
I hate living in my tiny house - DoreenMichele
https://www.fastcompany.com/90407740/why-i-hate-living-in-my-tiny-house
======
fennecfoxen
Article's conclusions are dubious.

> We need ... different housing tech that can lower construction costs

If you're paying ~$1,600 a month for a shoebox apartment, it's not because you
need construction technology. It is a housing-policy problem.

~~~
orasis
...combined with a lifestyle choice problem. Hundreds of millions of other
Americans do fine not living in the Bay Area.

~~~
i_am_nomad
This is a very valid point that almost nobody makes, and I still cannot
understand why not. People screaming about how unaffordable the Bay Area is,
seem to feel like living elsewhere would be some kind of death sentence.

~~~
garmaine
I’m from the Bay Area. This is my hometown, going back 5 generations. What
should I do? Move?

~~~
egypturnash
Oh man I feel so sorry for my artist friends who were forced out and can never
move home again. One of them is slowly succumbing to depression due to ending
up in Seattle and I really hope he can figure out how to get out of there
before the winter blahs drive him to suicide.

~~~
pram
Wow, Seattle! A punishment worse than death!

~~~
cortesoft
It isn't about the location, it is about being away from your family, your
friends, and your community. That matters to some people.

~~~
garmaine
Also 10 consecutive months of drab, gray skies and constant rain.

~~~
loeg
Eleven months! Don't move here.

~~~
DonHopkins
You'd be more convincing if you said "Don't move there."

------
ilamont
In 2018, my middle school-aged son and I stayed in a small apartment in Taipei
while he attended a Mandarin language program at a local university over the
summer. It was located on the roof of a 10 story building, and was about 250
square feet. I had to fold up my sofa bed every morning (he had the loft) to
make space in the main room. There was no indoor furniture except the sofa, so
when we ate inside he usually sat on the stairs while I used a small plastic
folding chair I bought at a night market.

Dealing with garbage was a constant issue. It just seemed to build up quickly
and there was no place to keep it in the apartment. In terms of our
belongings, if we had anything more than what fit in our suitcases and day
packs there would have been a major problem with storage as there was only
some small closet space and cubbyholes underneath the stairs. I did almost no
cooking because cheap food options were nearby but it occurred to me that if I
had been frying stuff on the little range, the smells from cooking would have
pervaded everything.

ETA: I realize that many people live in far more cramped conditions all over
the world, often with many family members or shared accommodations, and
generally have no options to move into bigger quarters. But in the United
States at least, I see the "small house" movement romanticizing the idea of
compact living quarters while glossing over the drawbacks.

~~~
cyberferret
I think this is a factor that is often neglected or not even mentioned is
articles espousing 'tiny homes'. The cooking. Even in our fairly large home,
if I cook something even vaguely aromatic, the smell permeates through most of
the house.

Maybe this is an indictment of the 'takeaway generation' that seems the norm
in places like the US, where it is often cheaper and more convenient to order
take out, rather than cook from scratch?

~~~
souprock
That smell is a good thing though, isn't it? If not, cook something else.
Maybe don't cook liver with Limburger.

~~~
cyberferret
Whilst the smell _can_ be good in the sort term, over time, it can actually
work against you. Trying to go to sleep with the delicious smell of baking
bread through your sheets? Good luck with that :) Also, waking up first thing
in the morning with the smell of last night's curry still in the air? Not the
best.

If you burn milk or something else on the stove? Best leave the windows open
and rent a hotel room to stay in for a few days!

------
lettergram
Having unintentionally lived in a "tiny house" at university, never again.
Mind you, it wasn't supposed to be a "tiny house", they had a rush remodel and
half the apartment was rendered useless.

My wife (then girlfriend) and I agreed never to live in one again. Just this
morning, we were reminiscing about how we used to have to get our utensils,
then eat on the utensil box I made to hold them because we didn't have counter
space. We also recalled the brick wall had a brick sticking out just slightly
too far that you couldn't open the oven. So we had to file down the brick.

Just... just no. Give me my 2600+ square feet house any day.

The real trick is not living somewhere where you need that kind of housing.
Outside of a submarine, there really is little reason.

I live in rural Illinois, make close to an SF salary, enjoy my 5 min commute,
and pay less than this guy for a five bedroom house.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
There's a wide variety of options between "tiny house" and 2,600 square feet.
Many of the post world-war 2 era homes in my area are ~1,000 sq. ft. (+/\- 100
sq. ft). It's more than plenty for 2 people.

~~~
lettergram
For reference, we have a roommate and two kids. Only one guest room left so
pretty much a good fit.

Agreed 1000 sq. ft. Is great for two. Living in SF I had a 750 sq. Ft.
Apartment with three people and it felt fine.

------
Arainach
If you don't want to live in a tiny house, then don't. It's good to have
options for people who can't afford otherwise. Clearly the author of the
article prefers living in Oakland (in a tiny house) to living somewhere
cheaper in a larger house. The author explicitly states that they can't afford
a larger apartment, but this is the tradeoff. There are tradeoffs in
everything.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
The primary cost in housing is not the size of the house, but the cost of
land. I don't understand this tiny house obsession -- frankly condos are 'tiny
houses' and they are mostly insanely priced in hot markets.

Tiny house is not a movement about affordability. It's an aesthetic movement.
One mostly participated in by people of higher income.

~~~
opportune
Depends on where you are in the country, actually. In suburban areas of the
midwest, the plot of land with a 3000 sqft house is much cheaper than the
actual house.

I don't think tiny house is black-and-white 0% about affordability and 100%
about aesthetics. To me it's basically a way for people who perceive
themselves as middle class to live cheaply in housing that is a step above
trailers, and it's caused by the very high rents in certain urban areas like
Toronto, Seattle, and the bay area. You probably don't see a lot of millenials
living in tiny houses in Des Moines, Iowa or Cincinnati, Ohio.

Also, not sure how familiar you are with the bay area housing issue, but a lot
of it is due to lack of supply + zoning. The state of california recently
passed legislation allowing some zoning requirements to be circumvented
allowing people to build ADUs - accessory dwelling units - in their backyards,
which constitute the vast majority of tiny houses in the bay area (again
partly due to zoning... there are very few places in commuting distance of the
jobs centers where you would be allowed to build just a tiny house, or a
collection of tiny houses, on a plot of land).

Around here tiny houses are priced similarly to similar-sized studios, with
some benefits and drawbacks of living in an ADU compared to a studio
(detached, usually in quieter residentail areas, less amenities than an
apartment building might have, often cheaper). Affordability is a huge part of
why people live in ADUs over here

~~~
badfrog
> In suburban areas of the midwest, the plot of land with a 3000 sqft house is
> much cheaper than the actual house.

I think the same holds true for most of the US outside of major urban areas.
When 1/2 acre costs $30,000 any house you build will cost more than the land.

------
woah
Hear me out: It may be possible to stack houses on top of each other in
layers.

~~~
im3w1l
I understand the joke, but let's take it seriously.

What are the main reasons people want houses and how can we preserve them when
stacking?

* Noise. If you want to create the house experience you need to be able to jump and stomp the floor in the middle of the night without bothering anyone. Need thick and advanced floors, walls and front doors (easy to forget the last).

* Garden. Probably would need artifical light, but might be possible.

* BBQ in the garden. Maybe not impossible but might take some engineering to get the smoke out.

* Parking. Just need to ensure it exists plentifully.

* Multiple floors. Idk if people care too much for this, but easy to handle if so.

~~~
souprock
Then the deal killer: the desire for maximum possible control via ownership,
without being subject to the whims of a landlord.

Even a condo fails at this. The ownership is fake. You don't have permission
to bore a hole in the roof, foundation, or exterior wall. You can't paint the
building with Vantablack. You have to pay a condo association fee which could
change in unpredictable ways.

Regular houses get much closer to the ideal, especially if rural or at least
without a homeowner association. Some states even let older people defer
property taxes until the property is sold.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
> You don't have permission to bore a hole in the roof

Is this really a relevant issue, when you just need a decent place to live?

~~~
oceanplexian
The example is pretty ridiculous but yeah, ownership unencumbered by a
landlord or HOA is immensely freeing.

Want to run a machine shop in the garage? Go ahead! Want to change your own
oil in your car? Nobody is stopping you. Don’t like the fact that anyone can
simply walk in your front door on a whim and “inspect” things in your own
home? Ownership provides all of those things and a lot more.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
I don't know laws in the US, but we definitely own the apartments and people
can't randomly walk in for 'inspections'.

~~~
mreome
In most US states all that is required is 24 Hours notice of entry for any
maintenance, and emergency repairs/maintenance do not require any notice.
Landlords and maintenance personal will always be assessing the
state/condition of the apartment whenever they are there. Since they do not
need a response to the notice, if you didn't see the e-mail, or missed the
piece paper tucked in your door jam, it can feel a lot like a "random
inspection."

~~~
ClumsyPilot
I thought we are talking about property you own, is the Landlord the company
that manages the building? This sounds like they have way too much leeway!

My family owns apartments in the Czech republic and nobody has rights to enter
them, or physical means to do so. There is no 'landlord', the building and
land is owned by the resident's association, where the "leader" is elected by
resident's voting and paid a small salary. They manage repairs and bills.

If I suddenly found them in my house doing some random inspection and talking
about 24h notice, police would be on the scene.

~~~
mreome
The parent comments were talking about landlords; in the US a landlord is the
owner of a rented property. In the US "apartment" usually implies rented,
while owned apartments are usually refered to as "condos/condominiums."

------
alexhutcheson
The author's experience is interesting to read about, but their dwelling is
not typical of ADUs. 240 sq. ft is on the extreme low end of ADU sizes.
Googling yields a variety of different figures, but one blog[1] cites an
average ADU size of 640 ft. As someone who currently lives in a <700 sq. ft
apartment with another person and a dog, I can say that 640 ft would be very
livable for one person.

Tiny homes sound terrible, but tiny home != ADU. There are a lot of more
reasonably sized ADUs being built, and most of them should be much more
pleasant to live in than this one.

[https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2017/05/23/jumpstarting-the-
marke...](https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2017/05/23/jumpstarting-the-market-for-
accessory-dwelling-units/)

~~~
maire
ADU size depends on lot size and zoning.

In Santa Cruz county, ADUs inside the "utility zone" are limited to 10% for
normal lot sizes up to a max of 640 sqft. Large lots can have an ADU up to 800
sqft.

Outside of the "utility zone" ADUs can be as large as 1200 sqft if your lot is
greater than 1 acre.

~~~
gnopgnip
A few state laws on ADU have changed recently, the lot size limits are no
longer legal and you can build 600sq ft adu on sub 5000 sq ft lots now

------
Retric
Ultra tiny houses are a very poor tradeoff. Your costs per square foot drop
significantly as you increase the buildings dimensions. The actual costs are
mostly for land which sit unused around them. At that size a 10% larger
investment in construction builds a significantly larger structure while still
representing a small percentage of the monthly cost.

By comparison of construction vs land. 50k gets you a nice prebuilt 750sf
single wide that can be delivered just about anywhere. Which could be covered
by ~300$ mortgage meanwhile that much smaller space is renting for
1,600+$/month. So, at best your reducing that 300$ a little while leaving the
1,300+$ land cost alone.

~~~
d-sc
I lived in one of those 50k prebuilt, they aren't as nice as they are made out
to be. But the premise of your comment still stands.

~~~
realbarack
Would you mind elaborating a bit? Would love to hear more about your
experience with this.

------
mikedilger
240 sq ft sounds too small. I think the tiny house movement overshot.

I've been living alone (with dog) in a 540 sq ft garage conversion for 7 years
and it's just about the perfect size for me. It has a small bedroom (queen
bed), larger office, even larger LR, smallish kitchen and a bathroom (no tub).
If I bothered to change antying, the kitchen could be slightly larger, the
bathroom could use a tub, the laundry could be moved indoors (it's out on the
covered deck) and the water heater could be moved indoors too. It's not well
designed and space is not utilized well (bare walls could be shelves). But
with a better design I think it would be completely satisfactory. I like
having less to clean and less to heat, but I wouldn't attempt anything
smaller.

I should add that my house has nothing to do with affordable dense city
housing, it's on a farm in New Zealand, which has other buildings (garage,
storage container, shearing shed).

------
hourislate
In Toronto 500k buys you 500 sq/ft. There are condos being built that are as
small as 385 sq/ft. Developers are just packing in units and making them
smaller and smaller and charging a huge premium if you want a larger unit. The
buildings are built like shit and the maintenance fees are outrageous. I can't
imagine how much worse it's going to get as time goes on and people become
more desperate trying to find somewhere to live or something to buy.

~~~
perl4ever
I'm in NY (ah, but not NYC) and inside city limits, within a metro area of 1.1
million people, and I have about 1300 sq ft that cost $165K. And no HOA/condo
fees.

I'm not really putting in any effort to evangelize and promote the idea, but
the concept of a land value tax instead of regular property taxes seemed like
a plausible solution to the problems people have with real estate markets. You
tax something, you get less of it. We want people to develop and invest in
building on land, but we don't want them to profit from the scarcity of the
actual acreage. So why not tax the value of the land away, and leave the
buildings on it alone?

------
protomyth
Unless there is some provision for tiny lots, I really don't get the desire.
Even then, many of these tiny houses, particularly anything that can be hauled
behind a truck, is astonishingly bad. A 400 - 700 sq. ft modular house would
be a better idea.

On a side note, there are quite a lot of stories from places like Hong Kong on
how to maximize space in their small apartments that could be applied to tiny
homes to make them more livable. I've watched a lot of those shows on HGTV and
have not seen any of those designs applied. A youtube channel called _Living
Big In A Tiny House_
[https://www.youtube.com/user/livingbigtinyhouse](https://www.youtube.com/user/livingbigtinyhouse)
has some interesting designs with some space saving techniques.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
It's worth pointing out that minimum lot sizes were used to push poor people,
particularly POC, out of wealthier neighborhoods by making it uneconomical to
build smaller homes on oversized lots.

SF has a minimum of 2,500-4000sf [1], and San Jose has a minimum of 5,400sf!
It's the same for much of the bay area, the SFH I live in occupies ~20% of the
lot it sits on, which is pure insanity for one of the most expensive metros in
the US. It is even more insane when you look at the giant lots of SFHs _right
next to Bart stations_.

[1] [https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-
rh/](https://www.livablecity.org/rethinking-rh/)

------
newnewpdro
This title is kind of misleading, they're the tenant of a tiny rental, they
don't own the place.

The necessity of being free to modify and tailor a living space to the
occupant increases exponentially with the inverse of ft^2.

I live in a tiny space. It would drive me absolutely insane if there were a
fold-out bed and other integrated amenities I wouldn't appreciate yet would be
wasting precious space on. But since I own my place, whatever isn't working
gets removed/changed and it's instead an iterative optimization process.

There are some serious advantages to having a small space. Heating/cooling
systems are smaller, so cheaper to acquire, replace, and operate. Cleaning the
place takes a few minutes. The lack of excess space significantly deters
consumerism and hoarding. Maintenance and upgrades have much smaller
multipliers, the number of windows, ft^2 of roofing material, exterior
finishing, flooring, etc. It's all significantly lower cost in materials, less
labor costs or less work/time if DIYing.

My property includes acres of buildable land, but I don't really feel all that
compelled to increase the cost of ownership by building a larger home.

The main thing I'm contemplating right now is building a second minimalist
tiny home on the property for visiting friends/airbnb, and maybe for me to
live in when I'm doing invasive upgrades in the other one. I value that that's
not a particularly costly proposition, to entirely gut and upgrade
_everything_ in my tiny home. It wouldn't even take that long. Go price some
nice windows on menards.com, lowes.com, or homedepot.com and see how much it
would cost when you have 10-20 to replace vs. 2-4. This is the kind of stuff
typical single-family residential home owners take out home equity lines of
credit to do. I'd do it for under ten grand, no loans necessary, nor did it
require a mortgage to buy this place to start with.

------
exabrial
> I can’t afford to move

For one months rent, you could move your stuff, and pay your first months rent
in my apartment complex in Overland Park, KS.

~~~
burlesona
Yes, but in the minds of so many people in California and New York, Kansas
doesn’t exist.

Having moved to SF from “flyover country,” it’s astonishing to me how many
people here are totally unaware of the rest of the country, and have never
even visited anything outside of the Pacific Coast other than NYC or maybe DC.
If you ask why they don’t move someplace in the Midwest, the answer is they
consider it to be a nearly mythological place that they only vaguely know
exists and are, frankly, terrified of. It’s bizarre how common that is.

~~~
Merrill
New York and San Francisco are two of the most provincial cities in the US.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Avenue)

~~~
ternaryoperator
Provincial != unfamiliar with your preferred area.

NYC and SF are about the easiest places for foreigners to integrate. Residents
of those cities might not have been to Kansas, but lots of them have been to
or come from Latin American or Asian countries--so definitely not provincial,
but in fact multicultural.

~~~
Merrill
2a: limited in outlook : NARROW - [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/provincial](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/provincial)

"Provincial" in the sense of being preoccupied with themselves and not knowing
much and caring less about the rest of the country.

Admittedly, both metros are more outward looking towards other countries. The
elite New York Times readers consider themselves members of a community of
international cities like London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, etc. That's not
true of the average reader of the Daily News or New York Post.

------
p1necone
I don't get the tiny house thing. They seem to have become a fad because house
prices in a lot of places are currently out of reach of a lot of people. But
isn't the part of the equation that's grown astronomically the cost of the
land, not the cost of building the house?

I know that I couldn't afford a house where I am now (without a large down
payment and mortgage repayments that were an unresponsible portion of my
income) even if I just bought an empty plot of land.

~~~
ilamont
The other part of the fad is the gorgeous photography of tiny houses and
articles extolling the concept that was shared widely on social media. It
romanticized the idea, and generally avoided the downsides.

~~~
notmyfuture
The first wave of tiny houses seemed to be mostly self-built and people had
poured a lot of love & hours into construction. Then they were all over
Instagram/Pinterest. This has paved the way for a second wave, where some
occupiers aren't quite as enraptured: mass production (or at least not self-
built), living this way by more by necessity than choice.

------
hanniabu
I think this is completely a function if multiple things including how much
money you can spend on housing, how much stuff you own, your lifestyle (do you
entertain, do you have equipment like a bike or kayak, etc), how
clean/organized you are, how large you are, are you single, do you have pets,
and how well the space is designed.

Tiny houses aren't for everybody, but they definitely meet the needs of a
group of people. For instance myself, I live alone, have no pets, don't
entertain parties, am really organized, and don't own a lot of stuff so a tiny
home is completely within my comfort. Not to mention that if I lived in a
normal sized apartment then it would look like I'm either in the process of
moving in or moving out due to how little stuff I own. Even if the price per
square foot increases, I simply don't need the extra space so why pay for it.
It's like saying I should get a large pack of eggs for a better deal, even
though I only need a small pack because the rest will go bad before I eat
them. It just don't make sense in my situation, as well it's the case for many
others.

Given that, I could not live in many tiny homes advertised on
TV/instagram/YouTube, they're simply inefficient in terms of lifestyle.
They've turned it into a competition for who can live in the smallest place
possible which is plain stupid and you end up with a bunch of idiots designs
that require you to somehow pack up your bed every day, or have no kitchen
countertop, or no table. These aren't what I would consider normal tiny homes,
they're on the extreme end of the spectrum.

You don't need to give up a normal lifestyle to have a "tiny home", only the
people that want to "show off" do. These are the same type of people as those
hipsters that carry around a typewriter to "show off" how hipster they are.

------
miguelmota
I once lived in a tiny 150 sq ft 'bachelor' style apartment which was a single
room as the entire living space with a small bathroom. It had no kitchen so I
had to wash my dishes in the bathroom sink and use a portable electric hot
plate for cooking meals. It was a very minimalist lifestyle since I had to
think about every item I brought in because it'd take up space. The good thing
is that I learned how to be efficient with resources and use less 'stuff', but
it was not good for my mental health over the long run since the lack of
freedom to move around was making me feel like I was trapped in a confined
space. Almost felt like I was living in a prison cell. Sometimes it's not
worth going with the cheapest option because it takes a toll on your mental
health.

~~~
godot
Curious for you and others who've done similar things -- had you considered
sharing a place with roommates at the time?

I too have gone through such a phase after college, 12-14 years ago. I worked
in the Sacramento area, I was single and had little belongings. The
smallest/cheapest places I lived in were 1) living in the living room of my
friend's 1-bedroom apartment, for $300/mo (he was paying $800/mo before I
joined, so I shared 3/8 of it, and it wasn't like he was even using the living
room at all before I moved in), and later 2) living in the living room of an
apartment with random housemates (found on FB, at my college town Davis) for
$250/mo. (Not counting the times when I had been somewhat homeless for a
couple of months and stayed in a different friend's apartment every week with
a sleeping bag, sleeping on their room's floor, when I was working a very low
pay job)

Of course finding similarly priced apartments is impossible (even in 2006~07),
I honestly doubt I would even be able to find a 150 sq ft apartment for that
price. I would however gladly take living with roommates/housemates --
especially over a 150 sq ft apartment to myself -- considering the toll on
mental health etc. like you said. I actually quite enjoyed my living
conditions at the time (taking over the living room at my friend's place and
random housemates' place). Even with random housemates, it's nice to have
someone to say hi to when they walk in and out (inevitably walking past where
I'd be sleeping or using my computer, when they walk to the front door).

~~~
miguelmota
I've lived with roommates before and I do agree with you that it's a lot
better than living alone in a small space if the rent cost comes out to be the
same. If you're an introvert it can get annoying though. There's trade-offs to
everything.

------
opportune
I have lived in a 200 sqft room in college (with another person!) and it would
have been tight, but pretty decently livable for a single person. You have
room for a bed, desk+chair, nightstand, TV + couch but not much else. I don't
believe the photo in the article shows as much of the place as it could (it's
also taken with a fisheye lense to distort the size).

Also, living in an apartment with roommates is probably cheaper than living in
an ADU by yourself (depending on area); in my area it is about 20% cheaper.
You can end up with a larger shared area with a normal sized kitchen and
living room. Living in an ADU is really paying a premium for privacy and other
benefits of living by yourself.

------
howlin
The main problem here seems to be that the author was working from home. A
tiny house is really only good for washing, sleeping and lounging.

------
jbarham
ISTM that "tiny homes" are just mobile homes rebranded for hipsters without
the stigma of living in a trailer park.

------
fenwick67
I lived in an off-grid cabin from June through September. It's 240 square feet
and has a loft. I had 4G and a 2Ahr USB battery bank I would charge at work,
but no electricity and not even a composting toilet, just the woods. But all I
saved from living there I probably spent eating out since there was no kitchen
either. I probably couldn't do it year-round, but I will remember my time
there fondly. I wish the author here talked more about their actual
experiences and challenges and not making it a story about rent prices or the
housing market.

------
gregors
Move Chattanooga, TN

* Lots of progressive tech with SF ties

* Municipal Fiber Internet - gigabit speeds!

* startups!

* rock climbing!

[https://www.inc.com/peter-cohan/how-chattanooga-
created-18b-...](https://www.inc.com/peter-cohan/how-chattanooga-
created-18b-in-startup-exits-in-under-5-years.html)

Move to Knoxville, TN

* Fastest super computer in the world

* Oak Ridge National Lab

[https://www.wired.com/story/worlds-fastest-supercomputer-
bre...](https://www.wired.com/story/worlds-fastest-supercomputer-breaks-ai-
record/)

------
djrobstep
Tiny houses in and of themselves are fine if that's what you're into.

The problem is that they seem to be used as a way to avoid discussing the fact
that land, not buildings, are what is causing all the housing affordability
issues.

We desperately need to ramp up taxes on land in order to reduce inequality and
speculation, and encourage density.

Nobody made land, so nobody deserves the right to use it to exploit other
people.

Unfortunately, hundreds of years of political supremacy by landed gentry is
largely still in place and hard to dismantle.

~~~
briandear
> We desperately need to ramp up taxes on land in order to reduce inequality
> and speculation

Speculation is what pays for housing.

~~~
djrobstep
Too often, yes. That's what I'm complaining about.

Plenty of other ways to fund it.

------
paxys
This has nothing to do with construction costs, just housing policy and
supply/demand.

Here's an idea - get a roommate. For twice what you would pay for this "tiny
house" ($1600), you can get a spacious 1500+ sq ft 2 bedroom apartment, even a
house with a yard if you are okay with living slightly farther away from
downtown.

------
vinay_ys
I was renting a 600 sq.ft apt in SF for $3000 more than half a decade ago. The
apartment management company raised rents with no rhyme or reason. I decided
to move away from SF in hopes of lower rent and started to search mainly along
the 101/280 or BART lines and found a lot of places that were vacant for more
than a month but rents were exorbitantly high. It seemed like just one or two
real-estate companies owned all those apartment complexes and were increasing
the rents artificially each year.

I finally realized moving further away doesn't help from overall costs. In SF
I wasn't owning a car. When I moved away from SF, car became a necessity. If
you add the cost of car ownership, it made up for the difference in the rent.
And of course not to mention the drop in quality of life due to 1h+ drive on
busy 101/280 each day.

------
uniclaude
As a European guy living in Japan, this article illustrates an interesting
perspective to me.

Millions of people live in smaller places and are perfectly happy about it. It
does look like her house is wasn't built to properly optimize for the space
though (the toilet unit could be much better, having a sink, toilets, and a
shower in the same tiny space with a very clean looking bathroom is a solved
problem).

The rent price seems fairly high, but it seems to be aligned with local
salaries and the (perceived?) quality of life the bay area has to offer.

As the rent price per square foot gets higher with smaller spaces, those tiny
houses are probably more profitable than larger apartments or houses, so we
might see more of those as landlords realize, and then maybe renters will get
used to it like in Tokyo and Hong Kong?

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kamaal
In short this is the nearest analogy to a prison cell. Add to this that people
only move around in fixed routes- Office to home to grocery shopping etc. This
is more less like self created open air prison.

I'm not surprised that the psychological effects of this are any different
than staying in prison.

I've been in this living-in-small-home position, and half the depression was
just happening looking at the birds flying away from trees to wherever they
want from small room I was living in.

Get out, the world is big.

------
torgian
I’m surprised no one has made a building with units compatible to the size of
Japanese apartments in Osaka. Tiny rooms, sure, but with their own one-unit
bathroom/shower and a sink and stove.

Don’t need much more than that. I lived in one for about 450 usd... I paid
extra for the small balcony.

But I guess most people in san fransisco would not want to live in such
“cramped” spaces. Either that, or more likely there isn’t anyone willing to
build such a place.

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vjeux
Average habitable surface per person in Paris is ~330 square feet. The average
tiny house is 500 square feet (quote from the article). It may be tiny for US
standards but is livable.

[https://www.cnews.fr/france/2015-04-28/paris-un-habitant-
vit...](https://www.cnews.fr/france/2015-04-28/paris-un-habitant-vit-en-
moyenne-dans-31-m2-703598)

------
newsbinator
The distinct advantage of a tiny house is that it forces you to live a tiny
life. It changes how you think, plan, buy, and behave.

I think of it like a stomach stapling:

For some people, it makes all the difference to their quality of life.

For others, it's a solution to the wrong problem, and therefore not a solution
at all. Maybe even something that compounds their existing problems.

------
rogerkirkness
Build higher. It is the only way. Centralize all the expensive stuff to
maintain, and build higher.

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viburnum
240 square feet is just too small. America is a rich country with plenty of
land, but without rational housing policies you wind up with insanity like
this. Great parking, though.

------
bane
There's tons of videos on youtube of people excitedly moving into their tiny
house or converted bus or whatever. They usually seem to be 200-500 sq ft
affairs on 5-10 acres of land, so they aren't exactly solving the housing
problem. There's a few in tiny apartments in cities to be fair.

Anecdotally, most of these folks seem to move out of their tiny place in about
a year or two because they're simply tired of not being able to do crazy
things like stand up or stretch their arms out.

I remember one series of increasingly distressing videos where a guy was
financially tied up in some tiny property, got married, then started having
kids. By the time they were finally able to unload the property on somebody
else they had an infant sleeping in a closet and the husband was sleeping in a
tent so their older daughter could sleep inside with their mother.

I'm really not sure what problem the "Tiny House Movement" is trying to solve
even if some of the solutions are kind of interesting. The variety of small
living accommodations in Asian Cities seems far more interesting to me to be
honest, because they're solving real problems of affordability, shelter and so
on.

Some of the tiniest places seem to be relatively shame-free dorm-like affairs
in South Korea and Japan intended for people studying for various exams, but
also used by a fair number of semi-permanent residents who lack the means to
stay elsewhere. These places are _cheap_ , maybe around $300-400 per month,
but have tradeoffs like shared washrooms and kitchens.

1 - [https://youtu.be/kBPyN3LE65g](https://youtu.be/kBPyN3LE65g)

2 - [https://youtu.be/0YWRPWDqzVg](https://youtu.be/0YWRPWDqzVg)

3 - [https://youtu.be/979a8b0lP2M](https://youtu.be/979a8b0lP2M)

4 - [https://youtu.be/q0zZfpe2v1g](https://youtu.be/q0zZfpe2v1g)

There's also the flip-side, various levels of poverty (like #1 above) result
in sometimes intense living conditions:

5 - [https://youtu.be/hLrFyjGZ9NU](https://youtu.be/hLrFyjGZ9NU)

6 - [https://youtu.be/wN4pgYzuRb4](https://youtu.be/wN4pgYzuRb4)

7 - -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhIQjyBrmwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhIQjyBrmwI)

------
hkai
> My bathroom, a 3-by-6-foot “wet room” with a walk-in shower, is so small
> that it doesn’t have a sink, and I have to use the nearby kitchen sink

First world problems.

------
tssva

      Frey argues that in some cases even small ADUs can make
      sense; a quarter of Americans live alone, and don’t
      necessarily need much room, especially as many cities work
      to improve public space and there are an increasing number
      of places to spend time away from home.
    

Somebody isn't an introvert.

