A Tiny Controversy Brews Over Tiny Homes
A Tiny Controversy Brews Over Tiny Homes
The tiny home movement is gaining steam. These small housing options are being featured on TV shows touting the cost and environmental benefits, and more buyers are being swayed to go small. But now cities are sparring over which one has earned the title as tiny house capital of America.
The Gazette recently bestowed that honor to its local city of Colorado Springs. However, some in the tiny-home movement were quick to counter that Northern California and Portland, Ore., are the true epicenters of tiny-home living.
“There are many more people who have lived in [Northern California and Portland],” couners Elaine Walker, one of the founders of the American Tiny House Association. “Colorado is pretty new” to the tiny house movement.
Portland says it boasts the first tiny-house motel called Caravan. Colorado Springs has one too: WeeCasa in Lyons, Colo.
There may even be more competing tiny-home capitals popping up, Mark Stemen, a professor at California State University, Chico, who teaches courses on tiny homes, told realtor.com®.
“I’m seeing them up and down the West Coast,” he says. “Everyone wants to be the capital.”
Other cities like Seattle, Austin, and Asheville, N.C., also have growing tiny-home movements, Walker says.
Tiny homes are generally 500 square feet or less — only a fraction of the typical U.S. home size of about 1,500 square feet.
Source: “Tiny Homes Spark a Big Controversy,” realtor.com® (June 27, 2016)
