It's a tricky by-product of the market. People are hostile to the idea because their property values drop when you get lots of micro homes in the area. And the property values rise when you have low density housing, privacy, little traffic, families with kids and dogs etc.
In other words, anywhere you want to do this, you're opposed by people who already live there, who usually have quite a bit to say about the area.
And anyone who wants to take away that influence from incumbent homeowners or tenants will be marked as someone who is destroying a long standing community for the sake of outsiders who want to take it over.
It is indeed a shame as I'm personally a big fan of small homes and at one point tried to get a new housing project off the ground.
But I'm seeing in some places slow consideration for new ways of living. From turning office buildings who've struggled to reach 25% occupancy in places where living rents are skyrocketing into homes, to microhomes.
In any case, it's not an easy issue. In some ways, small housing shares similarities with minimum wage: just because the economy is such that without a legal minimum wage, adults would still be willing to work for $4, doesn't mean we ought to allow it and let the market figure it out. People will get exploited. Similarly, the government needs to set building standards, including the minimum space a home ought to have, in my opinion (I just happen to think it can be quite small, if properly built, for certain people). If you don't have these standards, I would be the least surprised if we suddenly found large groups of students, young adults and struggling working poor living like they do as the 'Rat Tribe' in Beijing. [0] And again, like minimum wage, we don't want that.
But yeah then we're talking, really really small. <500 sq ft should really not be an issue. I live with my girlfriend on a little over 400 at the moment and it's great.
In other words, anywhere you want to do this, you're opposed by people who already live there, who usually have quite a bit to say about the area.
And anyone who wants to take away that influence from incumbent homeowners or tenants will be marked as someone who is destroying a long standing community for the sake of outsiders who want to take it over.
It is indeed a shame as I'm personally a big fan of small homes and at one point tried to get a new housing project off the ground.
But I'm seeing in some places slow consideration for new ways of living. From turning office buildings who've struggled to reach 25% occupancy in places where living rents are skyrocketing into homes, to microhomes.
In any case, it's not an easy issue. In some ways, small housing shares similarities with minimum wage: just because the economy is such that without a legal minimum wage, adults would still be willing to work for $4, doesn't mean we ought to allow it and let the market figure it out. People will get exploited. Similarly, the government needs to set building standards, including the minimum space a home ought to have, in my opinion (I just happen to think it can be quite small, if properly built, for certain people). If you don't have these standards, I would be the least surprised if we suddenly found large groups of students, young adults and struggling working poor living like they do as the 'Rat Tribe' in Beijing. [0] And again, like minimum wage, we don't want that.
But yeah then we're talking, really really small. <500 sq ft should really not be an issue. I live with my girlfriend on a little over 400 at the moment and it's great.
[0] http://projects.aljazeera.com/2015/01/underground-beijing/