A TINY (HOUSE) DILEMMA For many, a so-called “tiny house” on wheels fits the dream of small-footprint, sustainable and mobile living. The issue in B.C., and many other municipalities, is where to put one. By Bob Keating
Kailani Sutton had to give up the dining room table, swap her book collection for a Kindle and leave a few of her daughter’s toys behind. She regrets none of it. “We have absolutely everything we need. There’s nothing we really miss,” says Sutton, who, along with her husband and four-year-old daughter, downsized from a condo in Port Moody to a tiny home on the Sunshine Coast. “The biggest factor was financial freedom, but we’re also reducing our environmental impact. We wanted to live smaller and have fewer things.” The Suttons have embraced the tiny house movement, which has inspired TV shows and a new lifestyle movement that’s still spreading slowly in B.C., advocates say, because of a void in regulation.
Tiny homes don’t fit There’s almost no zoning for tiny homes on wheels in this province—or in Canada. A BC Housing report described a tiny house as, “A permanent, ground-oriented dwelling that is detached, movable and non-motorised. They are 500 square feet or under and tailored to compact design. It is neither a mobile home nor a recreational vehicle (RV). It is a home intended for full-time living.”
National and provincial building codes do not classify this type of dwelling, and most rural and urban municipalities haven’t stepped up, even though tiny-home communities could help create affordable housing options. The classification concerns are varied: from building codes and safety standards to rules for determining minimum square footage, home ownership and tenure models, servicing and depreciation concerns or the effect on neighbourhoods. In these concerns is a whiff of the stigma that follows mobile-home parks, and the so-called “van life” movement depicted in the Osacar-winning film Nomadland. Such concerns also arose in the 1950s and 60s, when trailers and mobile home parks began to pepper the landscape, yet the same challenges still bedevil the tiny-home sector, and according to its proponents, are choking substantial growth.
A tiny case study The Suttons purchased land on the Sunshine Coast while their tiny home was being built, only to discover they couldn’t legally put it there. They sold the land and temporarily placed their tiny home
Pam Robertson (left) and an efficient tiny home layout. Photo: Damon Berryman
Fall 2021
Right Sizing
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