Back in the 1950's, Socialists in our government insisted that Soviet Era multistory housing projects were the solution to housing the Poor Black People in places like Chicago. They were awful and created crime and convinced blacks that our govt was out to murder them. The noise of shared walls lead to anger and murders and most people who live there think they should be dynamited because they've damaged 3 generations of people into crime and despair and poverty. Flash forward 60 years.
People who bought homes 10 years ago during the Housing Bubble lost their jobs and have stopped making their payments. They've been squatting in the homes rent free in most cases and are starting to get evicted. The banks are doing this quietly in hopes of turning the home over without wrecking the home values in the neighborhood and causing a tsunami of foreclosures, which they'd end up eating since many mortgages are owned by those banks.
Most paying jobs went to China and India, so few can afford to rent or to buy a home. Houses still cost too much for the basic minimum wage paid today. There are lots sitting empty, but their list prices are way out of the market, and the market is defined as what people can afford to pay. Every time the govt intervenes to regulate wages in an industry, that industry collapses and goes overseas. We no longer get paid enough to survive in America. The American Dream is dead. The modern version of Fahrenheit 451 isn't burning books. Its mortgage default bankers seizing your house and kicking you out on the street. "We're from the government. We're here to help."
The Left looked for new solutions to homelessness, accidently provided by the New Poor in Tiny Houses, which are essentially wood houses built on trailers within a certain legal size, towed on wheels to a site and plugged into electric and water, sometimes as primitive as a garden house and orange construction cord outlet. Sometimes they're actual cottages without the wheels, but usually the wheels are part of the tax evasion scheme.
The Left realized these tiny houses might work for the Homeless, meeting the unfunded mandates from the Federal Govt to house the poor. So now, what about unit cost?
What is the right sized house for a person? Working to an economy of scale, less is better because it will take fewer materials and more homes can be built. Realistically? That depends. It is certainly possible to live in a studio apartment of basically one main room with the bed and kitchenette and separate bathroom behind a door for privacy, however the close spaces do drive people insane, and insanity is to be avoided. Most people intend to be outside and not there as much as possible, and during the age of universal employment this was a solution. Nowadays with most the population (65% and rising) unemployed, many are going to feel trapped in four walls, as if they were in jail. You can leave but if there's nowhere to go, and no money to spend, this also increases crimes of opportunity and potentially insanity.
You can reduce the feeling of being trapped with large enough windows to give the illusion of a larger living space to the resident however windows wreck a home's heating and cooling efficiency and one of the reasons apartment blocks were built in the first place was more efficient heating. Turns out not to be true, however. I also notice that sufficient light in a small apartment, especially natural sunlight, helps maintain good sleep and wake cycles where they belong and avoid Seasonal Affective Disorder (seasonal depression), such as commonly found in people living in the Pacific Northwest and are generally fixed by moving away from the heavy overcast and down to Arizona or California where the sun shines. Since housing requirements are an unfunded mandate from the Federal Govt, imposed and punished at whim, solutions have to be economically viable and local enough. And if a tiny house motivates the resident to trade up and sell the thing off to the next poor person, so much the better.
I have found that the smaller the space, the more important it is that it be cleaned. A dirty space tends to get dirtier faster because you notice it and human beings are self destructive. So removing the self destructive tendencies in a space matters as well. As best I can tell, you need frequently cleaning, good air movement to remove smells, excellent light, and what you see out the window should be trees etc rather than another trailer or fence. A fence is just another prison cell equivalent. Same with the window of another trailer staring back at you. So how they're placed, and what barriers you have between them is important too.
Can we build tiny houses on trailers cheap enough and fast enough, with enough insulation and large enough size, that they can be carted around to various sites and provide homes worth leasing or buying so people don't have to live in tents? It wouldn't even be necessary if the housing bubble finished popping. And I think it might, though the delusions of the Baby Boomers is delaying this, possibly till most of them are dead, or at least until they stop wrecking America through their selfish voting. The jerks.
Can a tiny house really work? I looked into it locally, at a larger model, the largest legally available on a trailer is 399 square feet, by law. Its somewhat narrow inside, the ceiling is low in the bathroom to allow a loft area, and it had some other issues. For one, there's little point building these without the thicker insulation, and putting the noisy air conditioner in the bedroom may keep you cool enough to sleep but the noise wouldn't let you. You can put a deck outside, but it can't be physical attached, at least not permanently, else it stops being a trailer and you get nailed with assessment fees, taxes, and fines. The unit I looked at had a pointless loft for storing stuff and possibly as bed space for the unwelcome visitor, the kind that's like fish: nice on the first day, stinks by the third. I think they offer units that don't bother with that. Since the A/C was external, on the ground with a hose, it must suck all kinds of power to keep the place bearable when it is actually hot out. And in the winters, while the gas fireplace is decorative and requires no cleaning, I can't see that being as good as a simple pellet stove, which is far cheaper to run. Additionally, most of these things have very small hot water heaters. I would say they're a critical failing to offer a bathtub in a home with a 4 gallon hot water heater. FAIL! On-Demand water heaters are probably the way to go, so long as you've got the propane. As soon as you start working off-grid, a tiny house should get serious about a hybrid-Photovoltaic setup, with the panel cooling liquid heating the hot water heater and the panels topping off the deep cycle batteries, then sending the rest into the hot water heater since you're going to want that for bathing, washing, cooking, and possibly a radiator in the bedroom on cold nights. Efficient use of heat and sunlight will be really key to make this work. Even going oversize and moving the house around with permits might be better for the person living there.
Most homes are too big for one person, these days, and 1000 square feet is honestly enough for two people, possibly two and an infant, if we were a society that had marriage and the basic family. I don't see much evidence of that today. The politicians have done their very best to destroy the family. It is up to us to deny them, and one of the ideas I had was taking a big house and turning it into boarding house, with door locks on each bedroom, higher rates for the master bedroom, and the kitchen run for profit by the staff, charging for meals. That prevents the typical roommates stealing food issue. It also creates jobs for a couple for every one of these McMansions, provided there's jobs available. Once the bubble finally bursts the rest of the way, these 5 bedroom houses will get a lot cheaper, and ones in college towns will be able to shuffle through students like dorms, only with live-in security. It could work. It doesn't have to be perfect. Additionally, the garage can be home to a restaurant or repair shop so the caretakers can have real income beyond maintenance and rents, meaning a McMansion can turn into a business.
The alternative is to duplex a house, adding a sound-wall and dividing the heat and water, but that often means ripping out the drywall and gets expensive. Really, dropping the price of homes and finding a use for the space you don't need is the way to go. If we have to try and cram efficient heating and cooling into homes on wheels its probably going to be cost prohibitive. So tiny houses are a sort of solution, but bursting the bubble on houses with foundations is the better answer. Are you ready, America?
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