Over the past few years, the tiny home movement has been gaining steam.
With living spaces ranging from less than 400 square feet down to as small as 100 sq. ft., tiny homes offer an alternative approach to housing, incorporating aspects of both sustainability and minimal living.
Lately, they’ve even been touted as a possible solution to the affordable housing crisis many communities are battling; a tiny home is both less expensive to build and has a smaller physical footprint. Building four or more homes on a lot which might otherwise be home to a couple of people rattling around in a 6,000 sq. ft mansion is a good plan for the future of our communities, environment and long-term survival, but it’s not really a solution to the affordable housing crisis.
For that, we need to open our eyes even farther and get rid of those blinders altogether. It starts with creating municipal, provincial and federal incentives for developers to create affordable housing, but we also have to discuss what that housing looks like.
Building homes using shipping containers might seem like the ultimate in industrial shabby chic, but it’s also a path to quickly building a low-cost rental housing project. That’s just one example. If you don’t like the idea of shipping containers, designers are coming up with countless ideas for building living spaces, from individual homes to co-living developments and every stage between. It’s also time for local governments to get involved. There is not a city that doesn’t own properties, whether it be undeveloped or developed. Rather than saying they aren’t in the housing business, it’s time for local governments to start building some of the housing their community needs.
Vision is needed, but first, we need to give up the concept, the goal, of ultimately living in a giant McMansion.
— Black Press
