How tiny house communities can work for both the haves and the have nots Ryan Mitchell lives and breathes tiny houses. He has been running the popular website The Tiny Life for the past five years; is currently planning a tiny house conference for approximately 120 people in Charlotte, N.C., where he lives; and has written a book on tiny living that’s due to be published in July. To top it off, he recently finished construction on a tiny house of his very own. Mitchell’s dream, however, is a community of tiny houses. How idyllic! Nevertheless, clusters of little huts in line with Mitchell’s vision are beginning to show their heads around the United States – though sprung from perhaps a different direction than he and the legions of tiny house followers might expect. But regardless of origin, tiny house community acceptance faces yet another obstacle: the stigma that tends to surround groups of very small dwellings clustered on a single plot of land. The majority of tiny houses are, in fact, built on wheels. The land for Community First!
11 Tiny House Villages Redefining Home Above: Boneyard Studios in Washington, D.C. Please share with Shareable! Click here to support our coverage of the real sharing economy. Tiny house villages are a new part of the tiny house movement, yet they hold a lot of potential to transform lives and communities. Some tiny house villages are still in the planning phase or are demonstration villages, and many are designed to house the homeless. 1. A demonstration tiny house village in the District of Columbia, Boneyard Studios has a mission to demonstrate creative urban infill, promote the benefits of tiny houses, support other tiny house builders, and model what a tiny house community could look like. 2. Community First! 3. Still in the planning stages, this tiny house village in Sonoma, California is the brainchild of Jay Shafer, founder of the Four Lights Tiny House Company. 4. 5. Touted as the first tiny house hotel, Caravan is a model of what a tiny house village could look like. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Tiny houses as affordable housing? Austin beats Portland to punch, Eugene follows suit Mayor Charlie Hales' office declared this week that the Rose City is ready to move forward with as many as four micro-communities of tiny houses — homes of roughly 200 square feet — that could be quickly and cheaply build to house homeless and low-income folks. But Portland isn't alone in the ranks of U.S. cities allowing clusters of tiny houses to pop up and serve the chronically homeless or low-income residents with cheap, clean and safe housing. In fact, the Rose City is decidedly behind its weird cousin, Austin. A nonprofit in the Austin area is poised to break ground next week on a 27-acre community with a variety of tiny houses that organizers say is a decade in the making. In the Northwest, Portland's Dignity Village is often cited as the torchbearer of tent cities evolving into more permanent communities. Austin: Community First According to Mobile Loaves & Fishes officials, their Texas community is virtually unprecedented in its scope and ambition. Eugene: Emerald Village