Thinking about solutions…
Tiny houses -the old reframed as new?
Like waves approaching the shore, in the permaculture design system we see ideas rise to popularity and then fall. They capture the imagination and, sometimes, they stick. Other times they hang around for a time before slowly fading away. Some disappear while others find a niche in the permaculture imagination and continue at a reduced level. That is the story with tiny houses. This is a story about accommodation alternatives.
IS IT the old reframed for modern times? Something that has been around for decades reimagined as something new? Are tiny houses all that different from the small cottages that were once common and the caravans that travel Australia’s highways?
I ask this because in the town where I live there are old vertical board cottages that have been renovated as permanently-occupied homes. They are small buildings built by a previous generation. Walking past them, I am reminded of the interest in compact homes of recent years that go by the name of ‘tiny houses’, and I am left wondering what the difference is to those early cottages that are part of Tasmania’s building heritage.
Scaled-down
A common definition of the tiny house is that they are small, scaled-down dwellings for one or at most two people that take two forms — fixed in place and mobile. Australia’s Tiny House Association takes the definition further:
Tiny houses are moveable dwellings up to 50m2 that are suitable for residential use. Tiny houses can be largely grouped into 3 categories: on wheels, on skids or shipping containers.
I have seen only one such building on skids. That was over in New Zealand and it was a transitional form between tiny house and small cottage. It was on skids because of limitations imposed by local government regulations. Other than shipping containers, the Association’s definition limits tiny houses to mobile dwellings, however we find small, fixed dwellings also tagged as tiny houses and a broader definition includes fixed dwellings of modest size other than shipping containers.
Fixed in place? Her living room just managed to accommodate a sofa and a couple chairs. The adjoining eating area and kitchen were compact but functional. Upstairs, a single bedroom. Shower at the back of the ground level. A small garden with a large, in-ground water tank. An earth-construction dwelling in a coastal ecovillage in South Australia, it was aligned to catch the sun’s warming rays in winter and had a vine-covered pergola to keep the sun out during the hot summer. Her’s was a tiny house before the term was coined.
We see fewer of the mobile version in Australia. They are built on a chassis fitted with wheels so they can be towed to a location where they will spend some time. If this sounds like the caravan that has been home on the road to generations of Australians, it is. A distinguishing feature is that tiny houses of the mobile variety are often one-off artistic, rustic-looking creations whereas caravans betray their industrial origin in their materials and functional design.
It was in the teen years of the century that the idea of tiny house took off. It spread from its American origin to capture the imagination of people here in Australia. Despite that, tiny houses of the mobile kind appear to be few here. Like wicking beds before them and mandala gardens before wicking beds, the tiny house was boosted to popularity among the permaculture coterie by word of mouth. Unlike those other things, the tiny house in its broader definition that includes fixed dwellings is the old renewed and renamed.
Tiny houses as opportunity
What do tiny houses offer that conventional housing does not?
Affordable housing
In our present cost of living crisis, excessively high rents and a shortage of housing stock for sale, the greatest value of tiny houses is their potential as affordable housing.
Additional to the purchase or construction costs is the cost of parking the mobile tiny house temporarily or permanently. Were local government regulations to allow tiny houses as residences, there would be only land rates as an add-on cost for the fixed version of the dwellings. Parked in a commercial caravan park there would be the weekly fee, the same as people living permanently in caravans already pay.
Now and then the idea of tiny house villages has been raised, however I know of none that have eventuated. The idea is a good one, and unlike the caravan park the tiny houses might become permanent dwellings.
Reduced environmental impact
Smaller size means less resource consumption for heating and cooling as well as consuming fewer resources generally, resulting in a reduced ecological footprint.
The variable is how the occupant manages their use of energy and water and from where they source those resources.
Small dwellings require fewer materials and less time is spent in their maintenance.
Minimalism
Tiny houses suit the simple-living, minimalist mindset that emerged in the 1970s as a counter to consumer society and the acquisition of possessions as a sign of economic success in life.
Possessions take space. To live in a tiny house means adopting a minimalist lifestyle by downsizing possessions. There simply is not room for an excess of them. Minimalism has become a lifestyle and tiny house living enforces it.
Mobility
Tiny houses built on wheels provide the opportunity for people to relocate and live a nomadic lifestyle. They can travel, explore new areas, find alternative job opportunities and stay awhile in their mobile accommodation, much as people living and travelling in caravans have done for generations.
Psychological values
Tiny houses are not for everyone, especially those who like a lot of space in a dwelling.
Some people, however, prefer compact living spaces rather than larger dwellings, perhaps because the scale of tiny houses gives them a sense of control over their environment and, with the addition of renewable energy technologies and a small home garden, enhances their sense of autonomy and personal security.
Off-grid living
Mobile or fixed tiny houses give the option of connecting to the energy and water grids or remaining independent of them. This opens the opportunity to adopt the off-grid lifeway.
Mobile tiny house residents might carry folding photoelectric panels that they deploy on stopping for any length of time and charge an auxiliary battery. Caravan residents and van dwellers already do this and make use of 12 volt appliances. Fixed tiny houses can install rooftop photovoltaic arrays to charge a battery and, perhaps, step up the current to 240 volts so a wider range of appliances can be powered. They can also harvest rainwater from the roof, store it in a water tank and run it through a filter (to remove dust, bird droppings and grot) for domestic use. In both instances, energy-efficient appliances reduce energy consumption.
Disincentives to tiny house living
Along with the opportunities and positives of the tiny house lifestyle, there are drawbacks that anyone contemplating the lifeway should consider.
Legalalities
We are considering a place to park the mobile tiny house for a length of time or, perhaps, permanently. Many areas have zoning regulations that make it challenging to legally dwell in a tiny house temporarily or permanently. Requirements for minimum size, permanent foundations, sanitation and plumbing fixtures and more can limit the feasibility of living in a tiny house. There might be a council regulation that stipulates a fixed time limit for living in a mobile dwelling on a piece of land.
Regulations vary across local government areas, sometimes leaving staying in a location in a commercial caravan park as the only option.
Lack of infrastructure
Because mobile tiny houses may not have the necessary infrastructure such as access to water, sewage or electrical hookups, particularly when parked in rural or less-developed areas, the inconvenience can dissuade people from adopting the mobile tiny house as a temporary dwelling solution.
Limited living space
The compact size of tiny houses can present physical challenges in terms of storage, accommodating individuals with accessibility needs or accommodating more than two people.
Then there is the psychological dimension. Moving from a conventional home into a tiny house could present challenges in terms of adjusting to the smaller space. A lack of privacy is a factor to consider where two people plan to live in the limited space of a tiny house because there is limited potential for personal space. This could put a strain on relationships.
Resale value
Due to their unconventional form, resale value might present another barrier. Additionally, the lack of a standardised market for tiny houses can make them difficult to sell or appraise accurately. Resellers would need to tap into networks of like-minded individuals to find buyers.
Something old reframed as something new?
As to the popularity of the tiny house in permaculture circles not that many years ago, I put it down to many of them being hand-crafted, earthy-looking constructions. They caught the imagination as have other things in permaculture over the decades. There is nothing wrong in this, however people writing about the virtues of the tiny house ignore the thousands already living in the tiny houses we know as caravans and shacks. We might include motorhomes and vans, too, because they are an alternative form of mobile dwelling.
My partner and I recently spent a spring and summer living in a caravan park on the Tasmanian coast while we looked for somewhere to buy. We didn’t live in a caravan, mostly in our small van and in a three-person tent. Other than the travellers who came and went there were a few caravan dwellers who were there permanently because they couldn’t afford the state’s increasingly high rents. This was a small, independent and fairly basic caravan park close to the beach and, as such, affordable to those on low incomes.
While we were on our road trip and before arriving at the caravan park we stayed in another on Sydney’s far southwestern boundary. There were a number of permanent caravan residents there. The manager told us that some were pensioners for whom the caravan was affordable housing, a few were occupied by welfare agency clients for whom the caravan was emergency accommodation, and the rest were homes to people who preferred life in a caravan without the maintenance and utility costs of maintaining a house.
If we stretch the definition a little, would those caravan dwellers qualify as tiny house residents? Despite similarities, probably not, mainly because they are not thought of as that despite the reality that, conceptually, the mobile tiny house and caravan are both iterations of the idea of the mobile-home. It depends how people frame the concept. Mobile tiny houses are mobile dwellings that appear to attract manly middle class people who may be able to afford to buy or build a dwelling. That marks a socioeconomic difference in outlook. It also signifies a social reality ignored in all of the tiny house literature I have seen. Same style of living, different demographic. Maybe this should not be surprising in a market economy where ability to participate in opportunities hinges on whether you can afford to do so.
Is this a case of reframing something that already exists — the caravan as permanent residence — to redefine what it is and whom it is for and redefining it as a mobile tiny house? We are talking about the power of naming. Is living in a small, craft-made mobile dwelling and calling it a tiny house anything more than verbally dolling-up the traditional caravan to make it attractive to a younger and more affluent demographic?
In considering this I thought of two women I know who live in their caravans on a bush lot some distance outside of an inland rural town on the NSW Mid-North Coast. The old sawmill was still standing on the land they bought and to this they constructed an extension to abut their caravans to and, with its open sides and galvanised iron roof providing shelter from sun and rain, they could use as an open-sided kitchen, dining and living area. It was a cozy set-up in the humid climate of their forested surroundings. Was there much difference to living in tiny house? Or were they already living an authentic tiny house lifestyle?
Other than caravans being intended as a mobile dwelling but in many cases serving as a fixed dwelling, is living in one all that different to living in some craft-built version of the same thing? Ambience might be a difference. Mobile tiny homes are often finished in wood and are one-off boutique products or are produced in small quantities. Reframing something that already exists as something new is an exercise in cultural politics that positions it for a different social group.
This is where the notion of social class comes in. Many people living in caravans in caravan parks are there because they have no choice. As pensioners, people living with disability or whom cannot compete in the housing or the labour market, their low income means that the caravan is their affordable housing.
Are tiny houses just modern-day shacks?
In the state where I live, a tiny house at a fixed address is traditionally called a shack. I only have to walk along the beach to find a number of them. Living in a shack is a socially acceptable way of life here and less of a signifier of a lack of personal wealth. So, we have to ask where the differences lie between shacks, small cottages and the fixed tiny house.
I have lived in shacks but not in a building designated as a fixed address tiny house, yet I fail to comprehend where the difference in the experience would be. The shack I lived in among the fruit trees and within clucking sound of a flock of chickens in a suburban backyard near Sydney’s harbourside Manly was smaller than that South Australian ecovillage resident’s earth-built tiny house I earlier mentioned, however a big difference would have been in her house’s thermal performance through the seasons. The woman’s tiny house was designed for the climate whereas my shack was in the Australian tradition of shack construction in which climate, solar orientation and thermal performance were not design factors. I froze through winters and sweated away hot summer afternoons.
The hidden presence of social class
Our discussion about tiny houses and, in mobile form their appropriation and reframing of the traditional caravan and shack, brings us to the question of access.
Social class is a hidden presence in the sustainability movement, in permaculture and in the assumptions of many of its practitioners. So it is not surprising that the idea of the tiny house found an accepting foothold in a social movement that, as Melbourne sociologist Terry Leahy has written, as veteran permaculture educator and activist, Rosemary Morrow has said, as permaculture co-originator David Holmgren hinted at in his 2018 book, Retrosuburbia and as I have said in my articles, is largely a middle class phenomenon.
Is this a problem? How could it be? The middle class is the locus of consumption of goods and services, so if tiny house living can accommodate only a limited quantity of possessions and goods, then it contributes to the countercurrent against excessive consumption. It is a similar situation for people living in shacks and other small dwellings not counted by the advocates of tiny house living.
The challenge is one of access, of who can build or buy a tiny house. With their access to capital and loans, that becomes mostly a prerogative of middle class people. A middle class social movement like permaculture is a node in the network of information flows that often bypasses people living on low incomes who would benefit from it. It is no surprise that when the idea of tiny houses flowed along those networks it took up residence in the permaculture mind.
A cultural repositioning
Steve Ward, a friend who came into permaculture in the 1980s and who was active with the Australian Association of Alternative Communities, had a good idea that retains the validity it had then and is even more relevant in our present times of high rents and unaffordable house prices. He looked at the commercial caravan park with its shared shower blocks, camp kitchen and social space and asked why it could not be reimagined as a permaculture design that was home to owner-occupiers. That seems a good model for a tiny house community.
My questions are about how the tiny house idea could be more-widely spread and how the experience of life in a tiny house, shack or caravan makes them all that different from one another.
Is the tiny house idea merely an exercise in reframing something that already exists and that is already providing solutions for a lower-income population so that it is culturally palatable to a different social class? It is a sort-of cultural repositioning. In an earlier, more egalitarian Australia, there was little to no social cachet attached to living in a caravan. It is the opposite for residents of tiny houses. Often regarded as the abode of the poor, the caravan lifestyle rebranded as tiny house is the artefact of a distinctly middle class movement.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against the caravan-as-mobile-tiny-house or the shack as fixed tiny house or the middle class people attracted to them. I recognise the environmental benefits the associated lifestyle potentially brings. I also wish that local government would approve their use as long-term housing, given the escalation in house prices of recent years. For singles and couples with minimalist attitudes towards possessions, the tiny house has much to offer.
What I am suggesting is that people acknowledge the tiny house as a modern adaptation of the caravan and step away from any stigma they attach to people living in caravans. Although the minimalist lifestyle associated with them is the right thing at the right time, let’s be realistic and admit that people have lived this way for generations. Maybe we should also acknowledge that tiny houses can be often signifiers of middle class people having the economic choice that others lack.
Like hula hoops, the tiny-house-as-caravan-revived is an example of how ideas are propelled by economic and social changes to reappear, repurposed and reframed to suit the mentality of a different time.
