Tiny “Houses”

I think tiny houses have their place. With the price of regular houses in high orbit people are looking for alternatives. Even apartments are stupid expensive. Every six months my daughter pays in rent what it once cost me for an actual house. It was on the small side, but not tiny. Sure, it needed work, but it was a freaking house. 

There are all these articles and videos about people getting great deals on tiny houses from big box stores. 

The vast majority of those structures are not houses. They are sheds. They are what goes next to a real house, not a house in their own right. 

Sheds are usually of much lighter construction. Typically they are just a shell. There’s no insulation, interior walls, plumbing and electricity. Even worse, you need actual land with water, septic and some sort of foundation. That is, if you want an actual house. Oh yeah, your “shed” probably won’t pass local codes for human occupancy. 

That’s a major reason why a lot of tiny homes are built on trailer frames. They are registered as trailers and kinda skirt the whole building code thing. Even that might not work. Living in one full time might even be against the law. In my very rural town it’s actually against the law to live in a trailer or RV. Your mileage may vary. 

Personally I think laws against tiny homes should be changed. If I want to live in a very small space that should be my business. There aren’t a lot of locations where it’s possible to do that. A lot of places where you can live that way are not really great places for living. Being in a remote desert with no water or services isn’t all that wonderful for most people. 

Frankly, for the price of those sheds people with basic skills can usually build something better from scratch. 

-Sixbears