QnA: Six weeks in and no end in sight for this Texas Tiny House owner
The tiny house movement is growing outward in all directions all across the United States. Just two years ago, the town of Spur, Texas announced it would begin to allow tiny houses within its limits, even calling itself “America’s First Tiny House Friendly Town”. At first, a traveler looking to set up a tiny home in the town would come every couple of weeks, but according to Spur resident Benjamin Garcia, there are now five to six people stopping by every week looking for a lot to begin construction on their small home project.
Benjamin Garcia has been living in his tiny home for about six weeks, and after talking through reddit.com’s messaging system, he spoke about his new lifestyle in a phone interview.
Q: So let’s go back to the start, what made you decide to build a tiny home?
A: I’m a traveler, and I like the freedom to move around. I want to have a workshop, but I do not want to spend money to have an expensive place that I do not use. I wanted a place that I could use as a home base, but I use it so infrequently that I didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars of rent each month.
Q: Was it hard to get started?
A: Finding a town that I could get parking in was too good to pass up. They decided to remove any kind of building codes, so I don’t have to worry about having a trailer on wheels. And I get Internet, fiber-optic, sewage, power, pretty much all utilities.
Q: What was the process like for building your house?
A: I’d never built anything before, so I didn’t want it to be permanent. I have a wood cabin made of reclaimed wood I found around town. There was a house that was about 100 years old that I got lumber out of that no one had lived in. The city doesn’t have a problem with me using utilities, so I got my own utility pole and hooked up.
Q: How much work did that take?
It was about 20 days of solid work over the course of five weeks, mostly full days, some half days, because its tiring work.
Q: So you don’t want it to be permanent, but do you see yourself living here for a while?
A: I think it’s about life stages. Right now I’m a bachelor. I don’t have to worry about having a space to accommodate children or large amounts of people. I think I will build something bigger and accommodating when I get to that stage in life, but I can see myself living here for the next few years.
Normally I would be renting for those next few years, but with the money I’m saving, I could pay off that larger house in cash. I will probably never have anything bigger than 800ft, but that’s because my lifestyle is very much outdoors.
Q: What do the locals think of your house?
A: Well there’s the funny looks, of course, I was only the third person to show up and start doing it. All the locals were walking by and driving by, and you could tell when car drives by that they reduce to about a third of their speed. It looks kind of funny because I’m surrounded by larger houses. Brick houses are standard here, but then you’ve got my little wood cabin sitting on a city lot.
Q: But the movement is growing in Spur, right?
A: Right now there are six tiny house people living in town: three have fully finished houses, and two are being constructed. We get five to six people here every week looking at lots, looking to build tiny houses.
Hopefully by the end of 2016 we will have 40 tiny houses around town. There are some larger tiny house communities around the country, and those communities are more concentrated in one area, but in Spur we have tiny houses on every other corner spread throughout town.
Q: Any final thoughts on the movement?
A: It’s a really good thing. I think the movement can help local poor people and with poverty issues we have in America, and it’s great to see more towns accept it and to see more people get over property values.
