Tiny Places

Have you found yourself studying a sleek motor home that has appeared in your field of view? Are you tantalized, imagining yourself in the cozy comfort of a home...

When affordablehousingaction.org was just starting to blog, we began searching (as we still are) for ideas that seemed to promise easing national homelessness crises. Five years ago there was...

Over the past decade at least, it's been easy to view housing circumstances in Hong Kong as otherworldly. There, a combination of limited land and total devotion to free...

From . . . temporary affordable housing that isn't housing anyone at all while it takes a lengthy snooze. Read more in The Seattle Times: The story of Seattle’s homeless...

Tiny Homes? Hug 'em and Love 'em! The Media seems to, including us. They're forever popping up as cozy little bandaid stories about the housing and homelessness crisis in...

". . .you in your small corner, and I in mine," is an evocative phrase from a children's hymn, proposing that individuals might shine in the light of a...

Over the last few years, fascination with tiny homes has grown beyond cutesy love-ins for a lifestyle akin to living in a clothes closet. (And along with our own...

A recent article from London, Ontario expresses a problem made more acute in the pandemic. That city is home to a successful program based on getting housed immediately (Housing...

How to explain what seems to be a middle class romance with the idea of getting away from it all by hiding in your own closet — one transported...

In a lengthy, entertaining and informative article, Miles Howard explores the past, present and future of one form of dinky living. He focuses particularly on high tech gingerbread cottages...

From California comes word of more, not less, zoning restriction. That's rare good news for existing affordable housing in America's rapidly-declining stock of trailer parks. Governments from the feds (think...

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), grannie flats, garden suites, call them what you will, can be highly affordable. Better still, in a crowded urban landscape they have a residential footprint...

By all means, let's hear it for true YIMBY. Hold that thought. We'll be coming back to it. True YIMBY? Does that mean there's a fake YIMBY? Of course there...

An engaging personal journey into the American South touches upon the swashbuckling origins of a kind of deeply affordable housing. The author ponders whether 'Shotgun Shacks,' as they were...

Luxury? Who says tiny home living is a luxury? Well, affordablehousingaction.org says so. Or at least we point out that it very much CAN be luxury living. Try: Small May...

Santa Monica City Council is not impressed with one particular class of tiny homes. Where is their sense of light-hearted romance, you might ask? Tiny homes are a charming feast...

Yacht racing has been likened to 'standing in a cold shower, ripping up hundred dollar bills.' Still, there's always the opportunity to save a dollar or two by living...

Are tiny homes and micro apartments a solution for unaffordable housing? They are often billed as such, though the evidence is scant or non-existent. A Hong Kong high rise...

With the Airbnb wolf on the doorstep, Canada's sleepy Prince Edward Island casts a half-opened eye at its rural 'Granny-Suite/Garden Flat' zoning. The idea? Relaxing the 'relatives only and...

All housed up, but no place to go. It's a growing problem for aging homeowners with limited income who own their home. They lack the cash to move, yet...

It seems that many of us view tiny homes with romantic nostalgia — a memory of sitting on a parent's knee listening to fairy stories while agog at picture...

Trailer Park residents are becoming an endangered species, even as their shrinking habitat is gradually being recognized as an effective form of affordable housing. Tiny homes? Tiny home communities? They're...

Not everyone is as fortunate as Steven Long. He, like an increasing number of Americans, has been staving off homelessness by living in a vehicle. As far as he...

With the prefabricated housing offering affordable housing possibilities worldwide, it's hardly surprising that 'mobile home parks', 'caravan parks', 'trailer parks' and similar solutions are being repackaged as 'manufactured home...

There are more than a few signs in North America that the hey-day of the much maligned North American trailer park is over. Try: ‘Naturally-Occurring’ No-Subsidy Affordable Housing. Too Bad...

The housing in the first bylaw was too large. The housing in the second bylaw was too small. But the housing in the third bylaw was just right. Goldilocks...

Mobile home parks, a.k.a trailer parks, a.k.a manufactured home parks: call them what you will, over time they've attracted a reputation based on their failings, while their successes have...

Private enterprise has had a long history of efficiently accommodating the public need for accommodation. But, thanks to the ever-stretching long arm of NIMBYism (read this New York Times article:...

ADU's (Accessory Dwelling Units), granny suites, in-law housing, laneway housing, call them what you will, these old, discredited housing solutions are generating new interest across North America. The favoured flavour...

The postwar housing boom that brought Norman Rockwell's idealized America to a ring of suburbs around every North American city was not built upon 2000-3000 sq ft. ranch houses...

$70,000 home ownership? It's still possible in 'Manufactured Home Communities'.  That phrase captures solid industrial strength paired with cozy neighbourhoods. Apparently, some 37,000 such communities around America enjoy this kind...

Does the idea of life in a stack of sewer pipes sound like a nightmare? Do you shudder when you imagine a creepy high rise of tubular sleeping coffins?...

The sheer cuteness of tiny homes! Compact living in a picture postcard forest of lush greenery! Of course it’s an impossible dream, except in places where there are still wide...

Can a temporary homeless shelter provide dignity and privacy? These are underlying principles of a San Jose, California initiative to create little villages of tiny, lock-upable homes instead of...

Tiny homes are a fashionably cute idea that has received a hopeful welcome by those desperate for a solution to the affordable housing crisis. Lost somewhere in the enthusiasm...

Like babies and puppies, tiny houses are cute — an almost irresistibly imaginative and economical solution to a housing shortage. But tiny houses are too often plagued by rose-coloured...