“We bring you Fort Collins.” Volume 3, Issue 2
WOLVERINE
FARM
PUBLISHING
FORT
COLLINS , COLORADO
FALL 2016
FREE
if TiNY Houses are ouTlawed oNlY ouTlaws iNHabiT TiNY Houses Article by Curt Lyons Tiny House Drawings by Allie Ogg
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ith the huge surge in tiny house coverage the last few years, from articles to entire cable network shows, many people have developed a burning desire to live tiny. This lifestyle not only allows someone to live more simply and sustainably, it also provides the opportunity to live within one’s financial means, at a time when employment opportunities that pay a living wage are few and far between. Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as building a tiny house, finding a nice spot to park it, and moving in. Many people are not aware that this scenario isn’t legal in most places and doing so constitutes an act of “civil disobedience,” says Jay Shafer, founder of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, who more than anyone has put tiny houses on the map of the American consciousness. The reality is that the list of places that allow tiny house living is short, particularly if the tiny house is one on wheels. Fort Collins is not on the list. San Jose and Ojai, California; Walsenburg, Colorado; Spur, Texas; and Rockledge, Florida pretty much sum up the options. You’ll notice that Portland, Oregon, considered by many to be the epicenter of the tiny house movement, isn’t even on this list, but the city acknowledges that there are approximately 140 illegal tiny houses in the vicinity. Portland actually has a history of creative housing solutions. During the 1940s, Portland was a major ship building port, and since there was a war to win and the U.S. needed ships to do it, ship builders started arriving in droves. It didn’t take long before the influx of new labor exceeded the available housing stock and Portland had to find solutions fast. Rather than just let the market scarcity drive up the housing prices until those who couldn’t afford to stay were forced out of housing, Portland realized their strict housing regulations were exacerbating the housing shortage. So, they bent and broke their own rules in order to immediately create affordable housing options for the war effort. Today, many of those quirky housing units are still contributing to Portland’s housing stock. Necessity created a strong will, which forced people to find a way. Most of us are familiar with the essence of the adage “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” but sometimes it’s useful to flip it around and ask, if there is not a way, why is there a lack of will? It cannot be denied that there is a growing number of people with the will to live tiny, but in the big picture this is still a relatively small group of people, and for the restrictions to change this will needs to be embraced by the group I like to
call, “The movers, shakers and policy makers.” Often one of the first questions they are going to ask is “What’s in this for us?” When it comes to tiny houses it’s not hard to realize they might not see much of a benefit for them. In fact they may be asking themselves, “Why would I want those kinds of people living near me? People that want to live like that must be weird. Why can’t they be just like everyone else? Maybe they’re just lazy, millennials or socialists, who might not even vote, let alone pay taxes.” Essentially I am saying that you cannot live in a tiny house in Fort Collins because the city doesn’t have sufficient will for you to do so. Tiny houses are such a radical departure from the current model designed to accommodate national home builder/developers that the whole concept doesn’t compute. They are not convinced of the benefits, so like most other municipalities our city is conveniently dismissing the whole notion in hopes that it eventually goes away. Before going any further it’s probably good to define what a tiny house is or isn’t. To date, there is not a governing body that officially defines what a tiny house is, and attempts to define it are still evolving. For the purposes of this article I am going to define a tiny house as being small enough to pull behind a pickup truck, assuming it’s on wheels—much larger than 200 square feet and that gets very difficult. Tiny houses began to be built on trailers, because the codes governing the construction worked better given their size. If someone built a 400 square foot house on a foundation, sure we could also call that a tiny house. For context, the typical new American house averages 2,500 square feet. It is worth noting that this is two and a half times bigger than houses 60 years ago, even though family sizes are at a historic low with more than half of all U.S. households consisting of two people or less. Jason McLennan, founder of the U.S. Green Building Council has said that as far as sustainability goes “450 square feet per person is as big as we should go, and smaller is better.” The current housing system we have in the United States is not very old, less than three generations, and by system I mean the construction methods, financing, development practices and regulations. It evolved out of profitability rather than sustainability and exists in its current state because it works really well for the entities that it works well for: primarily banks, national builder/developers, the real estate industry, municipalities, and even the auto industry. For the most part these entities think the current system is (Continued on pg. 4)