4 ms·

This is due to zoning laws. Many people desperately want smaller housing, but it's effectively illegal everywhere in the USA. The only alternative is to buy rur

This is due to zoning laws. Many people desperately want smaller housing, but it's effectively illegal everywhere in the USA. The only alternative is to buy rural land and try to get creative with the law (e.g. your tiny home on an existing rusted old trailer frame is considered a "remodel", etc) or simply build a small cabin and hope no one from the government comes to bulldoze it. Even success here means you're stuck far away from jobs, infrastructure, etc. Existing small houses are priced as high (or higher) than new-build McMansions. See also: "missing middle" https://youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc https://youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc

mindslight 3y ago
The entire point of wanting smaller housing is so that the neighborhood can be denser with better walkability, public transit, etc. You can certainly choose to live in a shoebox in a rural area, but it's losing on both fronts.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Most of the rural shoeboxes are old, and most new houses are McMansions. The options for somebody who wants a newly build small house in suburbia are very limited, with or without a large yard.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Find land, which there is plenty of in rural areas, and build a new small house? As far as I'm aware the legal requirements center around lot sizes rather than dwelling sizes, hence my original comment about density being the quality that has been prohibited.
    - CapstanRoller 3y ago
      >Find land, which there is plenty of in rural areas, and build a new small house? Then you're just contributing to the sprawl problem, because infrastructure has to extend to you somehow. The options are: - bring all the infrastructure with you (be rich) - do without (live in squalor) The third option we need: - small dense affordable housing
      - mindslight 3y ago
        > - small dense affordable housing Yes, we're in agreement that density is sorely missing, due to effectively being made illegal - whether SROs, lot size requirements, building codes prohibiting new triple deckers, etc. I just don't know why your first comment had this: > The only alternative is to buy rural land and try to get creative with the law (e.g. your tiny home on an existing rusted old trailer frame is considered a "remodel", etc) or simply build a small cabin and hope no one from the government comes to bulldoze it. Because that isn't an alternative. Rather it just strikes me as regular rural living in a small house. I'm surprised there haven't been more private corporate attempts to take ruralish land and bootstrap higher density walkable proto-cities with bus (or even train) service to a larger city, especially with the recent trend of remote work making attracting industry less necessary.
        CapstanRoller 3y ago
        >Because that isn't an alternative. Rather it just strikes me as regular rural living in a small house. It was more of a suggestion to do something quasi-legal like a multi-tenant tiny house village. I know a few folks who did this in the PNW, along with one who bought a disused kids' camp facility with small A-frame cabins and turned it into a permaculture farm & community, and then had all their friends move in. You're right in that it's not an answer either, because it's essentially a tiny breakaway society.
diracs_stache 3y ago
Seriously, I would been fine with my family in a 2-3 bedroom but in my area those are absolute pits so my wife and I both work to overpay for a 4 bed with more space than we need (not just bedrooms, a "sitting room" we dont use, extra bathroom, hurts to look at our payments and know its under utilized)

mindslight 3y ago

The entire point of wanting smaller housing is so that the neighborhood can be denser with better walkability, public transit, etc. You can certainly choose to live in a shoebox in a rural area, but it's losing on both fronts.

mcpackieh 3y ago
Most of the rural shoeboxes are old, and most new houses are McMansions. The options for somebody who wants a newly build small house in suburbia are very limited, with or without a large yard.
- mindslight 3y ago
  Find land, which there is plenty of in rural areas, and build a new small house? As far as I'm aware the legal requirements center around lot sizes rather than dwelling sizes, hence my original comment about density being the quality that has been prohibited.
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    >Find land, which there is plenty of in rural areas, and build a new small house? Then you're just contributing to the sprawl problem, because infrastructure has to extend to you somehow. The options are: - bring all the infrastructure with you (be rich) - do without (live in squalor) The third option we need: - small dense affordable housing
    - mindslight 3y ago
      > - small dense affordable housing Yes, we're in agreement that density is sorely missing, due to effectively being made illegal - whether SROs, lot size requirements, building codes prohibiting new triple deckers, etc. I just don't know why your first comment had this: > The only alternative is to buy rural land and try to get creative with the law (e.g. your tiny home on an existing rusted old trailer frame is considered a "remodel", etc) or simply build a small cabin and hope no one from the government comes to bulldoze it. Because that isn't an alternative. Rather it just strikes me as regular rural living in a small house. I'm surprised there haven't been more private corporate attempts to take ruralish land and bootstrap higher density walkable proto-cities with bus (or even train) service to a larger city, especially with the recent trend of remote work making attracting industry less necessary.
      - CapstanRoller 3y ago
        >Because that isn't an alternative. Rather it just strikes me as regular rural living in a small house. It was more of a suggestion to do something quasi-legal like a multi-tenant tiny house village. I know a few folks who did this in the PNW, along with one who bought a disused kids' camp facility with small A-frame cabins and turned it into a permaculture farm & community, and then had all their friends move in. You're right in that it's not an answer either, because it's essentially a tiny breakaway society.

diracs_stache 3y ago

Seriously, I would been fine with my family in a 2-3 bedroom but in my area those are absolute pits so my wife and I both work to overpay for a 4 bed with more space than we need (not just bedrooms, a "sitting room" we dont use, extra bathroom, hurts to look at our payments and know its under utilized)