the workers) actually hate cube farms? Between open floors and your own cubicle, I'd take a cubicle every time. I thought open floors only became a thing because companies realized they can save money and workers would put up with it, which doesn't seem to be wrong.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Oh open floors is even worse. The best is tiny little rooms - offices. Cube farms at least you can customize and claim “your space”.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Yes. I still hear other people talking. Either give me an office or let me WFH.
      - hnzix 4y ago
        At least give me a high partition so I don't have to watch my cow orker sloppily eating food with their mouth open and gesticulating wildly all day. I can put on noise cancelling headphones but I can't visually block out physical shenanigans, my monkey brain is tracking for threats.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Noise cancelling headphones will help ambient noise. But it won’t help when you are being actively interrupted for “just one question”. When I’m at home, I can block time on my calendar for “deep work”, shut down Outlook and Slack. I set my Slack status to “doing deep work until X:00”
    - zikduruqe 4y ago
danans 4y ago
> Our remodeled house feels the right size. Not because of the sqft, but because of the layout. We looked at 3k sqft houses prior to remodeling and they felt smaller than our 2.1k sqft one despite an extra 50% of floor space. I'll echo this. We (family of 4) remodeled our 1500sqft 3BD/2BA to a 1600sqft 4BD/3BA, but the house feels larger than some 2k sqft houses because of the clever space design, because of a double height atrium and a large open kitchen.

denkmoon 4y ago

Who could have imagined that taking something to the extreme isn't compatible with a regular human lifestyle. As someone outside the landed gentry, I see having an appropriately sized (small) home as my entry point. Most of my extended family have these monstrosity homes that serve mostly as storage space for dusty boxes and extra rooms that are utilised poorly, and took on significant debt to have it. Seems insane to me. This, however, is the polar opposite and just as insane.

serf 4y ago
> Who could have imagined that taking something to the extreme isn't compatible with a regular human lifestyle. the problem is when some extreme style of living becomes a well known trend, then you get lots of people that would otherwise be incompatible with an idea that try to cope with it anyway... ... then you get articles like "I hate Living in My Tiny House" side : these types of articles rarely hit the real point of "Maybe I shouldn't blindly follow every trend.". Rather than that bit of truth they just list the reasons why the idea is stupid from their perspective and conclude it with why no one should ever try it.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  If you read the fine article, you'll note that the author isn't following a trend. He simply can't afford rent otherwise.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    He also works full time from home, begging the question...why not move somewhere cheaper?
    - thwayunion 4y ago
      Particularly in the USA and childless. Especially if you don't need access to the best public schools, there are so many extraordinarily vibrant metro areas with really cheap housing.

wizwit999 4y ago

His bathroom doesn't have a basin so he goes to the loo and washes his hands in the kitchen sink over his dishes... that's disgusting.

quantified 4y ago
More so than washing poultry over the dishes? When you go #1, that can't be a big deal. When you go #2, well, your hands aren't going to be worse off than the food you got from the garden that wandering birds may have shit on, and if you're washing the dishes you're taking care of that too. If you're not washing anything well, then that's the issue.
- digitalsushi 4y ago
  making someone cross a door handle boundary without a plausible opportunity to wash their poopy hands is a deal breaker to me, even if only 1/3 of people are actually bothering to really soap up
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Not sure about other countries, but it's extremely common in France for the toilet to be in its own room, and then the washbasin and shower in another. Not just in multi-residential either. Dunno the history (gives a bit more flexibility: a showerer doesn't constrain the toilet), but could also be an aversion to not clean yourself in the same place you poop.
  - quantified 4y ago
    Lots of bars and restaurants do this in the USA. Not something the health department worries about.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  You shouldn’t be washing poultry
  - 4y ago

adam_arthur 4y ago

I lived in a 250sqft studio with my wife for a couple of years… it was worth it for the cost savings at the time. To each their own

rightbyte 4y ago
250sqft makes 23m2 sound so big.
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  It's all contextual, if you were raised with sqft it sounds extremely small.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  23 square meters is ~243 square feet. They're almost the same.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > 23 square meters is ~243 square feet. They're almost the same. 243sqft is a room 15.5ft per side. 23m^2 is 5,694sqft, nearly 23 times more floorspace than 250sqft.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      Quit being pedantic. Everyone with an IQ that isn't also an acceptable temperature for refrigerating meat knows that a square with 23m on a side is not relevant to a discussion of tiny houses or apartments and he was talking about a space of 23 square meters. And since I apparently can't get away with not spelling it out. A room that's 15ft on a side (or in the ballpark of 250 square feet) is roughly equivalent in interior space to a trailer that has external dimensions of 8.5ft by 20-something feet long which is not an odd size for a tiny house.
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      Exponentiation has higher precedence than multiplication. It's 23(m^2), not (23m)^2.

rpgbr 4y ago

I really enjoy all Never Too Small[1] videos, but as a fascinating curiosity. Having lived quite a few years in apartments ~400 ft sq apartments, can't think any other reason but necessity to do so. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@nevertoosmall https://www.youtube.com/@nevertoosmall

rzzzt 4y ago
Kirsten Dirksen and Bryce Langston also have great videos of peculiar housing: - https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen - https://www.youtube.com/@livingbig https://www.youtube.com/@livingbig

neighbour 4y ago

While I was still living with my parents, I romanticised the concept of a tiny house. It wasn't until I bought my own (normal) three bedroom house and went on my honeymoon, which was a stay in a tiny house, that I realised how valuable the extra space is.

deleted 4y ago
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bombcar 4y ago
I find that many of the people who “fantasize” about a tiny house have trouble keeping any size house clutter-free, and assume that having a tiny house would fix it.
- incanus77 4y ago
  I think this is the case with a lot of "escapes" (tiny house, van life, moving across country/world, starting to work for yourself). Particularly when compromise is the name of the game, not having enough positive reasons to go into a situation is not going to fix the negatives.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  I'm pretty clutter free these days. Then again, I've taken it a step further. everything I own fits in a luggage and I change airbnbs every month. can't buy what you can't fit in the bag!
Fricken 4y ago
I'm single, with 3 bedrooms. That's 2 bedrooms and a living room that I don't use except to accumulate junk that I also don't use.
- dymk 4y ago
  Get two roommates?
  - 4y ago

mozman 4y ago

I value my personal space, and so does my fiancé. Having our own personal space to decompress separately has been a game changer. We are much closer as a result. I suspect most people connected to the internet and social media can be subject to overstimulation. An easily accessible mini retreat has really been helpful.

TedShiller 4y ago

> “There’s no silver bullet to solving the housing crisis” Luckily, there IS a silver bullet: live in areas with low cost of living, which is most areas in the country

mjevans 4y ago
There aren't enough dwellings near the jobs. That's the whole problem.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  In many places there are. But they aren’t in the best places or where someone thinks they deserve to live. I’m not saying we don’t need to build more, but people need to come to grips with what they can afford and what that means for their location.
- dymk 4y ago
  The author works from home, that’s not a problem here
- rightbyte 4y ago
  I kinda not jokingly would suggest that there are available jobs because there is not enough housing. I.e. there is a big worker churn due to untenable living costs. It is easier to get jobs since a lot of people give up and move. Dunno how strong this effect is though ...
  - lmm 4y ago
    Churn doesn't create new jobs. In depopulated places like the rust belt, the problem isn't that all the jobs are filled by people with stable 20-year careers, the problem is there aren't any jobs period.
layoric 4y ago
That might work for some but moving away from common infrastructure creates other problems. I found this video [0] a decent dive into issues and possible long term solutions. None quick or easy but I think are most likely to succeed in a lot of places. [0] https://youtu.be/sKudSeqHSJk https://youtu.be/sKudSeqHSJk

hk1337 4y ago

I like some of the ideas in a tiny home but I couldn’t see myself enjoying it long term. I definitely would want it on a slab foundation instead of a trailer and maybe expand it out a little bit. I’d really like it outside of the city, have a simple kitchen and living room inside and more elaborate outdoor kitchen and living space outside. Build a barn big enough to house my truck, piddle in, storage for lawn and garden, and an office to work from home.

walrus01 4y ago
Most of the "tiny house" that are on a trailer are because it's legally registered as an RV, same as a real travel trailer. With a trailer title for the underlying frame registered in your state with a license plate in exactly the same legal way as if you bought a boat trailer or a flatbed cargo trailer. Theoretically this means it doesn't need to meet building code and go through the approval process in whatever rural location you put one on land as its only dwelling, or as an ADU. It's an attempt at a legal workaround saying to the local government "this is totally NOT A HOUSE it's my RV trailer!". But by the time you hook it up to water supply, electricity and sewage disposal it effectively becomes fixed in place.
- hk1337 4y ago
  Yeah, what I have heard is that it’s technically not a “tiny house” if it’s not built on a trailer. Which I’m okay with but I guess it also means there might be other housing regulations from whatever city I setup in.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    In the US, there are basically two categories of building codes. Local codes for normal permanent buildings (which differ from town to town). And the federal HUD code for mobile homes (of which tiny homes are a subset - basically just trendy/stylish mobile homes). A mobile home is different from an RV in that an RV is not generally intended for full-time living. It also isn’t meant to be permanently/semi-permanently placed in one location, as mobile homes are. It’s pretty common to have a mobile home placed such that it’s externally indistinguishable from a permanent home of similar size. The interior layout is the tell. Or the fact that it’s located in a trailer park. The “problem” is most local zoning (different from the building code) in urban/suburban bans mobile homes and also bans permanent homes smaller than some arbitrary size. So, without a carve-out for ADUs or some other change in zoning, you can’t actually live in a tiny home, small permanent home, or anything in between. Apart for the rare urban mobile home park, it’s not until you get well outside most metro areas that you can drop a mobile home on your own land without a zoning problem.

cobertos 4y ago

I have one slightly smaller one (180sqft) and while I still have yet to live in it full time (it's a WIP) it already feels claustrophobic sometimes. Every inch counts, but it's also important to have open-ness outside the tiny home too. What I really wanted was the ability to experiment with so many things I would not be allowed to do in a traditional home, without worrying about blowing a bunch of money or hurting a $200k+ home I don't own/have a mortgage on. There's a lot I inherited from the previous owner, but it'll have custom automation and control software for the climate (dehumifier, heat exchanger, monitoring of power usage, etc), my dream programming space (converting the previous owner's "balcony" into a sort of indoor/outdoor deck with a massive transparent rollup door), and integrating more screens into my life (controlled by me, not loaded with any proprietary stuff that will inevitably hurt me). But it's also just me and my cat. I've told partners already that I don't think I could live in this with anything more than that.

symlinkk 4y ago
Where does your cat take a shit? Do you smell it?
- cobertos 4y ago
  I have a space that's sorta 1/2 inside 1/2 outside the cat can walk to on his own. I haven't brought the car down yet but that's where the litter box will go. I've lived in a small space before with my cat and as long as you clean the box frequently (at least daily), it's not an issue.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Needs a (2019) in the title

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

design-of-homes 4y ago

"I also question how well tiny homes make sense as a solution for long-term housing" I also agree. This article is one of the few examples of a tiny house situated in what seems like a dense urban environment. In contrast, many tiny homes are placed among open space. The tiny homes don't feel cramped because they're surrounded by nature, with beautiful long uninterrupted views out of the windows. No noisy neighbours or traffic nearby either. But take away the countryside location of these tiny homes and could the tiny house work in an urban environment? I doubt it. The future for housing for most people on the planet (including the US) is in cities and urban environments. Can you live in a tiny home where you don't have long, uninterrupted views out of your windows? Or where you only have windows along one side of your dwelling (e.g. single-aspect apartments). Do you feel you have enough privacy when your apartment or house is joined with your neighbour's home? Millions of people already live in homes like this and have to contend with these issues. Can we have small or modest-sized homes that give us light, space, privacy, quiet and comfort in a noisy urban setting? It's one of the most pressing and important issues in housing design - and one that architects and home builders have failed to address. Also, space can be 'modest' in size rather than 'tiny' and still be sustainable or amenable to high density. For example, London has it's own housing design guide that recommends new one bedroom apartments for two people to be a minimum of 50 square metres (538 square feet). That's still less than space standards in continental Europe but it's enough space to live comfortably even if it doesn't count as tiny by Western standards.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
Another advantage of tiny homes in rural settings is they're generally optimized for outdoor living, thus dramatically increasing the usable space by using the abundant outdoor space. Urban settings generally lack that option.
somishere 4y ago
Agree, esp. regards a clarification around 'tiny'. Personally (controversially?) I've always questioned the idea of a tiny house in the countryside. In dense urban (and otherwise restrictive) environments focusing on size makes some sense. But in a rural setting? Emphasizing 'tiny' over e.g the UN-Habitat's mantra of "fast, affordable and absolutely green" feels like a misinterpretation and unnecessary burden ('fast' might be switched out in this context too). I'm not advocating for sprawling mansions by any means, but certainly a more holistic consideration of space and its effects on mental health.

jrsj 4y ago

This is only tangentially related but at some point we need to get over the desire of homeowners in large cities to continue to increase the value of their million dollar homes. This doesn't seem possible at the local level, so maybe the federal government needs to step in and force housing development to happen.

foogazi 4y ago
> but at some point we need to get over the desire of homeowners in large cities to continue to increase the value of their million dollar homes. I don’t see the two being opposed. I have ingrained NIMBY tendencies but have recently come around to “more housing / dense housing” idea Some cities have taken a path towards sprawl that can be corrected by state / federal intervention. A mega city planned redevelopment would be interesting to see

jackcosgrove 4y ago

I lived in an ADU for a grand total of three months before moving out for more space in a typical apartment. I had to pay more but it was worth it to escape the claustrophobia. I've also lived in a duplex that occupied the same lot footprint as the bungalow + ADU, yet had much more space for both parties to enjoy because simply building up and adding a second floor was a more efficient use of the lot. I think ADUs are at best a stopgap but are so far from an optimal solution that they shouldn't be taken seriously by policymakers. I simply do not understand the aversion to multi-story construction in some places.

brewdad 4y ago
Multi-story can make it difficult to age in place as the population grows older. I'm not quite 50 and in reasonably good health for my age but already find trips up and down the stairs multiple times a day unappealing. My first descent in the morning frequently reminds me that I no longer have a 30 years old's legs.
- novok 4y ago
  IMO you should take that as a warning to improve your health before it gets even harder and have a pretty bad time in your 60s and 70s. You should be able to climb stairs with no problem in your late 40s and there are many who do fine in their 70s if they keep up their fitness. Like looks at this MRI comparing a 40 year old triathlete, a 74 year old and a 74 year sedentary man. Sarcopenia is a choice in many ways! https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-Typical-quadriceps-and-hamstrings-Magnetic-Resonance-Image-of-a-40-year-old_fig1_338446940 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-Typical-quadricep...
  - badpun 4y ago
    There are also joint issues, and they can actually be accelerated via keeping fit. Walking up the stairs with an aching knee or hip is no fun.
- lmm 4y ago
  Huh? Multi-story is the best thing for aging; an apartment block full of single floor apartments with a lift is easy and natural, a house without stairs is pretty hard to make viable.

presentation 4y ago

It’s useful to have small apartments even for people who don’t intend to live there for life. Like students or fresh graduates getting their careers together, minimalists who don’t care for accumulating stuff, and so on. Living in Tokyo, it’s awesome how, if you want to live centrally, you can still do it on a budget. Separately, Americans don’t know how to make space efficient homes, I loved my tiny 23m2 apartment in Tokyo and found it quite livable. I’ve never seen American apartments that use space in a remotely efficient way like those ones do.

potatototoo99 4y ago
Tokyo gets a bad rep, but on average apartments are smaller in London than Tokyo for instance.
novok 4y ago
On top of that, these tiny houses are talked about in an american context, where cities and lifestyles are designed for the suburbs, cars and the fact you have so much space for storage. Cities like tokyo provide a lot of stuff within walking distance so you don't need to have it yourself, like gym equipment, close by groceries, a lot of good restaurants / bakeries and so on. Because you need to get into a car, go on a +10m drive, etc, everything is designed for the 'costco lifestyle', buying 20 packs of everything and recreating many of the services of the city within your own house, because otherwise it is too expensive and inconvenient to have them. If you want quality baking and meals too, you need to make it in your own house, because you probably surrounded by boring american chain stores otherwise.

nemo44x 4y ago

One of the nice things about having a larger house is different rooms have different moods at different times of day and times of year. You’re not just in the same space every day. Some days a certain room just calls to you and time is well spent in it.

dave333 4y ago

The original idea for tiny homes was to avoid the mortgage rat race and retire early. An alternate solution that is almost as inexpensive but that doesn't involve living in a shoebox is a mobile home in a good old fashioned mobile home park. For seniors looking to downsize/economize their retirement a MH in a quiet senior 55+ community can solve the financial problem while still allowing them a single family home dwelling that you can park next to (unlike an apartment) and that is cheap enough to live near you grandchildren in a metro area. Senoir parks also have many community benefits for retirees. The one downside is the space rent that you have to pay to the park that is not under your control. Some parks such as Natural Bridges on the Pacific Ocean near Santa Cruz, CA have astronomical space rents ($5000+/month). Other places such as San Jose have rent control ordinances that limit increases in space rent to 3%/year. A few parks are set up where the residents own the park and so the rent they pay is to themselves and they have democratic control over any increases. In most cases space rent is comparable to property taxes in a normal single family home. Construction of new mobile homes is very adequate and at the same time affordable generally in the range of $100k-$150k. MHPs have been socially maligned but they are a great housing solution and a much better option than most people think.

thinkmcfly 4y ago
I'd advise against a mh for older people. As soon as your knee or hip goes the mh is useless
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  I think they're mostly describing the immobile kind that's basically a pre-fab home trucked to the spot. Sometimes double-wide.
- dave333 4y ago
  Not true - MHs can have special shallow stairs that are easier on the knees or even a wheelchair ramp or lift if necessary. All three of these options exist on houses on my street. Also my wife has bad knees but had knee joint replacement surgery on one pre-Covid and is scheduling the other knee post-Covid and she is happy with normal stairs.

CMCDragonkai 4y ago

This reminds me of the van life trend. Seems attractive on the outside. Until you actually try it and realise it's like living like a hobo.

hotpotamus 4y ago
Matt Foley was never intended as a positive role model, that was sort of the whole point.
- geoduck14 4y ago
  >Matt Foley was never intended as a positive role model, that was sort of the whole point. It sounds great until YOU ARE LIVING IN A VAN, DOWN NEAR THE RIVER. Great skit. I miss him.
jamincan 4y ago
The Youtube algorithm recommended a "top ten" list awhile ago about things the youtuber hated about van life. I had been watching quite a feel tiny homes videos, mostly out of curiousity about how people made efficient use of their space more than a desire to move into a small home. In any case, it's a pretty honest breakdown of the challenges of van life, from someone who seemed to be making bank on the whole trend. Interestingly, going back and looking at the titles of subsequent videos, it sounds like it's becoming more of a struggle for her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4QQTfIvzv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4QQTfIvzv4

chiefalchemist 4y ago

What I think would be ideal, and I've fantasizfantasized about, is a tiny home community. A larger shared "community" space at the hub, with 4 to 6 to 8 "spoke" tiny homes. The hub gives you space to entertain, and you retreat to your TH as you see fit. The hub would function Air BB style in that aside from shared hours, each TH unit can schedule X hours per month. Something like that.

thwayunion 4y ago
A few modifications: 1. attach the units and TH's together so that you don't have to go outside (more relevant in non-temperate climates I suppose) 2. Put a high-quality kitchen in the common area (they don't work well in THs anyways -- not enough space for eg prepping and cooking and storing a meal for the week) 3. Move bathrooms and showers to the main area (they don't work well in THs anyways -- wet rooms are gross) Aka, a shared house with room mates. I lived in these for years and would much prefer a shared house to a TH...
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  That's the general idea. But not #1. I think privacy trumps comfort.
lost_tourist 4y ago
I know "shared community" sounds great to some, but to me it would be a living hell. I hate nosy neighbors. I tried with one neighbor, he and his family seemed nice enough, and he was new and getting to know people. After a few months I had a semi-retired cousin who likes to travel a lot stay with me for a month or so as my guest. After a couple weeks my neighbor waves me over, I figure it was just to say hi, and starts asking nosy questions about who that "man" staying at my house is, and I refuse to answer him because, well, it's nosy and none of his business. I was nice at first about my refusal because he didn't give me any reason why he was asking, but then he got angry. So I just walked away and haven't talked to him since. The best neighbor is a fence.
- 4y ago

asiachick 4y ago

This sounds pretty whiny given there are plenty of apartments much smaller that people live in just fine in places like Japan, Hong Kong and I'm sure more. Here's 12000 apartments the same size or smaller within a 40 minute commute of Shibuya Tokyo https://www.chintai.net/list/?cf=0&ct=0&m=0&m=1&m=2&m=3&jk=0&jl=0&sf=0&st=25&b=1&b=2&b=3&h=99&k=1&st=25&ks=4&wd=%E6%B8%8B%E8%B0%B7&sj=50&tc=1&tm=0&rt=3&p=50&o=10&&i=1 https://www.chintai.net/list/?cf=0&ct=0&m=0&m=1&m=2&m=3&jk=0... People live in them just fine because their expectations are different. It's like most students don't complain when living in dorms. Yes it's not the same, but the point is the expectation is different so it's fine. Similarly, I lived in hotels for 1~3 months at a time several times, often one after another (no larger place in between). Not a problem because my expectations matched.

michaelwww 4y ago

I didn't really get what they hate about it. I read some mild annoyances, which I had a hard time understanding because I grew up in an 800 sq ft house with 2 parents and 5 kids, then served on a submarine in the US Navy. I'm probably an outlier in the low direction in terms of Americans and their space requirements.

_Wintermute 4y ago

Just for reference for those in the US, the "tiny house" in the article would be a small but fairly standard sized apartment in Paris. I think the US just such a warped view on house sizes compared to much of the rest of the world.

ch4s3 4y ago
At 22 square meters, it looks like it's on the small side for Paris, based on some Googling, and smaller than my studio in NYC.
- fold3 4y ago
  It is indeed. Also I want to add that in a city like Paris, you have access to high quality public facilities like open acceas library study room, squares and parks with comfortable chairs so that you don't need to stay home for much more than fix a quick meal and sleep. That said, it is a precarious lifestyle and not something people do by choice.
Gigachad 4y ago
From what I have seen, the "tiny house" trend typically is located in the middle of nowhere though where there is plenty of space to build a much bigger one. A small apartment is pretty good and workable when it's in a city where you can make use of external facilities. I just don't see the point when you have space for 50 houses on the land but you build this one shipping container sized one right in the middle.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago

According to the article: > Node, which builds tiny homes in factories to reduce construction cost These cost >=$150k (source: https://www.fastcompany.com/90381454/these-flatpack-homes-can-be-fully-assembled-in-less-than-three-months https://www.fastcompany.com/90381454/these-flatpack-homes-ca...). > Node’s smallest unit, at 400 square feet, is $150,000 This seems expensive to me given that in Kenya a 40x8 foot container home costs between 950,000 and 1,400,000 Ksh (c. $8000-$11500, so less that a tenth Node's price). (source: https://premiumcontainers.co.ke/current-cost-of-shipping-container-homes-in-kenya/ https://premiumcontainers.co.ke/current-cost-of-shipping-con...) There's absolutely no reason technologically that housing has to be expensive. If it is, it's because of social/regulatory reasons.

allendoerfer 4y ago
Quick googling showed, that the average salary in Kenya is about 1/10 of that in the US. So the prices are the same to the respective people living there. Technology doesn‘t matter much here, economics are the reason why prices have to be different.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  The typical reason why the price is whatever people are able or willing to pay for an item, is a lack of competition.
  - snoot 4y ago
    Right. If you want to buy a house in a desirable place, you’ll have to compete with other people who want it.
    - tinus_hn 4y ago
      It’s not about buying a house in a place. These are the construction costs if you already have the place.
    - PontifexMinimus 4y ago

Eleison23 4y ago

I live in a 1BR apartment and it's huge; much too large for me. I moved here 7 years ago, from a small studio (efficiency) place. The last place had a dorm-size refrigerator, a non-walk-in closet, no tub, etc. Between there and here, I've accumulated a lot of stuff, and for a while it seemed like I could never downsize again because I needed a separate working space, and this was a dealbreaker for entertaining thoughts of a roommate or going back to a studio at all. However, I've downsized, got rid of plenty of stuff including some storage furniture and my desktop computer(!) and I feel ready to downsize again. And eventually, I will need to. I'm 50 and living independently with mental illness. Every year I have a nervous breakdown, because managing my own household is a Herculean effort I can barely sustain. If I prepare all my own meals and clean up after myself, I'm exhausted. If I don't, then I'm broke and fat. It's not a winning situation. Eventually I'll need to work something out where I give up my independence of living and rely on some sort of caregivers, and I may also need to admit a roommate to the mix. This will not be enjoyable. It reminds me of our grandmother who, 50 years ago, lived in a 5BR-2BA house with about 6 apartments in back. She was a landlady and head of household. And eventually it was just way, way too much for her to maintain, even with Mom and Dad's help. The space we take up as Americans is unconscionable. Either have a large family and share that space, or give it up, or share it with other adults equitably. We just don't need these McMansions all over the place. We also don't need pedestrian-hostile suburbs!!!

TedShiller 4y ago

People who think more housing lowers housing prices have never been to a big city. Waiting for the “But Tokyo!” guy.

lmm 4y ago
More housing lowers housing prices and makes the city better, which attracts more people, which raises housing prices. It's hard to separate the two effects, but if you compare a city that builds more with a city that builds less, building less has little to recommend it. And yes, Tokyo is a good example.
- TedShiller 4y ago
  Problem solved. Tokyo.
  - linksnapzz 4y ago
    That also requires ~30 million Japanese, without which you might end up with a very different city.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  more people in a city making more efficient use of global resources doesn't sound like a worst case scenario
Gigachad 4y ago
Price is supply/demand. More housing usually came because of a huge population causing more demand. Population is almost like a force of gravity where dense places can never build enough because more always want to come.
- TedShiller 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand The answer is actually less housing.

harmmonica 4y ago

We've been building tiny houses for the past year and a half (4 houses total, two of which we've sold). After talking to a couple of hundred people interested in tiny houses, here's what we've learned: The wheels/trailers are "dumb" because almost nobody wants to move them once they get them in place. So as far as we can tell the only reason to build on a trailer is to avoid regulations in many locations throughout the US (an example: where we are in New Mexico if you build a house on a foundation you need to hire licensed plumbers and electricians whereas if you build on a trailer you can DIY; needless to say licensed professionals are far more expensive that doing it yourself so there are significant savings when you DIY). The people interested in tiny houses seem to fall into three buckets (maybe 4): 1. people who want an Airbnb on their existing property (these are usually well-to-do folks who don't bat an eye at the pricing) 2. older folks who don't have the means to retire in a normal-sized house 3. younger folks who don't have the means to live in a normal house 4. if there's a 4th, it's younger folks who want a vacation house that they can Airbnb when they're not using it. These 4 markets seem quite large based on the number of people who have reached out to us when we do pretty minimal marketing. And the reason we started doing this in the first place was to build below-market-rate housing (i.e., targeting groups 2 and 3 above), but there's a bit of a paradox going on here that we're trying to solve: groups 2 and 3 do not have the means to buy houses (tiny or not) outright so the only way we're going to crack this nut is if you can finance the purchase. We think we've found a way to do that, at least in our local market of Northern New Mexico, and we're just going through the proper channels with our local county to test this concept because lenders of course require that what you're building is legitimate. We're still hopeful that this will be a good solution locally, if not more broadly. Btw, we have never given a thought to trying to do this in an urban area. Doesn't seem sensible given land values where cheaper housing is almost by definition multifamily (i.e., >=2 units on a lot). Edit: Oh, duh, here's a link to the house we build: https://santafe.craigslist.org/reo/d/el-prado-brand-new-fully-outfitted-tiny/7546789523.html https://santafe.craigslist.org/reo/d/el-prado-brand-new-full...

dsalzman 4y ago
Isn’t the biggest reason to build on wheels is to register the tiny house as a vehicle and not pay property taxes on the house value?

6510 4y ago

I see pretty much no effort to decorate. What a depressing space.

6510 4y ago
look at gypsy wagons, [expensive] custom campers and [high end] small sail boats. Not having a lot of space allows for an almost infinite budget per m2.

Havoc 4y ago

It’s just cramped apartment living with a sprinkling of influencer cool

deleted 4y ago

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