Tiny homes Huge possibilities

By KELLY MILNER HALLS

According to Tom Hornel, President of the Spokane Association of Realtors, Spokane is short 25,000 units of housing for the current population of the city— not including the county residents just outside of the city limits.

Those who have secured housing have seen their rent soar. In just two years, from March 2020 to March 2022, many saw their payments increase 49%, the highest increases in the nation.

Rising rent has expanded the homeless population and made thousands of the housed people food insecure. The Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium and other organizations oversee 6,000 units of subsidized living spaces, but there is a three-year waiting list to be considered.

Spokane has a serious housing problem. And one serious solution keeps resurfacing. Tiny Houses.

Ours would not be the first community to gamble on tiny houses. Albuquerque, New Mexico opened their first transitional tiny home community in February of 2021. Thirty, 120 sq. ft. dwellings were built on land leased from the Albuquerque Indian Center.

Homeless applicants 18 and over who agree to live by a set of community rules can move into the homes equipped with a bed, shelving, a desk, a chair, a closet, a front porch and seasonal heating and cooling systems in exchange for $30 a month in rent.

Each home faces the community living space with bathing and kitchen facilities inside and a dog park adjacent. Social workers provide counseling and services to the residents who will eventually move on to more traditional housing opportunities.

River Edge (https://www.riveredgetinyhomevillage.com/) offered Albuquerque suburb Rio Communities a commercial tiny home experience a short time later. Just east of the Rio Grande, it offers tiny homes for sale, or lots for tiny home owners. “We’re writing a new chapter in this amazing area’s history,” the website says, “with the beginnings of an economical, ecologically friendly and sustainable tiny home community.”

The City of Albuquerque modeled their transitional community after Opportunity Village, a venture launched in 2013 in Eugene, Oregon. Opportunity’s “budget bungalows” also share common spaces and social services, but they are self-governed—the residents set the rules. Personal control reinforces the sense of ownership and sustainability.

Opportunity Village was created by SquareOne Villages, a nonprofit dedicated to cost-effective, short and long term housing options for low-income Oregonians.

Cottage Village, another SquareOne project in Oregon features slightly larger tiny homes with kitchenettes, bathrooms and a sleeping lofts. The 13 units built on just over an acre require a payment of $350 to $500 a month for ownership.

“I do believe we should have options for tiny homes, as a complex of rental homes on a single, larger parcel of land or on small parcels where each home could be owned by the occupants.”

Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs

They are not transitional dwellings. They are permanent housing for people making half of the median Oregonian income, or less.

SquareOne plans to develop even more economic tiny home villages in Oregon, and they hope the trend will catch on across the country. In fact, they offer a tiny home “toolbox” on their website (https://www.squareonevillages.org/) for cities hoping to replicate their success. Acony Bell (https://aconybell.com/) is in Mill River, North Carolina—not far from Ashville. Developers created 80 residential lots and 12 vacation rentals on the 50-acre parcel of land. Residents own their tiny homes but lease their lots for a monthly fee of $550. That payment covers garbage, water and sewage. Residents are responsible for electricity, cable TV and their internet connections.

Vacation rentals were included before the village opened as a hedge against the experiment of tiny homes going bust. But all 80 lots are leased and their waiting list is ever expanding. Residents of all ages have embraced Acony Bell, including its community center, community garden, community chicken coop, a dog park and miles of forested trails.

Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs agrees it’s a promising concept. “I do believe we should have options for tiny homes,” he says, “as a complex of rental homes on a single, larger parcel of land or on small parcels where each home could be owned by the occupants.”

Beggs knows there would be challenges—building and maintaining streets and utility infrastructure, for example. But these are challenges other towns have clearly overcome.

“It’s worth pursuing,” Beggs says. “Given the higher costs of land and the trend towards fewer people living in individual residences, tiny homes along with smaller apartments and condos are urgently needed to ameliorate the housing affordability crisis. This will particularly benefit older community members living on fixed incomes, first time home buyers and those otherwise living on a limited income.”

Spokane’s already has PRD—pocket residential development—on the books.

It allows for building multiple smaller housing units on a single lot. Two tiny homes could be constructed on a 8,700 square foot lot. A 1.2 acre lot could accommodate eleven.

According to experts, there are more than 3,000 vacant lots scattered across the city landscape. Beggs and his predecessor Ben Stuckart hope PRD makes it easier for nonprofit developers to build tiny home villages on some of those zombie properties.

For now, most tiny homes built on wheeled trailers wind up in mobile home communities and RV parks in Spokane and Spokane Valley. “But I’d love to see tiny home compounds around all of our business centers and all over the city,” Stuckart said in 2018.

Beggs agrees. “I am hopeful, as we continue to pilot these types of housing options in Spokane, people will experience them and realize they don’t devalue neighborhoods and actually contribute to neighborhood vibrancy.”

Tiny homes could address the homeless population and the need for affordable housing for people on a fixed income. Success could be within reach if we find the courage to think outside the box.