Tiny Houses: Freedom To Be Resilient
Tiny houses evoke a lot of emotions in people for many different reasons. For some, they promise freedom from a mortgage. For others they offer an appealing minimalist lifestyle. Some people just find them irresistibly cute but would never live in one, and there are those that think they are a passing fad that won’t work for most people.
Can less be more? Can smaller equal better? Who do tiny houses really benefit?
Tiny houses as an affordable housing solution is just one iteration of the movement that has garnered significant media attention recently. And rightly so. The idea is potentially a great one. Building houses that are extremely tiny, means cheap (unless it’s covered in gold leaf) compared to the standard house. Cheaper housing means the bar for home ownership is lowered, which theoretically means that fewer people will be homeless or in an unaffordable housing situation. In most cases, owning a home (no matter how small) adds dignity and stability to a person’s life that could change a negative socioeconomic trajectory to a positive one. Lowering the cost of living also has very real effects on the resiliency of a household. It’s common sense really: if less of your daily expenditures are consumed by basic necessities (housing), you have more reserve to deal with unforeseen life events.
One of the things that was hammered into my head during my masters program in community development was that helping a person build resiliency is one of the most effective long-term strategies of assistance. Many people think that building resiliency means helping a person get more or better resources (psychological or physical) so that they can weather through the storms that inevitably come their way in life. When dealing with the poorest of the poor, this strategy for building resiliency is probably appropriate most of the time. But when dealing with the marginally poor, this isn’t always the case. In some situations building resiliency means having the right amount of physical resources. When it comes to housing, less house can equal more resiliency.
As a real world example: I am a recent graduate of a Master’s program, I am also the owner of a small business called Wind River Tiny Homes, and I live in a tiny house with my wife. While we were both completing our Master’s degrees in 2014 and 2015 we were living within HUD’s definition of very low income for Chattanooga. Although our needs were always met, we were definitely living paycheck to paycheck. Because we live in a tiny house our obligatory living expenses for the home itself are about $50 a month in utilities. If our living expenses hadn’t been so incredibly low, I would not have been able to start the small business in the first place, let alone weather the inevitable droughts we faced during the startup period. If we were paying off our student loans on top of a monthly rental payment at market rates, I would have had to leave the business in 2015 for other work. But because my wife and I chose to live in a tiny house, we survived the uncertainty of the first year. Since the beginning of 2016 our business has grown to the point where we are employing several people and have a full build schedule. Living tiny gave us resiliency, which then allowed us to maintain through the thin times and capitalize on opportunity.
Tiny Homes aren’t THE solution for affordable housing. They surely won’t work for every type of affordable housing problem or in every context. They do, however, offer an option for a certain sub-sector of those burdened by the cost of a house. Living below one’s means is a very un-American thing to strive for, but what would a nation, a state, a Chattanooga look like that valued living below its means? I don’t think the “American Dream” of home and property ownership is a bad thing, but I do think it needs to be brought back to reality for all our sake.
Jeremy Weaver is working with Causeway through 2016 to build an affordable pocket community in downtown Chattanooga that a diverse group of neighbors can call home.
Learn more about Jeremy’s fellowship with Causeway at www.causeway.org/dreamtiny
