There's a movement in this country called The Tiny House movement, started by Jay Shafer, who started out by building really tiny houses. The basic theory is that people have too much stuff, and that it's choking us. We don't need more space, more cars, more and bigger McMansions: what we really need is high quality, emotionally satisfying space.
Less space means lower bills, less consumption, less pollution, and more happiness, goes the thinking. Tiny Houses can be tiny trailers, tiny cabins, tiny actual houses, or tiny houses on wheels. Some of the proponents of this concept are scary survivalists who think that Obama's coming for their guns, and who seem to look forward to Armageddon with great eagerness, certain that they'll triumph. Yet others are classic hippie types, who want to use solar power and cached rain water for their needs.
Some people think bigger is better, but when the choice is between quantity versus quality, is that really true?
I'm admitting a certain bias right up front. I grew up in small houses, built during the Twenties, which were loaded with shelves, breakfast nooks, fireplace nooks, wall cabinets, pantries, cupboards, and window seats.
The era of the McMansion is over. These overpriced, outsized white elephants were badly, cheaply designed and built and many now sit empty thanks to the recession. Mass produced and built in bland neighborhoods of identical houses, they offered no charm and barely more than shelter and square footage. In a word, they were wasteful. A family of four does not need a four thousand square foot house. In Minnesota, it's especially critical to get rid of these defunct monsters, because they sit on some of the richest farmland in the nation. And now, many of them are empty.
In their place people have begun to reconsider. What is really needed to make a house satsifying? The answer is not size, but effectiveness.
What is an effective house? The answer comes in layers, like Maslow's pyramid. First come basic needs: shelter form the rain and the cold, from the heat and the wind. In Europe they're experimenting with so-called passive housing, where a house is double or triple insulated and as a result is cool when it's hot out and hot when it's cool out. Such thick insulation, of course, practically demands window seats, which of course offers storage possibilities as well.
Yet a house satisfies emotional needs as well. There is the need for safety (from what?), for privacy, for a feeling of refuge, for a comfortable environment. A huge space, to my mind, can rarely provide the intimacy of a smaller setting without extremely careful design, and so many McMansions just feature huge echoing rooms. I think some people might find such rooms lonely and be driven to fill them, which could be bad for the budget, especially in this financial climate.
A smaller house hugs around one, keeps one in close touch literally with one's belongings, and yet offers enough space for living. The houses of ross Chapin feature front porches, large amounts of storage, built ins, nooks, and yet feel spacious and bright, due to the carefully-designed windows and doors, which in turn influences traffic flow and ease of movement. Chapin's houses are often used in what he calls 'pocket neighborhoods' which recreate the old neighborhood of yore. People congregate on front porches and watch kids play in the central common green area, but each house has its own yard and maybe a fence,. A common building provides space for potlucks, parties, movie nights, and all sorts of fun gatherings. Sadly,his houses are as yet quite expensive, but the houses of Marilyn Cusato's cottages and Jay Shafer's tiny to small houses can be built by the owner and in some cases are movable. For people in this economy, the ability to take one's house with one from job to job might be a lifesaver. Also, the Cusato cottages cost less than the FEMA trailers that Katrina survivors were jammed into, despite the health risks and cramped conditions. The Cusato houses were designed to be expandable as well as culturally appropriate for the Gulf Coast.
Furthermore, tiny houses could be a boon to those who help the homeless. One of my friends who used to be homeless confirmed that some homeless programs demand that the homeless be clean before they're granted shelter. That seems both cruel and stupid. Getting clean seems like it would be just about impossible while one is homeless.
Some tiny house advocates propose a certain austerity in life that seems a bit too stringent for ordinary tastes----one should limit one's self to 100 things, 200 things, whatever. In fact, it's a human desire to have things, some of which one might want to display. Possession management is a huge component of reducing one's spending, as the the slightest bit of accumulation can obscure what one really has, and this can snowball.
Houses can satisfy emotional needs as well as physical ones. One thing I learned in Iraq was how important a bit of privacy---the need to put one's self where one could not be seen or have to interact with other people for a while---can actually be. It was one of the most satisfying things one could do, to flop on one's bunk, flip the blanket down from the top bunk and gather one's thoughts about the day and whatever might have happened. It cleared the head. It recharged one's batteries. While civilian life is not that bad, many people work jobs which require they solve many other peoples' problems many times per day, then ride public transit or crowded highways home. Recharging after such a day is more than just a matter of resting and refreshing one's self. It takes strength to work in positions where one deals with people---especially people who need or want something----however satisfying it can be.
A house needs to offer more than brute shelter from the elements, though. A feeling of both space and safety is necessary for wellbeing. Nobody likes to feel cramped. The various sizes of small houses offer various things. A truly satisfying space is just big enough. Just big enough is where everything has a place, with maybe a bit left over just in case. A smaller space makes one a part of one's environment, and not a small object in a huge echoing space. Too much space makes you feel lonely and maybe scared. Just enough space makes you look around and think, This is my space.
Transforming furniture that folds into the wall or has more than one purpose can also offer more flexibility and room for guests. Beds no longer have to be Murphy beds that have to fold up into the wall from the bottom up. Now they can be a couch during the daytime and a bed at night----with not a single thing disturbed on the desk's surface. Ship building offers some clues as to how to utilize space as well.
A small house, by the very fact of its being small, can also offer a certain fairy tale aspect to one's life. One of Shafer's Tumbleweed houses is meant to be a place of shelter, rest, relaxation, bathing, cooking and other very basic needs, but its size makes living outside a necessity. After years of McMansionhoods, where there are no front porches, where people often don't know their neighbors' names, that has its charms.
The tiniest of these tiny houses can be parked in parking spots or backyards, yet they offer housing to people who work itinerant jobs and would otherwise be trapped by the company store scam. Many of these houses can be fitted out for solar power and rainwater collection, thus further reducing bills. In a very real way, these houses offer freedom to people who previously would be trapped in low end jobs. They are, in appearance, charming and attractive, and pose no danger to neighborhood standards of maintenance. The movable houses would be a boon to itinerant workers who must follow the jobs and are at risk of depending on unscrupulous employers. (Shafer's tiny house are roadworthy, though not what I'd call good for gas mileage. Some of them might be suitable for rail transport, though.)
Small fixed houses offer many of the same advantages to people who are trapped by low wages into the expensive life style of poverty-level living. If you can't afford an apartment deposit, you rent a room or a hotel room. If you do that, you can never save enough for a deposit. Add utility bills, and you're doomed to the lifestyle forever. A small house can be built by the prospective owner, and a couple of people could get together and build on old lots, if the city they were in had any sense. Would a city rather have lower tax income than none at all? Would a city see its tax revenues go lower and lower rather than attract home owners who would pay taxes? Home owners stabilize a neighborhood; empty lots destabilize it and lower property values. Cusato cottages might not be worth much but they can be expanded, and their charming exteriors would improve the appearance of many blocks.
Of course, I think trailer parks as they exist now should be outlawed and trailer owners should be allowed to own their lots or the park either individually or as a group.
Builders need to recognize that the era of the big expensive house or condo is over, and that while fancy condos sit empty no one pays taxes on them, but while small houses are paid for, their owners offer stability to a neighborhood---and may bring life back to a faltering one.
Still another option is making worker or homeless housing out of containers, once they've been suitably cleaned and insulated. This combines recycling, practicality, and humanism. Shipping containers are about eight or ten by twenty or forty, are designed to withstand the rigors of shipping, and can be---are designed to be, in fact---stacked. They can be cozy for one or two people. They can be both basic and charming, depending on the paint job.
Of course one thing all these options have in common is this: the desire for the improvement of life for everybody, the desire to give shelter to everyone, and finally, the belief that doing so for everyone, and doing so in an economic fashion is what's desirable, not making obscene amounts of money. People who are freed from excessive housing costs could turn around and put the money they save into the local economy. People who have lower heating and cooling bills pollute less. They could save money or do what the so-called little people do and put their money into the local economy. The big buys won't rake in the obscene amounts of cash they're used to, but what have they done for us lately? Or ever?