America's love of single-family homes is summed up in this tiny house. A literal decaying reality coincides with the ever-fading dream of All-American-style homeownership.
The origins of this phenomenon lie in the early 2000s, when many millennials rebelled against the McMansion-friendly norms of late 20th century culture. Millennials are famous for their minimalist aesthetic, and this tiny house was literally minimalist. That means it's very small.
But over the past few years, tiny homes have transformed from a millennial lifestyle trend and life hack to a potential solution to the housing crisis. As the affordability crisis grips the nation and homelessness skyrockets, tiny home communities have sprung up from Wisconsin to Austin. In California, which is facing the nation's worst housing crisis, Gov. Gavin Newsom last year promised to provide 1,200 tiny homes as transitional housing in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and Sacramento.
Unfortunately, tiny houses appear to be an imperfect solution to rising housing costs and rising homelessness. So why do politicians, nonprofits, and even good businesses love tiny homes so much? It has to do with a deep-seated American addiction: our obsession with single-family homes.
America is different when it comes to housing.
Homes are built differently in America than in most other countries, and nothing compares to the tiny housing phenomenon of the 21st century. This miniature caricature of a 1950s-style suburban house says something about the American identity, which equates being a homeowner with having a space of one's own, separated from others.
“In other countries,” said Sonia Hart, a professor at the University of Georgia. luck“Where people are actually less interested in living on their own private property, their home ownership rates are much higher than ours, for example,” said Hart, a professor at Georgia State's College of Environmental Design. As dean of the faculty, he has spent many years researching the appeal of single-family homes in America. She points out that in other countries, the term “single-family home” does not exist, and building regulations do not use the term “family.”
“What's interesting culturally is that we're willing to have a small house, but that doesn't necessarily mean we have a small garden,” she said.
According to architecture critic Kate Wagner, who chronicled America's “McMansion hell” on her blog of the same name, the single-family home is “a 19th-century invention of the middle-class professional class,” essentially a 19th-century It is said to have been completed. US. More than 100 years ago in the United States, companies “basically… [was] It is mass-produced, easily distributed, and affordable to ordinary middle-class people. ” As the American economy emerged in the 1920s and boomed during the postwar baby boom generation, it paralleled the emergence of the largest middle class in world history and the blossoming of the single-family home lifestyle. “It was a big change,” Wagner said. luck.
Seventy-five years later, the nation's dependence on single-family homes shows little sign of abating. The mini-boom in housing construction that occurred last November was primarily for single-family homes. As Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, which provides multiple property information services, pointed out at the time, the number of single-family housing starts increased by more than 40% year over year, but the number of multifamily housing starts fell by nearly 34%. did. And as of a few years ago, 75 percent of the nation's residential land was zoned for single-family single-family homes, meaning it was illegal to build anything else in those areas. new york times analysis.
Even before the pandemic, the United States was already facing a shortage of housing, especially affordable housing, in key regions of the country, including the largest cities with the highest-paying jobs. Since the pandemic accelerated the housing boom, single-family homes have become extremely hard to come by, as home prices and rents have increased significantly and mortgage rates are at their highest levels in decades. It is now a coveted asset, closely tied to the wealth of American society. Some millennials rebelled against this by building tiny homes, which were more affordable than the homes their parents owned. Tiny homes have helped millennials save money and allow them to travel without being tied down. Although the origins of this tiny house can be traced back to his 1970s small life and nomadic culture, Wagner said, “It's very much his 2010s invention…a post-recession invention.”
“This was a time of cultural minimalism, and you could see minimalism in everything,” she said. This “post-recession aestheticism” in Wagner's thought was facilitated by cultural changes among the upper middle classes, as was a reappraisal of necessities and materialism itself. Tiny homes have become a form of showing how little you need — a direct nod to the McMansion era, Wagner explained.
In any case, even though tiny houses are much smaller than standard homes, they aren't necessarily much cheaper. Jeff Kruse, assistant professor of architecture and urban design at the University of Miami, said new housing development, whether it's tiny homes or McMansions, comes at a cost. You'll save on construction costs, but you'll still be purchasing land, so “in terms of actual square foot cost, there's really not much difference between a tiny home and a home that's even slightly more modest.” ” than your average home, he said.
Small size reduces costs
In some ways, tiny houses and tiny home communities are simply rebranded mobile homes and trailer parks, with the only real difference being the cultural ties of class, Kruse said. The tiny home movement is a rebuke to the early 2000s trend of inflating home sizes, but still represents “independent housing as an ideal,” he said.
Brian Miller, a sociology professor at Wheaton College, said tiny homes are also impacting America's homeownership aspirations, including the desire for privacy. “On the other hand, it's a big departure from the typical progress of the past few decades, when American homes got bigger and bigger,” Miller said, later adding, “Small homes sometimes make it more obvious. “I refuse to do so.”
But they're not necessarily for low-income households, they're actually for people who can afford this kind of lifestyle, and perhaps even pay for a storage unit to store their material possessions. However, Miller suggested it is for people who are able to do so on a temporary basis. Yet somehow tiny homes are entering a new era, where they are presented as an (incomplete) solution to the housing crisis, which has been compounded by rising housing costs and a growing homeless population. It's appearing. Wagner emphasized that tiny homes are a personalized solution. “The reality is we just need to build housing,” she says. But the push for tiny homes as a solution to the housing crisis is a perverse result of the deep inequalities in the American economy.
“What makes these people worse than you? Would you live in a small house if you didn't want to? I wouldn't,” she said. “Why are homeless people eligible to be subjects in architectural experiments?”
Still, tiny homes can be helpful, says Donald Whitehead Jr., executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. They may not even have a toilet, but they do provide shelter and safety. He said it was an “imperfect” solution, but added: “When it comes to affordable housing, there is such a lack of depth that we must exercise every option, even if it is not the best.” We need to do that,” he added.
Nevertheless, in his view, we are a society that views housing as a commodity rather than a right. The bigger the house, the better the quality of life, so tiny houses are becoming an option. “People don't value life in those tiny houses,” Whitehead said.
