Tiny houses

today

i’m going to talk to you about freedom

the freedom to do certain things

and the freedom from having to do

certain others

and how tiny houses might be implicated

in this

so over the last two years of my phd

research the key

question that seems to come up again and

again is how can you step away from a

system

you depend on where you identify that

it’s unfit for purpose

or even harmful how can you extricate

yourself from that when you depend on it

for your survival

so this key question can be broken down

into three main areas

the first one is how can you step away

from a live to work

mentality the uk has some of the longest

working hours in europe

and a recent survey from the trades

union congress

has shown that half of brits feel that

their work is meaningless

the second part of this question is how

can we step away

from the work to spend mentality

ubiquitous

advertising and compulsory consumption

uh an implicit part of our society

and many people want this to be

different but don’t know how to make it

so

the third part of the question is

intrinsically connected to the work to

spend mentality and that’s how can you

step away

from the eco side an economic system

based on

growth at all costs demands so we’re

going to examine these questions a

little closer

um by using a story so i’d like to

introduce you to parvist

this is parvis she’s a recent graduate

she’s a clever girl she’s got a degree

in statistics

she’s living in a house share it’s a bit

messy there’s often dishes in the sink

she can’t always cook when she wants to

as a recent graduate

she’s earning the average higher

education lever salary in the uk

of 22 399 pounds

which leaves her after taxi national

insurance with a monthly income of 1

572 pounds and 61 pence

this is a bit of a problem because

recent studies from abc finance have

indicated that the cost of living for a

single person

in the uk is 2 249 pounds a month

this means that parvis has to stay

living in her shared accommodation where

there’s always someone in the bathroom

the tenants change all the time she can

often feel like she’s living with

strangers

and somebody is always stealing her

cheese from the communal fridge in the

kitchen

she’d like this to be a little bit

different she looks into what it would

take for her to have a place of her own

and she finds out that the average house

price in the uk is 256 000 pounds

she knows that this means she would need

a deposit of twenty five thousand pounds

and an ongoing salary of thirty seven

thousand pounds a year

in order to meet her monthly mortgage

repayments of one thousand

twenty four pounds per month for twenty

five years

and in order to begin this process and

save up for her deposit

she would have to remain in the shared

house for 14 years

with the cheese steelers she works a lot

takes up a lot of her time commuting

preparing for work being at work

unwinding after work she’d like to spend

more time in the community

volunteering or perhaps learning to play

the french horn

so she starts looking into other

alternatives she quickly discovers tiny

houses

falls into a youtube pinterest instagram

rabbit hole

and emerges 16 hours later disheveled

but enlightened parvis has learned that

the average build cost of a tiny house

is 35 000 pounds which compares very

favorably with the purchase price of 256

000 pounds for a traditional home

she’s also learnt that the average size

of a tiny house is in the region of 30

meters squared

which is in part why it’s so much

cheaper to build in the first place

but also contributes to its

affordability in the lifetime of the

building

because the most money and energy we

spend in our home is in heating and

cooling

so a smaller space demands less energy

and less carbon burden

in the lifetime of the property harvest

has learned that most tiny houses

are built with no permanent foundations

they take the form

of shipping containers log cabins

trailer-based models or even converted

vans

this means that many tiny houses are

off-grid and use renewable clean energy

sources like solar power

wind turbines water harvesting systems

something else that she’s really

attracted to about tiny houses which she

doesn’t think she’d be able to access in

any other way is that she can design

and build a house that specifically

meets her individual needs

she recognizes that this reduced cost of

living opens up

a whole roster of different employment

choices

perhaps she could work part-time maybe

she could move into a different industry

that has a lower salary but is much more

meaningful for her

she also sees that living in a smaller

space means that she wouldn’t have

the storage facilities for her 200 pairs

of trainers

and this might help her to move away

from compulsory consumption

in other words parvis wonders whether

tiny houses

might help her to step away from a live

to work mentality

step away from a work to spend culture

and extricate herself

from the eco side implicit in that

in her investigations however she has

identified that there are a few barriers

to this way of life

access to land is one of them about 60

percent of britain is owned by roughly

16

of the population lots of land that

could be developed is held as a

speculative investment

by overseas investors in the same way

that they might hold stocks or shares

and this artificially inflates the price

of land

access to finance for tiny houses is

also tricky because they definitionally

don’t come attached to a parcel of land

and the land is the asset against which

a mortgage loan is secured

planning policy also needs to be updated

in order to be able to understand what

tiny houses are

and how to extend legal permissions to

them so that they can be lived in as

primary residential dwellings

there are a few fantastic examples

around the world of

real people who are really addressing

these issues the new zealand tiny house

association

is the first national association in the

world to draft new legislature

which incorporates tiny houses into

renewed planning policy zoning laws and

building regulations

and then a little closer to home the

tiny house community

in bristol is making fantastic progress

with bringing

self-built eco homes to the city of

bristol

and in the city that i’m speaking from

today a social enterprise called op

house is working closely with the

council

and the community to bring the city the

first self-built tiny house plots

so i’d like to finish by leaving you

with a quote from a gentleman called

jay schaefer who’s been building tiny

houses for almost 40 years now

he says too many of our houses are not a

refuge from chaos

but merely extensions of it and i wonder

how many of you watching this talk can

relate to that

and what you think about tiny houses as

a potential way to speak to some of

these issues

thank you very much for your attention

and thank you from harvest

you