The interest and appetite for tiny houses is infectious. It’s a much talked about topic. Popular lifestyle TV shows and magazines have featured them. Stories about local examples make their way into the mainstream news and they’re a regular feed on social media.
From ‘granny flats revisited’ to Tiny House Parks
Over the last two years ESC Consulting have collaboratively explored different typologies and scenarios where tiny houses could fill a niche within our communities; Granny Flat Revisited, Tiny Lots, Tiny House Villages, Tiny Backyard Leases and Tiny House Parks. These options are captured in the Tiny Housing Planning Resource; a document that provides a basis for planners and regulators to consider the introduction of tiny houses (fixed and on wheels) within appropriately zoned areas.
You might be wondering, why, if tiny houses are so popular, we don’t see more of them popping up around the place? Well the quick answer is that we’re just not really quite sure how to treat them. If it’s a fixed tiny house, well that’s fairly straight forward – you can explore a granny flat option. But… you’ll need to own the land and you’ll need to make sure that your design can comply with current building regulations. There’s also a lot of variation from state to state and locality to locality on the planning parameters for granny flats.
It’s a mine field
But…if you’re considering the option of a tiny house on wheels, well, let’s just say…it’s a minefield. Are they a caravan? Are they a house? Do you need a planning permit? Do you need a building permit? Where can you park your tiny house on wheels? Every local council has their own by-laws on how they regulate moveable dwellings. On the Gold Coast you’re simply not allowed to live in a caravan in your backyard. In other councils there are time limits (from a couple of weeks to a few months) or you can live in one temporarily while completing a house build. Who would have thought that ‘tiny’ could be so complicated?
This presents problems for many tiny housers as most want to live on land for a long period of time or permanently. Basically the planning and building laws haven’t quite embraced this style of housing as a legitimate option so tiny houses on wheels currently sit in a regulatory grey zone.
Inroads
But the good news is that inroads are being made. In December, 2016 Rikki and Valerie led a successful Queensland appeal that determined a tiny house on wheels was a moveable dwelling and did not require a building permit. Earlier this year, a decision by the NSW Land and Environment Court also determined that a tiny house on wheels met the definition of a moveable dwelling and did not require development approval. These precedents are paving the way for change. But there is still a lot of work to be done to establish a fit for purpose regulatory framework for tiny house developments.
Real potential
“Despite the uncertainties and inconsistencies, we see real potential for tiny houses (either fixed or on wheels) to play an important role in creating greater housing choice and diversity” said Valerie Bares.
“Tiny houses, compact housing, micro housing or whatever term you use tick the boxes on so many levels. Flexibility! Low impact living! Affordability! Adaptability!”
“The thing is when you start to consider how tiny houses could fit within our cities and regions; you start to think about things in a slightly different way– design and density, the way we use space, quality versus quantity, social cohesion and equity, the interplay between transition and permanence and our perceptions around families, households and the cycles they go through”, added Rikki Pieters.
And… it seems they’re not the only ones thinking along these lines. 80% of the entries in the 2017 Queensland Government’s Density and Diversity Done Well open ideas competition provided design solutions for the 1-3 storeys (low-rise) category and many of these were premised on compact dwelling infill of existing housing stock.
Rikki Pieters and Valerie Bares of ESC Consulting will be joining a range of speakers to unpack Tiny House Village Models, Planning and Regulation, Community Land Trusts, Blockchain and more – at the Tiny Houses & Eco Villages Seminar, Sunshine Coast on Saturday 4th August 2018 at the House With No Steps, Doonan.
For further information on the event can be found at: http://OpenTalks.com.au/Tiny
We need to move on from the McMansion and I love the idea of tiny houses, but why the wheels? In my mind that makes it a caravan or a house pretending to be a caravan. You say people want to live in them permanently, so why the wheels? Is it to get around planning regulations? I can see no other reason.
Right now we have a very large caravan parked (in the driveway next door) 1.7 metres from our living room window. It’s visible from three rooms, it blocks out the light, it has bright lights that shine into our house at night. Someone is living in it. If it was a house or a shed it would need to be at least 1.5 metres from the boundary, but since it’s a caravan in a driveway no such provisions exist. Are you similarly suggesting someone should be able to live in a tiny house on wheels 20cm from the boundary with another property? If it wasn’t on wheels it wouldn’t be allowed.
I’m all for tiny houses, but I can’t understand why they need to be on wheels. Aren’t they just fancy caravans?
I’d like to see you and others who are championing the tiny house movement move away from the moveable dwelling idea. Surely we need regulations that allow tiny houses (not on wheels) to be permanent dwellings.
Hi Judy, Thanks for your comments.
Quite simply, yes a Tiny House On Wheels (THOW) is essentially and technically referred to as a Caravan currently, but “Built Like A House”.
This means potentially much better insulation and climate efficiency, innovative and smarter design, more a feeling of living in a house than a caravan, ability to change up the utilities and install better options like a decent sized kitchen, tailor made for permanent living like a house.
A a caravan is essentially built for holidays, and is usually one big open cabin, designed for short stays – mostly thinner walls, they are generally not built to be lived in long term (but if you really have to, please be our guest) 🙂 Tiny Houses are pretending to be nothing but a Tiny House (a smaller house).
The issue you have with a caravan parked in the adjacent driveaway has little to do with Tiny Houses, and more to do with either politely discussing directly with the land owner to find a better solution for all, or failing this, you have the right to contact Council and lodge a complaint, which they will have to act on – sometimes it’s better to very kindly chat to the people first and save a lot of effort 🙂
The beauty of Tiny Houses – and especially Tiny Houses On Wheels – is their mobility and the freedom this achieves for people. They are conducive to better facilitating Community – connection between people – because the tyranny of distance, and separation, particularly in McMansion Estates and the entire western living paradigm, is now being blamed for not only our social ills and dysfunctional society but now exacerbating chronic illnesses like depression, anxiety, which also leads to (believe it or not) inflammation, obesity, mental illness – because people are social beings, we’ve forgotten that we are not robots designed to live in separate houses and not knowing and talking to our Neighbours, who often sleep 30 feet within our beds.
We haven’t evolved beyond “the village” model of living just yet (which was, at last count, around about 3-400 years ago), so Tiny Housing is seen as one of the emerging solutions to correcting this disconnection, as well as promoting minimalism and downsizing by reducing our impact and footprint on the planet, which is also viewed as being better for the planet so that it can be enjoyed in the future for generations to come. It’s a whole movement. Do a bit of googling if you’re curious 😉
So there’s a lot more to it than just turning to Caravan living.
Thanks for the reply. I agree that the the options of offering moveable housing, higher density, smaller dwellings and more do need to be explored and included in our regulatory framework, but it seems to me tiny houses and mobile tiny houses are two different things and will need to be treated differently in any regulatory framework. Compounding the two types of tiny house and trying to have a conversation or devise a framework that will meet the requirements for both seems bound to meet opposition and be extremely difficult to devise and implement.
Making tiny houses on wheels (THOW) does seem primarily a way to get around current planning provisions. As you say, these tiny homes are a better built caravan, but not meant for holidays, and most owners want to live permanently or at least a long time in one place. What you seem to be providing is an upmarket version of the relocatable home and the provisions for THOW’s can probably more easily be included in provisions for relocatable homes and caravans. I am hoping that will not include long term living on detached housing residential blocks without having to meeting planning guidelines and infrastructure regulations.
Planning provisions for permanent tiny homes fixed to the land needs to be included in the broader regulatory framework for permanent dwellings. Already in Queensland, and indeed in the new Noosa Plan, there are changes that allow secondary dwellings on existing residential lots. This can be used to build tiny homes, although I understand both dwellings will need to be connected to the same infrastructure and have one owner. There are other options to pursue such as shared ownership, subdivision or larger scale development of tiny lots, tiny villages (like retirement villages?) and more, and if we’re serious about addressing density and affordability issues then planning schemes of the future need to develop a framework for inclusion.
Those responsible for infrastructure, safety and services need to have some control over the density and style of housing and the amenity of neighbourhoods and those who do invest in permanent tiny or conventional housing need some certainty. Throwing mobile homes into the debate seems to me a diversion from the real issue which is size of land and dwelling.
Cheers Judy.
An appreciation of the holism of the eco system surrounding Tiny Housing and what outcomes they can lead to in future I think needs to be had. That will be the purpose of the http://OpenTalks.com.au/Tiny Seminar – to be a catalyst for conversations and action in a conciliatory environmen
We are ultimately talking about sustainable communities. Eco Villages. But ones that work.
Then once there is an understanding about what these new villages look like and how the function – using technology like the Blockchain, incorporating holistic design with plant and social permaculture, social engineering (that’s a new one, hey), akin to the values of indigenous ‘kanjini’ and african ‘ubuntu’ for example, how nature and people interact in a more sustainable and connective manner, only then can we even begin to think about the planning and regulation around Tiny Housing – both fixed, and mobile.
Slowly, it will take councils and people many years to get this right… you can only work with your audience, you can’t make them jump to something so enlightened and different in a hurry, so we are talking about triggering generations of change in introducing “connection” back into the western living paradigm: it is in fact virtually impossible to introduce wide change and having people dive straight into Eco Villages currently – the proof is all around us with varying results, it doesn’t work all that perfectly, generally it doesn’t work that well.
We are still dealing with “land titles”, “entitlement” and mental and social illnesses that are still prevalent in the current disconnective, less-community, more-competitive and highly individualised western developed world. To many people these ideas seem too weird, complex or even one person said (uh) “christian” (??). In fact, they are downright empirical and scientific as H2O 🙂
But slowly we will press on, small changes, slowly slowly catches the monkey, one transition at a time, not in a whole leap, for the broader population to help them become more sustainable… then what they do with their lives is ultimately and completely up to them. We can help set a new heading for the human race today. Before the third world catches up and makes all the same mistakes we are now learning from and avoid far more fatal environmental deterioration 🙂
The more we help people see this and why it’s important, the faster we can travel to understanding how best to implement planning rules and infrastructure for a western world filling in the gaps and shifting to more sustainable and connective housing models.