Small Living Journal

Yes, it is illegal to live in a tiny house in much of the US. Does that surprise you?

According to designer and tiny house advocate Jay Shafer, “minimum size standards have been found to be unconstitutional in several US courts.” These standards reside in model building codes, adopted and customized at the local level for the stated purpose of protecting public health, safety and general welfare.

In his Small House Book (order it here), Shafer asserts that these standards (specific to the size of houses and the rooms within) were pushed through during the 1970s and 80s by the housing and banking industries in order to produce “more profit per structure.” The result? Ugly McMansions, sprawl, construction waste, higher co2 emissions, and, now, an unaffordable housing crisis.

To make things worse, some neighborhood groups “needlessly fearful for their property values and lifestyles” also prohibit small homes in their areas, writes Shafer.

However, there are ways to get around this.

1. Move out of the city. Many rural areas are unregulated in this way.
2. Negotiate. Talk with your local building officials or neighborhood associations. They might be convinced that a small house is non-threatening.
3. Accessorize. Small dwellings are sometimes allowed to be built adjacent to a house, such as a “granny flat.”
4. Don’t hook up. If a structure is not permanently attached and not hooked up to public utilities, it may not be considered relevant to housing codes.
5. Apply pressure. Point out the immense housing problem and give an out for your local politicians to save the day.

Of course I’m speaking in generalities here. You must check your local building codes as they vary greatly.

Alternately, you can do what was done here — turn the chicken coop into a tiny house and make it a tourist attraction. Here is a recent photo Michael took of the smallest house in Santa Clara County. It is 514 square feet on a 956-square-foot lot. The house must have been “grandfathered in” and thus, slips under the minumum size code regulations.

Hillary lives in a 677 sq. ft. historic home with her partner while renovating a 50 sq. ft. tiny trailer. Her blog is located at thistinyhouse.com where this article was first published.

Making our tiny house dream come true has been challenging. We’ve faced a variety of obstacles and most of those have to do with city codes.

In Sacramento, our tiny house would be classified as a camping trailer. So we’ve struggled with the challenges presented by bureaucratic regulations and have talked about a variety of options to get around these rules.

1. Backyard possibilities.

Illegally park in someone’s backyard within the city limits. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind trying this option. If we found a homeowner willing to work with us and the neighbors were nice, I don’t think this would cause a problem. Many tiny home dwellers suggest building a cute home (people like beautiful things) and exploit municipal code technicalities such as defining your tiny home living as “recreating”.

2. Moving outside of the city.

If we parked on private land outside of the city limits (either in Davis or Sacramento) then we wouldn’t need a permit. All we need is written permission from the owner of the land to “recreate/camp”.

Logan grew up on a cattle ranch, near Mt. Shasta and we’ve talked about moving to the ranch. There wouldn’t be a problem with city codes and we would be near family.

3. Co-housing community

Finding a co-housing community that would let us park on their land or moving to a tiny house village would be a fantastic option. Hillary is working on an amazing project called the Tiny House Village Network and I think this has a lot of potential. Using our collective power to change perceptions and creating an intentional community is the way to go.

4. Purchasing land.

Purchasing a small piece of land for our tiny home is something we might consider doing in the future. But buying a habitable piece of land right now is not financially possible. The upfront costs are huge and we don’t want to be tied to a specific city at this time in our lives. Part of the draw to a tiny home on wheels is the ease of transport. Moving isn’t hard when you have a home on wheels.

5. Lease a space in an RV/trailer park.

Most Sacramento RV parks are expensive and not very attractive. The RV park’s we’ve explored have no space for gardening, are too far outside of the city and resemble WalMart parking lots. It’s not the kind of environment we want to live in. I’m sure there are many beautiful RV parks in the U.S., but I haven’t found many in my neck of the woods.

6. Moving?

We’ve considered moving to Portland because the city has embraced a variety of sustainability project’s. I think it’s possible to find a piece of land or someone’s backyard to park our tiny house. I’ve taken a few trips to Oregon recently and talked to a variety of folks who said local officials are receptive to alternative dwellings.

I don’t know if we will move but the Portland peeps have also given me a lot of creative ideas we can implement in Sacramento, like using the “recreating” strategy and lobbying public officials.

7. Lobbying public officials/bureaucrats.

Getting around city regulations seems to be a common problem for folks who live or want to live in a tiny home. The key to changing this problem might be lobbying and educating local politicians and city planners about the benefits of living small. The lobbying process is long and cumbersome but I think it would be a good starting place, regardless of your location.

Questions

I’m curious to hear from you. What strategies have you used to get around bureaucratic regulations? Do you have any options to add to the list?

Most cities have ordinances that determine how small a house can be. Typically homes must be larger than 1000 square feet in size because any dwelling smaller than that is considered to be sub-standard and not suitable for habitation. Presumably these laws are established to prevent the construction of small shacks and shanty towns such as those pictured here. Such regulations may have the appearance of equity and reason, however they are neither fair nor rational.

Although housing codes suggest that small homes are not habitable, many homes built prior to such laws being established continue to be lived in and seem to be those in highest demand — despite the current national housing crisis. Although they cost less to construct, small homes aren’t necessarily of poor quality.

How is it that homes can be bought and sold on the market that are well below the legal minimum size standards, yet current laws dictate that newly constructed homes must be large? How is it that the law in most cities requires new homes be larger than 1000 square feet, yet apartments and rooming houses can be rented that are well below that limit?

The current “minimum size standards” are nothing more than institutionalized poverty and injustice. The fact is that the per-capita square footage for most people is about 300 square feet of space per person or less. Think of how common it is for several students to share a single cramped dorm room. Singles and couples on a budget often rent a room or an efficiency to save on rent.

The current minimum size laws do nothing to help ensure more square feet of living space per person in our society. What they do is ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The minimum size rules established in a municipality are not the only regulations a builder is constrained by. Most neighborhoods have covenants that include the permitted size of homes in the neighborhood. It’s not uncommon to have 2000 square feet as a minimum size for new home construction in many neighborhoods.

Those who can’t afford to build a large home (most people) must rent. Herein lies the core of this issue. Those who rent are not building equity. They are lining someone else’s pockets with profits and paying off that person’s mortgage. Meanwhile, the renter owns nothing. Those who rent are often charged exorbitant fees and are locked into restrictive contracts. Often deposits are not returned unless a tenant takes legal action.

Allowing the construction of smaller homes and perhaps condos, would ensure that those who aren’t wealthy could at least start on their way toward home ownership and building equity.

Until the laws change, what some people have done is construct homes that are above the law by being above the ground. Homes constructed on trailers are considered to be similar to a camper or motor home RV. So, in most cities, people are able to wheel them in, rather than constructing them on site, and live independent of the laws that would otherwise have them evicted and their home condemned.

Toms River, New Jersey suburb (above)

I heard it as recently as yesterday. “Those entrenched bureaucrats in city hall are the ones to blame!”

I was talking with a man about the state of public transportation in Burlington, Vermont. His strongly worded opinions about the current condition of our bus service and our failed attempt at reviving passenger train service pointed the finger squarely at “those pencil pushers who don’t care about anything but protecting their jobs.”

It certainly wasn’t a new argument. I hear variations of it virtually every day. “It’s the politician’s fault. It’s the bureaucracy’s fault. It’s the corporation’s fault.” Et cetera. There’s never a shortage of blame to pass around, it seems, except when it comes to turning the finger on ourselves.

I have to admit my defensiveness when it comes to blaming the bureaucrats because, you see, I was a bureaucrat once. For ten years I worked as a planner for the City of Burlington, Vermont. Not unlike other municipal planning departments, we facilitated the public process that shaped the regularly updated municipal development plans. Those plans are the policy documents that are the basis for the zoning ordinances that our office also administered and enforced.

As a progressive college town, Burlington prides itself in its success in keeping a vibrant downtown surrounded by close-knit neighborhoods and a publicly accessible waterfront. When the march of the big box stores in the surrounding hinterlands began threatening the future of our city by the lake, a call to arms gave us “Citizens for Responsible Growth” and various other organized efforts to halt the spread of what James Kuntsler so aptly describes in his book, “The Geography of Nowhere.” In an effort to protect the values of a healthy urban core, providing jobs and residences without compromising the surrounding open lands with beltways and suburban sprawl, the director of my department was at the forefront of the policy discussion. We all spoke loudly in opposition but, as is so often the case, our efforts failed. Vermont, previously the only state without a WalMart, saw the formerly agricultural soils adjacent to Exit 12 on Interstate 89 graded and paved to provide acres of free parking for the bargain-hunting throngs to follow.

Sadly, among the thousands of “consumers” excitedly taking advantage of cheaper prices as soon as those big box stores opened were my fellow planning staff members, from the director on down. In the end, it is all of us as individuals who are to blame. Policy statements and best intentions are one thing, but the implications of our daily economic decisions are what shape the world around us. We as individuals are the ones who have purchased the oversized homes, stuffing them with the latest trendy goods and stopping only long enough along the way to power up with drive-thru fast food and designer latte’s. Those purchasing decisions, not bureaucrats or corporate executives, are the real driving force.

The bureaucrats are not the reason why big box retailers are winning out over locally owned and operated alternatives. Planners are not forcing us to comply with some centrally concocted scheme for suburban sprawl, gated communities, and plastic-coated facades. It is not the zoning administrators that are plotting against those who want to build a smaller home. Politicians are not the ones responsible for the minimum size restrictions and other seemingly nonsensical regulatory requirements that go beyond zoning’s original purpose to protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizenry. Those rules came about as a direct result of collective interests that have stood to gain a lot by protecting property values and promoting increasingly bloated “dream homes.”

Should we blame the developers then? Certainly not. Just as with fast food restaurants and big box retailers, builders are responding to market demand. When I read about a community that does not allow a home of less than 1200 feet to be built within its borders, I don’t look for some renegade planner that was clever enough to foist such a requirement on the townspeople. Rather, I take a walk down the streets and look at the purchasing decisions that are reflected by individual town residents. The answers lie collectively behind those doors.

To read more of Kevin’s small home adventures, visit his blog, “Building Gypsy Rose .”