
A Better Alternative to Small Houses - chrismealy
http://benicetobears.com/2016/11/17/the-better-alternative-to-small-houses-that-nobody-is-talking-about/
======
SwellJoe
I'd like to put forward the pinnacle of this theory: Get a tiny shithole.

Travel trailers are dirt cheap, once they reach a certain age, and they're
shitholes, once they reach a certain age. There really isn't much you can do
to fix up a really old travel trailer that isn't one of the "collectible" sort
(Airstream, mostly, but there are some others with collector value). They
don't cost too much to heat/cool, even if poorly insulated, because they're
very, very small (a couple hundred square feet). They've also got wheels, so
you can drive them south when it gets cold and north when it gets warm.

And, unlike tiny houses, you can park them in most RV parks, which provides
the hookups you need to live comfortably (though the older and shittier your
trailer is, the fewer parks will take you, but you don't want an expensive and
fancy RV park, anyway, as that defeats the purpose of living in a shithole
tiny house).

I say all this only half jokingly. I live in a 32 year old Avion travel
trailer (one of the collectible sorts, all aluminum and very expensive when
new); not quite a shithole, but not exactly pristine, either. I genuinely
recommend it for folks who have the freedom to do so.

~~~
sakopov
How frequently do you travel? Do you work remotely and if so how do you manage
to find internet connection? This is something I've been very interested in
for some time now.

~~~
hn_user2
Can't say from experience since I am in the research phase. But I like the
outdoors so I want to be able to boondock.

So my current plan is a Wifi Device from Verizon, plus Satellite Internet,
plus lots of Solar and Batteries. This is not cheap, and I am pretty sure it
will not resale very well.

The satellite dish alone is like $7,000
([http://www.rvdatasat.com](http://www.rvdatasat.com)).

But I know I'll be working remote for some time, and why not just go hit the
National Parks for a bit. Of course, still need to pick and choose. Not sure I
could rely on a view to a geo-sat from Yosemite Valley for example, but up
high at Tuolumne Meadows should be fine.

~~~
SwellJoe
I considered satellite when I first started, but the cost is very high, the
latency is very high (I have experience with satellite internet as I've helped
design caching systems for cruise ships and other satellite linked networks;
while the up/down speeds aren't terrible, interactive stuff is painful), and
the places where you can't get 3G/4G data in the continental US has shrunk
quite a bit over the past decade or two.

I spend a lot of time in deserts, which have surprisingly good coverage, even
quite far from civilization. Being flat, and all, makes it reach quite far
from towers. Mountains are problematic, but even then, you can often find a
place to park that's in a pocket of coverage...or you can hike or bike to a
high point where you can get coverage. And, as you note, mountains are
potentially problematic for satellite coverage, as well.

~~~
sakopov
Do you just tether internet from your phone? I've been looking at service like
Karma [1] which seems to receive good reviews from RVers i follow on YouTube
and they charge an incredible $150/50Gb. The prices are just outrageous.

[1] [https://yourkarma.com/pricing](https://yourkarma.com/pricing)

~~~
SwellJoe
I had Karma, but they did a double bait and switch (they offered unlimited
with a bandwidth restriction, but then changed it after a bunch of people
signed up, and then changed it yet again the month after, due to
complaints...in both cases, the deals got worse and the pricing got more
expensive for my use case), which made me hate them.

But, I use Sprint and T-Mobile. Karma is on the Sprint network, so the same
network, but with slightly better prices. I have a 40GB plan from Sprint
($127/month, including the hotspot and the line fee), and 16GB spread across
two devices on T-Mobile. And, yes, my phone can tether, but I have two
hotspots, as well. I use T-Mobile for the Binge On feature, which is zero-
rated Netflix, Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Video, YouTube, etc. So, when I'm
streaming, I use the T-Mobile data, and for anything else I use Sprint.

And, yes, prices are outrageous. It wasn't always this way. Clear used to
offer unlimited data for $40/month, and I had an unlimited data plan on my
T-Mobile phone, as well. I kept the actually unlimited plan for many years,
even after T-Mobile no longer offered an actually unlimited plan. But, then
they started blocking hotspot usage (even on a rooted phone; not sure how they
were detecting it was being used that way), so I had to switch to another
plan, which was more expensive and much more limited.

Anyway, it works out to about $250/month; if I weren't sharing it with my
girlfriend (who does a lot of streaming), it'd probably be plenty. I never
used to use more than about 30GB/month when it was just me. I watch a lot less
TV when it's just me.

------
bArray
I live in a shared shit hole and let me tell you, it can be pretty damn
miserable at times. I'm living 20 minutes from central London via train for
£300 a month. Everything is falling apart, things keep breaking because they
have been repaired so many times, everything is glitchy, bits of ceiling
occasionally fall on my head.

All that said, it's freedom. I can live any hours I like, do anything I want
and not worry about the consequences. I don't worry about the paint falling
off the wall, the furniture that wobbles or the heating that randomly turns
on. I would say I am living the life.

~~~
midgetjones
It depresses me to say so, but that is insanely cheap for London.

~~~
pjc50
The price tells you how awful it must be to be that cheap.

~~~
bArray
Yeah, it's literally the cheapest place I could find in the local area.

------
Tharkun
I don't live in a shithole, but I live in a shitty neighbourhood with many
shitholes. It's definitely not as glamourous as this guy makes it out to be.

The whole 'broken window syndrome' means that no one gives a shit about
anything in the neighbourhood. People will literally shit on your doorstep.
They will drunkenly crash their cars into their garage in the middle of the
night. You will be awoken, many a night, because people are fighting.

Stay away from shitholes if you value sleep and your sanity.

~~~
cmdrfred
And when people move away they call it white flight and question why they
didn't stick around and give back to the community. What community?

~~~
jandrese
Or they do stick around and try hard to make the area a better place to live
and get nothing but grief for gentrifying the neighborhood.

------
blubb-fish
I live in Germany where I guess the situation is quite different in that
regard from the States.

One thing that comes to mind is that shitholes are also usually located in
shit areas - the whole neighbourhood situation is there usually rather
depressing and less secure.

The idea of a tiny house is that you can place it anywhere - at least in
theory. And that allows you to choose an especially calm, quiet, peaceful
environment.

I'd love to live in a tiny house - a shit hole on the other hand does not seem
so appealing. Also b/c the additional square meters wouldn't be of much use. A
nicer less is for me more than a shittier cheap more.

~~~
yitchelle
I also live in Germany. The other day I was walking past a kleingartenverein
[0] and wonder how it it will be before it becomes legal to stay in in the
small hut that is on each garden.

[0] - for the non-German speaker folks, this is the closes I can find on what
a kleingartenverein is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_\(gardening\))

~~~
jsilence
The Bundeskleingartengesetz will never allow this.

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LouisSayers
Yeah, but then there's the mould, the lack of insulation, rough neighbourhood
and paper-thin walls (if in apartments) that you have to put up with...

Sure you can get a shit hole, but then it's important to ask why it's
considered a shit hole. Shitty housing in good areas aren't common (at least
not where I've lived)

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devoply
I feel this is a passive aggressive way of attacking what's a reasonable idea.
To live in a small place that you own outright. Maybe this guy associates that
with smug hipsters or something like that. But really it's about people
seeking autonomy. Not seeking a way out of society or wanting to live at the
bottom rung of it.

------
Swizec
Or, you know, just get a place you like and understand that a home is a home,
not an investment. The part whete people get into trouble is when they buy a
home and think it's an investment.

The implication of home != investment is that you get something you can
afford.

~~~
aidenn0
What does "you can afford" mean? By definition you can't be bankrupted by
nonrecourse debt.

On the other hand, I have a fairly significant fraction of my net worth tied
up in my home, and a fair amount of equity at this point, so it would be
fairly painful to lose it.

That being said, in hindsight I am almost certainly financially in a better
position than had I been renting for the past 5 years (I say "almost" because
appraisals aren't worth the paper they are printed on as far as I'm concerned;
I don't know a single person in this town who has bought or sold a house
within 10% of the appraised value in the past decade).

It seems like poor advice to _not_ consider a home as an investment;
investments come with risks, as well as opportunity costs. Particularly for
smaller units, I've known places where renting was so much cheaper than buying
that it should be considered a luxury to buy, and yet people just buy once
they have a down-payment without considering the financial repercussions.

Maybe you really mean one must understand that a home is not a risk-free
investment, in which case we are in agreement.

~~~
Swizec
> yet people just buy once they have a down-payment without considering the
> financial repercussions.

My desired location is in an anomalous realestate market. Mortgage for the
place I live in would cost me about $6k/month, rent is about $3.5k/month. Even
if that wasn't the case, do I really want an illiquid investment that ties me
down with a loan for 30 years when there are so many other investments I could
make?

Just considering a downpayment of, say, $200k ... for that kinda money I could
take 2 or 3 years off work and build a business that makes much more than
that. Riskier investment, sure, but also a lot more profitable and more fun.
Quicker returns too.

Dunno, the arguments for buying never made sense to me. Unless of course you
have high leverage (can buy cash, but choose not to). Then it's a whole
different game.

~~~
pjc50
> My desired location is in an anomalous realestate market.

> the arguments for buying never made sense to me

Well, there you go. I live in a market that's anomalous in the other
direction: there's exactly one four-bedroom house advertised for rent in the
city at the moment, and its price is about 20% higher than the mortgage would
be.

(Mortgage >> rent implies a _really_ strange market where the landlords must
be experiencing negative ROI?)

~~~
ohwello
The statistic measuring this property is the price-to-rent ratio:
[https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-in-us-
ci...](https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-in-us-cities)

Landlords in California have a great reason not to sell - prop 13, a tax
benefit for people and corporations who bought low.

------
bane
I've never quite understood the problem the tiny house movement is supposed to
be solving other than "look at all the amenities we can cram into such a tiny
space!"

Most of the time when they're shown off, they're sitting isolated on some huge
lot somewhere in the woods, so housing density isn't it. I mean, clearly, just
look at how they're positioned on the market -- 9/10 are in the woods or next
to a lake or some such. A housing situation that's less sustainable than
suburbs.

If I look for ones that are actually for sale, they just seem to be rebranded
college apartments or RVs - except now the sellers are charging twice as much
because they attached a solar shower to the back or something.

They often come with advice for how to get them into RV parks or mobile home
parks, but those can be very expensive to dock a house in and can sometimes
come with uncomfortable and very real externalities as you intersect with the
transient and the poor (plus, if you're going to live in a mobile home park,
you may as well just buy a used mobile home, they're much more comfortable to
live in).

Just like RVs and mobile homes, most of the shed-like tiny houses are terrible
housing investments because the market views them as what they are, RVs and
sheds, and depreciates them over time on average, while actual real estate
tends to appreciate over time.

And for the non-RV tiny houses, they don't solve the mobility question.
They're just about as fixed as a normal home structure.

And notions about living less materially seem okay, but there are many long-
term stories of tiny home dwellers who run away screaming because of how
cramped their living conditions are, and all the unexpected external costs
(like self storage for their actual stuff) that never seems to get into tiny
house movement propaganda.

I feel like what they're actually trying to solve is the desire of apartment
dwellers to "own" a home without having to go through the normal home
ownership system, which they've been conditioned to view as a trap of some
sort for reasons, and "hack" that system by coming at it from some non-
traditional angle.

It's also interesting how pretty much all of the professionally designed and
purpose built tiny homes seem to lead their sales pitch with all the tiny
house movement awards they've won and really not much about the structure or
the maintenance of the 20 acres the tiny house sits on.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
I have a few friends who are very enthusiastic about the tiny house movement.
They are building a tiny house community, getting the zoning changed, etc.

At first I didn't get what problem they were solving. After enough discussions
with them, I understand: The problem that tiny houses are solving is having
the financial advantages of living in a trailer without the social stigma that
comes with living in a trailer.

It's a class perception thing. In America, if you want to avoid living around
the poor or being perceived as poor, you have to buy an expensive house. This
is why people buy more house than they need - so they can live in the right
kind of neighborhood.

Tiny house communities are a way for astrophysicists and programmers to live
in trailers without having to live around the kind of people who live in
trailers. It's a social hack to get around the signaling cost of expensive
housing.

I told them that I didn't think it would work long term, that eventually tiny
house communities would be perceived as just another kind of trailer park.
They said sure, eventually that might happen, but by then their kids would
have grown up and the next generation could figure out their own arrangements.

~~~
dharmon
I think you're spot on with your analysis.

The hope (for me), is that some middle ground is reached. Make it ok again to
build normal-size houses (1200-1500 sq. ft.) in nice neighborhoods with nice
schools.

------
ars
(Summary: Live in a rundown, but large, house.)

That only works if you rent. It's too expensive to own and not maintain a
rundown home - you lose too much money on letting it decay.

And no, I don't understand the economics of how it's not worth it for a
homeowner, but is worth it for a landlord to let property decay. But somehow
it is.

~~~
thinkloop
The shittier the shithole the less depreciation there is. Land gains value,
houses lose value. A brand new home, with brand new appliances, starts to
depreciate quickly - like driving the car off the lot. Once the oven, roof,
walls, plumbing, is 10yrs old the 11th year doesn't matter much. There is a
threshold of course - if you let the roof cave in and destroy everything
inside there's a jump in loss there. Otherwise the longer you can make use of
your shitty house, on your appreciating land, the more financially beneficial
it will be.

------
metaphor
Extolling the merits of a clear pejorative strikes me as disingenuous to say
the least.

I honestly can't figure whether this blog simply echoes the sentiments of a
bachelor longing for days free from adult responsibility, or tries to be some
hip justification for squalor conditions contrived by the outrageous cost of
living in a high-density city.

If your reasons for _choosing_ to live in a shithole are: 1. cost; 2. cost;
and 3. laziness thinly paraded as character...more 1st-world power to you. I
prefer to live frugal, which actually requires a bit of work to pull off.

~~~
drcross
Some of you guys really need to lighten up.

------
grecy
Complete nonsense.

A large(r) "shithole" requires more money for:

# Maintenance in general - things like water heaters, furnaces, roofs and
kitchen appliances are not cheap.

# Heating. Older buildings have crap insulation, you're going to pay through
the nose for that if you live anywhere cold.

# Property Tax. Depending on where you live it's a function of the square
footage of the house.

# Things to fill it with. The bigger the living space, the more stuff you
have.

------
bryanrasmussen
from the name of the domain I thought the alternative he was going to discuss
was going homeless with really good camping equipment.

~~~
contingencies
Same here. Which reminds me, I have some decent Kiwi camping gear in Sydney,
might give it a workout next month in the southern hemisphere summer!

------
50CNT
We're currently going for "tiny shithole". Trying to set up a full kitchen in
<4sqm of space. Our current BOM for that is

    
    
        1 x 15L Medical Wastebasket 
        1 x60x40cm Table 
        1 x Anti Slip Stickers 
        2 x 30x40cm Bamboo Cutting Boards 
        1 x 75cmx35cmx150cm Industrial Shelf 
        1 x 56cmx24cmx38cm Plate Rack 
        1 x 7W T5 LED Lamp
        1 x T5 plug with switch 
        
        1 x 90cmx45cmx180cm Industrial Shelf 
        1 x 71cmx46cmx21.1cm Range Hood 
        1 x 15cm Range Hood Exhaust 
        1 x HEPA/Active Charcoal Filter Sheets 
        1 x Roll of Greaseproof Foil 
        
        1 x Induction Plate 2100W 
        1 x Pressure Cooker 1000W 70kPA
        1 x 52cmx32.5cmx30.5cm Oven 1600W 
        1 x 182L Fridge 
        
        1 x Kitchen Scale 
        1 x Kitchen TImer 
        1 x Meat Thermometer 
        1 x Immersion Blender
        1 x Coffee Machine
    
        1 x Chefs Knife 
        1 x Cast Iron Skillet/Dutch Oven
        4 x Lint-free Kitchen Towels 
        1 x Vegetable Peeler 
        1 x Paring Knife 
        1 x Silicone Spatula 
        1 x Ceramic Sautee Pan 
        2 x Large Mixing Bowl 
        8 x Small Prep Bowl 
        1 x Zester (Microplane) 
        1 x Silicone Bench Scraper 
        1 x Tongs 
        1 x Mesh Sieve 
        1 x Strainer 
        1 x Set of Measuring Spoones 
        1 x Ladle 
        1 x Can Openner (side open) 
        1 x Potato Ricer 
        1 x Waiters Bottle Opener 
        2 x Wooden Spoon
        1 x Kitchen Apron 
        1 x Salad Spinner 
        1 x Sharpening Stone
        2 x Pepper/Salt Mill 
        1 x Set of Tupperware 17pcs. 
        
        8 x Plates 
        1 x Pack of Chopsticks 20pcs
        8 x Cutlery Set (Fork, Knife, Spoon) 
        8 x Highball Glasses 
    
        1+1 x 120cmx60cmx75cm Foldable Table
        8 x Stackable Chairs 
    

We've spent about 4500RMB (650USD) on it, which includes some non-kitchen
stuff (Wardrobes, Bedding, Lamps, extra shelving), and there's still some bits
and bobs we'll need to get, but all in all, it's a compact, cheap, and
versatile kitchen stack.

~~~
guard-of-terra
4sqm kitchen is basically how everybody lives in ex-USSR, and I presume China
too, and probably Japan and Korea.

It's quite some space if you know how to use it.

~~~
thesmok
Ukrainian here. I've only seen 4m kitchen once in my life, and it was in
apartment in 120 y.o. building. In all the USSR-era apartments the kitchen was
at least 8sqm.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Obviously you were lucky: Soviet standards were pretty diverse (non-russian
republics getting the best housing and wares, then Ukrainian and Belorussian
SSRs, and finally the worst ones for RSFSR).

Here you have a typical plan of block khruscheba:
[http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/volgodim/14339505/26623/26623...](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/volgodim/14339505/26623/26623_original.gif)
I've seen quite a few of those. 5.8 m^2 kitchen. All over Russia.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
_“You don’t need to fix up a shithole!”_

Well, maybe. One shithole some friends lived in in Melbourne had had all the
copper piping stolen, so the landlord had replaced it with garden hose.
Touching the shower head or taps in the bathroom resulted in a mild electric
tingle. Something wasn't right there I tell you. Probably electrical earthing
and the absence of a residual current device.

Another shithole, this time in Adelaide, I lived in for a couple years, when
it rained heavy one gutter overflowed and there would be a waterfall above the
window _inside_ the house.

Couple other shitholes I saw in my 20's weren't so bad.

Filth _is_ fun when you're _young_.

Also, there's no way a lender will get in on you borrowing to buy a shithole.

------
hubert123
I live in a shithole and the only complaint that I have is the health risk
from using a shared toilet and the noise in the city. Other than that, I
really dont care. I have everything I need and it's cheap. If I could get
something even cheaper then I would.

------
sigi45
I'm grown up enought to have so much aesthetic that i don't wanna life in a
shithole anymore.

------
digi_owl
err?

------
jcoffland
The problem with shitholes is that they suck. Sure they are cheaper but like
fast food it's not good for you.

