“Your House Is HOW Small?” | Diving Into The Trendiest New Housing Craze, Tiny Houses

Though tiny houses have essentially always existed in some form or another, they have become an extremely trendy housing choice in the past few years. Popularized by everything from Instagram accounts to major network television shows, “going tiny” has become a phenomenon. I’ll admit it; I was drawn into the movement by seeing photos online of chic, cozy little houses and watching my fair share of HGTV shows. But the deeper I dug, the more connection I felt to the less glitzy ideas behind the movement. I was attracted to the concept of building my first house with my own hands and empowered by the idea of shrinking my environmental impact.

Where did this trend come from? The fancy houses on wheels you see on TV are certainly a far cry from the modest log cabins where American tiny living may have actually begun. Most people consider the founder of the tiny house movement to be Jay Shafer. In the early 2000s, Shafer founded Tumbleweed Tiny Homes, the first U.S. based company to build mobile tiny houses. He began writing, was interviewed about his experiences living in 90 square feet, and worked with a group of tiny living enthusiasts to found the Small House Society as a resource for like-minded individuals. The movement has continued to pick up speed in the 20 years since. Boosted by the advent of social media, the trend has skyrocketed in popularity, creating a whole new industry of builders and specialized products, as well as opening new perspectives about alternative housing.

What’s Tiny? And What’s Legal?

You may also be asking, what qualifies as a tiny house? This can be a surprisingly hard question to answer. “Tiny” means different things to different people. But tiny houses are generally limited to residences of 400 square feet or less, and can include small converted garages, fully mobile RVs, self-converted camper vans, houses built on trailers that move either full-time or only occasionally, and so much more. The variety you can find in the tiny living community is vast, and the creativity you can find on display even more so.

Downsizing into less than 400 square feet from a multi-bedroom standard home may sound difficult enough, but one of the harder parts about going tiny is how to do it legally. Zoning ordinances differ for every state, city, and county. Some locales are supportive of tiny homes as ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) placed near existing full-size homes, while others have strict policies that can impose heavy fines or even have you evicted from your own land. The legal issues plaguing tiny house dwellers and dreamers are so complex and vary so greatly from location to location, there’s no way to adequately sum them up without a lot more time and way more research than I am equipped to do. The primary issues come down to permits and square footage minimums. One of the advantages of building a tiny house on wheels is that building permits or certificates of occupancy are not required, but are necessary when building on a foundation. This expedites the process of building, and keeps costs down, but understandably causes some issues with zoning and permitting entities. Permits were put into place so that people don’t try to – for instance – do their own wiring, mess it up, and set their whole neighborhood on fire. Minimum square footage requirements and mobile structure bans in most places were put into practice because of the fear that a piece of land in a neighborhood purchased as the residential site of a rundown RV or mobile home would drag property values down. It’s easy to see both sides of the argument.

Some places, primarily on the West Coast, have started to catch onto the benefits of making their communities tiny house friendly, often as a way to increase affordable housing and combat homelessness. But by and large, it is still technically illegal to live out of a stationary tiny house with wheels in most states. For example, if I were to buy my own piece of land outright, and park my tiny house on it, a grumpy neighbor could call the zoning board, tell them, “There is someone living out of a mobile home next door,” and I could possibly be evicted from my own property. Tiny houses, especially those on wheels, exist in a legal gray area, though there are many people working on changing those policies, advocating for the economic and social benefits of creating space for those who want to live tiny.

Stuck in an Apartment

By the end of 2017, I had been dreaming of buying my own house for almost two years. I had grown tired of living in the city, with hardly any outdoor space and the bare minimum of natural light in my modest one-bedroom basement apartment in Downtown Richmond. I was getting a bit desperate to find a place that I could truly make my own, and with the real estate market booming in Richmond, I needed to start making plans soon. However, I couldn’t seem to unblock myself enough to find a real estate agent and start looking in earnest.

After taking some time to pick apart my worries, I figured out that my concerns were three-fold. 1. I love my city and don’t have any plans to leave, but being 29 and having always lived in Virginia, I was concerned about investing time, energy, and money into a place I might have to leave behind if the right opportunity came along. 2. I am lucky enough not to be burdened with a lot of debt in my life thus far, so the idea of a 30-year mortgage and the cost of filling a house with furniture was jarring. I know that it’s a very normal process, part of the way of life in America, but nonetheless the idea had me stuck. And 3. Every house comes with issues. The great thing about renting is that for the most part, your landlord handles the major issues. But if I were to buy a house and discover foundation problems, mold, a leaking roof, or a broken toilet, all of that cost and responsibility would then be mine. I recognize those are just the realities of traditional homeownership, but I stayed roadblocked, living in my apartment.

Duh!

I was absent-mindedly scrolling through Instagram one night, having recently gotten hooked on following so-called “van-lifers,” people who live on the road out of mostly self-converted vans, working remotely and traveling the world. I was thinking about how brave it was to sell almost all of your possessions and live fully mobile in roughly 60 square feet. I thought I could ever do that. Like many others, I had been following the trend of people building tiny houses on wheels online and on TV for some time. But for some reason, I had never connected that idea to myself as something I might want to pursue.

That evening, while I was admiring all of the smartly designed compact spaces on wheels that these van-lifers were using to live the good life, everything clicked into place. Quite literally, I smacked myself in the forehead, scoffing at my inability to connect the dots earlier, thinking, “You want to create a space that’s yours, but you are worried about cost, about being stuck in the same place, and about how to handle unforeseen issues … Why don’t you just design a tiny house on wheels, and build it yourself?”

I was instantly obsessed with the idea. That very night I stayed up until 3 a.m. doing research, flagging photos for inspiration, poring over blogs and builder websites, figuring out a potential budget, even sketching a floor plan! I spent the following months teaching myself how to use a 3D modeling program so I could formalize my design, researching zoning issues, comparing financing options, and excitedly telling friends, coworkers, and family, to a fair share of raised eyebrows and confused looks. During the day I coordinate the marketing program for an architecture and interior design firm, so I even presented my design to my coworkers over lunch one day to get their feedback and suggestions. I drove up to the Mid-Atlantic Tiny House Expo in Fredericksburg to attend educational sessions and tour all of the tiny houses they had on display.

A Leap of Faith

After close to six months of research, work, and consideration, I ultimately made my decision. I took a solo weekend vacation to an AirBnB tiny house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The house was the same square footage as the one I had designed and proved to be the perfect size, not cramped or claustrophobic at all! I took note of anything I didn’t love about the design and made sure that I had mitigated those issues in my own design. But more than anything, I felt comfortable and at ease in that space. It was the strongest gut feeling I can ever remember having – that this was the right kind of lifestyle for me to pursue. I returned to Richmond ready to hit the gas pedal on building my house.