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Comment by michaelbuckbee | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't really get into it, but there are some weird pressures in the US that really work against tiny houses, namely: our crumbling infrastructure nationwide and our system of paying for that infrasture and other civic responsibilities with property taxes.

If a municipality is looking at two competing development plans for a couple acres of town:

1. 10 new $500k - 3,000sq ft McMansions = 5 million dollar base and 48 people (estimating 4 people / family)

2. 30 much smaller houses at $100k each = 3 million dollar base and 100ish new people (estimating fewer / house)

In the small house scenario (if they were built on foundations and tied into city water/sewer) you also end up with 3x as many connections to install and support, significantly more kids that need educated at the local overcrowded school system, etc.

View on HN

Probably related... There are also zoning constraints. Most districts have a minimum home size - anything smaller is a mobile home - and many neighborhoods don't allow mobile homes.

So, you can build/buy a tiny home and use it like a mobile home, but that limits where you can put it. Or, you can try to get the county/city/whatever to allow it as a permanent home (with whatever zoning variance is required).

Surely more people are an asset for the local government, not a liability? You'd have 3x the tax revenue, 3x the purchasing power, plus the logistic efficiency that allows for local business to spring up and mass transportation to be viable.

That's the point the GP is trying to make: those services rely on property taxes, not income tax. So more people in the same area means either lower revenue per capita for the local government, or much higher taxes for the existing residents. Usually, proposing the second option is political suicide.

It depends on who the "more people" are. Schools are the vast bulk of many town budgets. Young families are a net user of town services and enough of them would drive higher property tax rates. (In my case, the town also has negligible commercial activity and no transit--and is spread out enough that transit is basically a non-starter.)

Maybe, maybe not. People are not equal. You can nly tax someone so much. 3 people making $10k/yr (this is below poverty in the US) at 100% is the same as 1 person make $100k at 30% - but the first group couldn't live after taxes while the second could.

Of course when the people are more equal your math works out. However things are never equal.

These pressures would work in favor of small housing spaces, not against them. 3 small houses would in fact be worth quite a bit more than 1 house that's 3 times as large, especially in high-cost-of-living areas.

The math is highly location dependent, but _in general_ the rise of the McMansion across the US is deeply linked with the property tax pressure.

It's not just the price of the home, but that more people == more services that need provided (school, water, roads, etc.)

60 storey human antpile highrise 600 people ;) a way to go

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