Tiny house movement

The tiny house movement is an architectural and social movement that encourages people to live simply in small houses. Tiny houses are typically defined as living spaces that are fewer than four hundred square feet. They may be mobile or stationary. Tiny house homeowners often build their tiny house themselves, hiring out for specific needs or getting friends' help to keep costs low, but prefabricated tiny houses also exist. These houses arrive partially or fully assembled and require only a small vacant space on a piece of land to set up. In addition, tiny house kits may be purchased and then put together.

Some builders specialize in designing and constructing small houses. Efficient layout is important. Tiny houses usually include a bathroom, a small kitchen, and a multipurpose room that is both a living and sleeping space. Many tiny houses include small loft spaces for sleeping and storage. The tiny house movement is based on the idea that humans should be living only with the things they need—not accumulating things—and leaving a small environmental footprint. While prices of such homes vary, another common theme in the movement is providing a less expensive alternative to traditional housing. Another important aspect for many tiny house owners is the ability to travel and move around more easily, with or without one's home. For example, if a tiny house owner is interested in traveling, they typically need to ensure the house is safe to be left for a period of time. Tiny houses are easier to close down than full-size homes. Also, if an owner of a mobile tiny house is interested in moving, they need only move the house to the new desired location. In this way, these homes offer owners greater flexibility and mobility.

Brief History

Many people in the tiny house movement credit eighteenth-century author, poet, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau as the primary inspiration for the movement. Thoreau lived in a one-hundred-square-foot cabin on Walden Pond in Massachusetts for about two years. During this time, he wrote Walden, a famous book about living simply in nature. His book encourages deliberate, or thoughtful, living with few material possessions and time for reflecting on and observing one's natural surroundings.

A few books about building and living in small houses appeared in the 1970s and 80s as some baby boomers embraced the back-to-nature movement. In 1998, Sarah Susanka published the best-selling book The Not So Big House. The book advocated quality over quantity in house design. Susanka, like Thoreau, encouraged owning fewer material possessions. She also encouraged a more deliberate, simpler lifestyle. Her book was published during a time when house square footage in the United States had been steadily increasing. The average square footage of a home in 1970 was 1,400 square feet. By 2009, the average square footage of an American home had climbed to 2,700 square feet.

Another pioneer of the small house movement was Jay Shafer, author of The Small House Book (2009). Shafer spent his life living in and designing tiny houses. He designed many tiny houses on wheels so that they could become mobile living spaces. By the 2010s, the tiny house movement had grown popular enough that it received considerable mainstream media coverage.

Overview

The tiny house movement advocates using fewer materials to build a home, whether urban or rural and stationary or mobile. Often aligned with environmentalism, the movement encourages people to think about the resources they are using and the impact their space and lifestyle will have on the world as a whole. It promotes designing and building only the spaces necessary to live a simple lifestyle. Tiny houses have virtually no unused spaces, and many spaces serve multiple purposes. Tiny house dwellers must be creative with their space since it is so limited. Couches may double as sleeping quarters, furniture may have multiple uses, and a bed or table may collapse or fold into the wall. Since storage space in tiny houses is generally minimal or even nonexistent, homeowners are encouraged to think about each of their possessions carefully and discard anything that is not necessary for their daily life.

Many tiny houses make use of natural light. Since these structures offer such limited indoor living space, a connectedness often exists between the house and the outdoors. Tiny houses are designed to be affordable to heat, cool, and maintain. This is part of the deliberate lifestyle approach that includes thinking about what is needed and working to provide only for those needs, cutting out any excess. Many tiny house dwellers believe this aspect of the tiny house movement allows them more freedom, time, and opportunities to pursue the things they love to do. The tiny house movement focuses on being content with less. Advocates suggest that living in smaller, more thoughtful homes leads to a better quality of life.

A major attraction of tiny houses is the fact that they can cost far less than traditional houses to construct, purchase, and maintain. Americans typically spend almost half of their income on housing, but people living in small houses often have no mortgage. In the 2020s, basic tiny houses could be built for less than $10,000, although customized options and extra features meant prices could vary widely. In 2024, the median cost of tiny houses in the United States was around $60,000, while luxury examples reached $180,000—still well below median prices for traditional homes. Proponents also note that portable tiny houses mean there is no need to purchase expensive tracts of land, while the potential for travel opportunities is greatly increased. In 2024, according to the Tiny House Society, 60 percent of people living in tiny houses had no credit card debt, over 80 percent of tiny house owners carry less debt than the average American, and 68 percent have no mortgage, meaning they likely paid in cash for their house.

The tiny house movement became associated with millennials in the twenty-first century, especially within so-called hipster culture. However, tiny houses also became a popular choice for retirees. In fact, industry analysis suggested that about 40 percent of tiny house owners were fifty years old or older.

Some victims of natural disasters have also embraced the tiny house movement. Soon after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, Marianne Cusato designed tiny houses to help New Orleans residents have safe, comfortable, and affordable homes in which to live. Each of these "Katrina cottages" was about three hundred square feet and could be easily assembled. These tiny houses cost about $70,000, the same amount as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers that had typically been used to house displaced residents. Katrina cottages became an important part of rebuilding communities around New Orleans. They also gained popularity nationwide as an affordable living alternative.

Several reality television shows further increased awareness and interest in the tiny house movement. For example, Tiny House Nation, which premiered in 2014, followed two builders around America as they design and build houses with no more than five hundred square feet. Another reality show that debuted in 2014, Tiny House Hunters, followed Americans who are looking to downsize from big homes to tiny homes. The similar Tiny House World appeared in 2015. These shows continued to air throughout the 2020s, demonstrating their popularity.

Tiny houses have also become popular vacation rentals. Unique, small dwellings are popular among Airbnb and VRBO renters, two major platforms for vacation and short-term home rentals. According to Airbnb, tiny house and tiny cottage rentals rose by 85 percent from 2019 to 2020. Sources on vacation rentals attribute this hike to a post-COVID-19 pandemic shift in interest from vacationing in cities to more rural areas. One source claimed that post-pandemic demand for rural vacation rentals rose by 120 percent and that searches for tiny house rentals were up 791 percent from 2019 to 2021.

Despite the growing popularity of tiny houses, the movement did generate notable controversy and criticism. One of the central critiques came from an environmental perspective, as some observers questioned the allegedly smaller eco-footprint of tiny houses, particularly in rural settings. For example, it was noted that the idyllic image of an isolated tiny house in the wilderness, as widely perpetuated in the media and the tiny house community, can in fact be less environmentally friendly than dense urban living at the large scale. The challenges of waste and sanitation also present a significant challenge to tiny home dwellers, something that is not always emphasized by content promoting such a lifestyle. Meanwhile, transporting a tiny house from location to location is highly energy intensive, and siting a house for an extended period often involves complex zoning rules and other local legislation.

Additionally, many experts note that although the upfront costs of tiny houses may be relatively low, such homes can actually be relatively more expensive than traditional housing in the long term. Some industry analysts have found that tiny houses tend to be considerably more expensive per square foot than other living situations. There are also generally many hidden costs, from building permits to the price and maintenance of a truck and trailer capable of moving the house. The specialized nature of many appliances and other items customized for tiny houses can mean repairs and replacements are more costly than normal. Along these lines, some critics have accused the movement of catering to the wealthy and privileged in spite of claims of cheap, simple living. At times the tiny house movement has been seen as taking a well-established concept associated with lower-income communities—the mobile home—and re-marketing it to more affluent demographics.

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