Green Homes, Tiny Homes

The Tiny Home is a lifestyle.

• 
• By Nancy Smith
• Qualicum Beach REALTOR®
• Published: Jul 21st, 2020 at 7:44 pm

For the past few years, tiny homes have been the rage for people wanting to cut their cost of living, reduce their maintenance costs and dedicate their spare resources to hobbies, recreation and healthy living. The tiny home movement is greatly focused on a minimalist lifestyle as living space is very compact and every cubic inch has a purpose. Living in such a small space requires a specific mindset, as many tiny home dwellers end up off grid, on the back of someone else's property, quite often a family member or some uninhabited land where the owner appreciates the benefits of having people monitoring the area. With farms becoming larger and larger, it is easy to hide a tiny home in a beautiful spot next to a river, overlooking a magnificent view, or tucked behind a barn so the occupant can tend to animal chores.

Tiny homes are not restricted to single people with limited resources, but couples and families also are adopting the lifestyle. Let me repeat, tiny home living is a specific type of lifestyle.

With this recent Covid-19 pandemic, parents are more involved in their children's lives as children are kept home from school, and many parents have had employment hours cut back, if not eliminated. Some people will become financially stressed and will not be able to afford rent, or homeownership. 

Heating, cooling, water, sewer and internet are today's main requirements for a home, and creative people have come up with a plethora of solutions. The market development for tiny homes is still in its infancy, as is new technology compatible with the needs of the tiny-home owner. First though, there are many community hurdles to overcome.

The biggest stumbling block to tiny home living, appears to be unwillingness of communities to accept the concept. The tiny home is not an rv, it is not really portable, but is much like a mobile home, but not accepted as such. Mobile home parks do have their own issues and community guidelines, but these rules and the mobile home lifestyle is not the tiny home lifestyle.

To me, Green Homes and Tiny Homes belong in the same category, so I hope to add information to our website highlighting new developments in this interesting lifestyle.