Is the tiny home trend too romanticized?
Just outside of Airdrie, Andre Gaudraeu is planning and building his tiny house. The Airdrie Echo recently interviewed him to talk about his project, which is a 25 square metre house that, despite its diminutive dimensions, will have a shower, living room and study and a real kitchen.
Gaudraue is a carpenter and wanted to find a new way to live better and not bigger.
He’s using quality, recycled materials and hopes the experience of building his house and then living in it will change his life. He’d like to be self-sufficient in the future by growing food and raising chickens.
Others in the Airdrie area are interested in what he’s doing, and after he’s finished his he’d like to help people with their tiny homes.
He is fortunate in that he has some rural property upon which to build, plant his garden and keep poultry. A tiny home can be difficult in a big city where the tiny home movement is great on theory but hard to put into practice because of municipal by-laws.
Building a tiny home, often on a trailer flat-bed with wheels so it can be moved, is affordable. Depending on what’s inside it, a tiny home can be anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000 or more. No mortgage required. However, because of their incredibly small dimensions, they’re more like trailers than homes, especially when they’re on wheels. That’s when they are actually deemed as recreation vehicles and require a license plate. And generally, there are rules about where RVs can and can’t park. Emphasis on can’t.
In Calgary, there are by-laws in place which outline how big a house on a lot must be and tiny homes just don’t qualify. Some are looking at renting a piece of land outside the city limits.
I could be easier to have one in Airdrie, where there are no restrictions on how big a home on a city lot must be. However, when you do the math, a tiny home at $40,000 sitting on a lot that costs $200,000 doesn’t make much sense.
The best course of action for putting a tiny house in a permanent place in Airdrie would be to convert it into a garden suite or lane home and put it on someone else’s lot. Another term in Airdrie would a granny suite or accessory suite. These aren’t regulated currently by the City of Airdrie, but council is looking into it this spring. Safety issues and utility hook-ups need to be considered.
With the tiny home movement gaining in popularity, cities will be forced to incorporate them into municipal ordinances. The good thing is that tiny homes could help with homelessness in urban centres.
The bad thing is that the trend may fade away.
Big problems with tiny houses
Those who have spent time in a tiny house will tell you that it’s not a sustainable way to live. Could you accommodate more people if your family grows? Will you tire of not having privacy? What about when you’re old – can you climb a ladder to the loft or hop over the bed to get to the other side? What will you do with all the keepsakes you have as you walk through life?
Some will say that a tiny house is too expensive. But how can that be, when many are choosing a tiny house and its lifestyle because it’s cheap? Well, relative to a standard sized bungalow, the cost per square foot to build the house can be upwards of $400 compared to that bungalow at around $84.
Consider all the options before you decide if you’re being trendy or true to your frugal nature.