Are Tiny Houses the Key to Fighting Homelessness? | Hacker News Reader

Are Tiny Houses the Key to Fighting Homelessness?

billmoyers.com

136 pointsyiedyie128 comments

Upvoted and I hope it gets read but I don't think any one thing is THE solution to homelessness.

In previous life, I wanted to be an urban planner. As part of that, I took a class on Homelessness and Public Policy at SFSU. I am currently homeless and have been for over two years.

So, some thoughts in brief:

Current housing stock, financing, and policies in the U.S. is very skewed towards housing for "the nuclear family" and is rooted in things that happened when our soldiers came home from WWII. In the decades since, our demographic has diversified thus this type of housing stock, financing infrastructure and policies no longer fit our needs. Ironically, the result is we no longer have a lot of the options that were once fairly common here, like SRO's and boarding houses, which were better suited to single people with limited incomes. You increasingly see things like 3 (or more) roommates sharing a three bedroom apartment designed with the nuclear family in mind.

Yes, smaller houses would be nice. Post WWII, the average new home was around 1200sf. In 2000, the average new home was over 2000sf and housed fewer people and had more amenities. This is driven in part by tax policies that encourage those who can afford a house at all to buy the largest house they can afford. Meanwhile, homelessness is on the rise because it is increasingly hard to afford housing at all.

I have commented on this in various places over the years. I could probably write a good blog post on it. But most people seem to think this entrenched history is irrelevant. So I see little reason at this time to put much effort into laying it all out.

My family has lived in the same neighborhood since 1951, and I work in one of our local schools. I often tell visitors about the history of the area to explain the struggles we have in our student body. Most of the houses were built right after the end of WWII by veterans who were starting their own families. They're what was considered starter houses even back then -- right around a thousand square feet, 3 small bedrooms, 1 small bathroom, a combined kitchen-dining area, and no dedicated laundry space (my grandparents' house originally had these characteristics; they eventually expanded and still live there.) By a decade later, many of those families were ready to move up, and they moved into the bigger houses being built farther away from the city (I grew up a mile west, where the average house was built a decade later and is more like 2000 square feet, 4+ bedrooms, 3+ bathrooms, with dedicated laundry rooms and rec rooms and fireplaces.)

Over time, the old and small homes in my grandparents' area became the bottom of the barrel for family living, which means they attract the poorest segments of society -- 90% of students in my school are native speakers of other languages (primarily Spanish), whose parents came to the area to make a living mostly as unskilled laborers who haven't moved up the ladder very far since arriving. At their income levels, many of them can't even afford this low-end housing -- so they end up with multiple parts of an extended family sharing a single house. This creates problems of various kinds for my students.

I have no doubt that some of these families would benefit from very small, truly affordable housing -- housing that fits their circumstances (low income, limited job prospects, sometimes no support network), instead of the circumstances my grandparents grew up under (the GI bill, family support, a manufacturing and export economy whose primary competitors were ravaged by the war.)

My family of 3 live in a basically unrenovated 1950s house. It has some inconveniences (combined small kitchen dinning, tiny bathroom) but some of the features turn out to be mostly good. The separate living room makes it more relaxing (can't see the dishes!) easier to heat and cool and quieter. Its layout, while old, is quite clever. The arrangement is such that all plumbing is close together, making maintenance easy. It is mostly efficient to heat at 90 square metres (970 square feet), although the brick walls lack insulation. And the house has character which is very important to me.

I lived in a duplex in Richland Washington that was built in the 1950s. It was in a very walkable neighborhood. I was a homemaker and we had two kids and one car. I found that a two bedroom, 1950's style home worked quite well for my 1950's style lifestyle at the time, much better than a lot of more 'modern' housing where you can't get anywhere without having two cars, etc. My sons hate the suburbs. My oldest refers to most suburbs as "suburban hell" because we live without a car and you just can't walk to anything in most American suburbs, especially those built relatively recently.

I also lived in Europe for a time, where homes tend to be smaller than than in the U.S. But the problem I have with articles like this one is that it is a poverty mentality solution, which helps keep poverty alive. It is not proposing policies which remove the incentives that are causing new housing to be 2000 sf or more. It is not making it more feasible for "normal" people to get a small place. It proposing tiny houses specifically for very poor people who are currently homeless. This is not a good way to solve the problem. That approach is basically how welfare began -- by defining the needy population as "poor, single moms" -- and it actively grew the population of poor single moms. This makes problems more entrenched. It is not a "solution."

Thanks for your great comment.

That's a great comment, except for the last bit. The evidence does not support that welfare grows the welfare population. Concur on the other issues, though. London, where we live, is similar.

I no longer recall the title of the book but I read the history of this in the U.S. I did not say welfare grows the welfare class. It grows the number of single mothers who, thus, live in poverty. When welfare was designed in the U.S., "poor, single moms" were mostly widows and considered "deserving poor." They did everything right -- got married, had kids within the bonds of marriage, etc -- and had something unfortunate happen.

In Europe, a lot of "welfare" type programs are designed to help women or pregnant women or children or families regardless of income level or marital status. In the U.S., such aid is almost always tied to some criteria proving you "need" it. So you can't get help until a) you already screwed up and b) you are willing to fill out forms testifying that you are a screw up. This has substantial negative psychological impacts that I don't think you see in Europe (yes, I lived in Europe for a time and have read books and articles comparing European policies to American ones in this area).

Oh, geez, I did not really finish my point:

In the U.S., welfare -- which requires a woman to be both a mother and unmarried to qualify -- actively discourages "shotgun weddings" and changed the social contract so that having babies out of wedlock is now much more acceptable than it was when the system was conceived. At the time, it was inconceivable that women would choose to intentionally have babies out of wedlock. This is no longer true in the U.S.

So, that is how welfare in the U.S. grew the population of "poor, single moms" -- by actively encouraging out-of-wedlock births. Single moms are typically poor. Families with two parents are usually better off.

It could not be solution because homelessness is not a structural problem but a facet of a deeper one. From what I have read the US has 2 huge social problems right now - the unemployment and the war on drugs. Until the employment moves of the death spiral it is in right now you will always have fresh supply of homeless people.

Having both studied it and lived it, my best understanding is that homelessness is generally rooted in having too many intractable problems combined with too few resources to meet them. No one thing causes it but, certainly, structural issues can change the tipping point at which available resources fail to be sufficient to one's needs. So while changing the housing stock won't solve it, it can help reduce the problem.

I am not sure that I got understood - I meant that you should not give the homeless a house. You should give the homeless a house and a job if you want the issue solved (or better access to healthcare, or whatever was the stuff that put him in the downward spiral). I absolutely support providing roofs above the heads on the vulnerable people. I just think it don't goes nearly far enough.

No, it does not go nearly far enough. Most homeless people have either medical or mental health issues which are barriers to making their lives work conventionally. Supportive housing sometimes works where just access to housing per se may not. This is a much more complicated problem than just 'jobs and housing' (availability) but those things both help.

Have an upvote.

Sorry for the personal question, but, are you homeless by choice?

It seems you can talk well in this area and appear to be eloquent enough to describe complex situations, so it begs the question.

As with all things, it is part choice, part happenstance.

I have a serious medical condition, as does my oldest son. I have been advised that people like me do not get well. I have figured out how to get us well, but it all came out of my pocket, leading to a lot of debt.

I had a job with a Fortune 500 company. At some point, I was evicted from my apartment, not due to inability to pay but because I had done things like removed carpeting without permission because that made more sense than staying ill. After getting a notice of eviction, I chose to not look for another apartment because it was clear to us that the apartment was part of why we were still ill. After three days sleeping in a tent amidst trees, I woke up feeling better than I had in years. I submitted my notice that I was quitting my job and I left on foot to cross the country and return to a climate I knew I would do better in.

Since then, I have focused on getting well and trying to develop an income that does not keep me sick. I have made good headway on getting well and I am beginning to make headway on an income that does not keep me ill. I would like to get off the street soon. I am nearly well enough that I think more conventional housing would no longer be an automatic health disaster for me and my sons. I don't yet know how to solve that problem, either financially or logistically. I really need to go straight from homeless to homeowner. Renting leaves me too little control over my home life to keep myself well given my medical situation.

Thank you so much for sharing. It is a well-needed reminder that homelessness and lack of health care are a vicious cycle in the US, whereby medical bills cause bankruptcy and homelessness causes [an increased chance of] injury, disease and mental illness. The conversation about homelessness too often takes place among the privileges, whose primary concern is to put the homeless out of sight and feel less guilty. I'm ashamed that I don't spend all day every day in a state of moral outrage that I live in a society where the sick are sometimes not just denied care but actually bankrupted and put out on the street.

I don't entirely agree with that view. My ex was career army, thus I am theoretically entitled to free medical care for life as long as I do not remarry. My bills are not "medical bills" per se. Getting well was not about pursuing drugs and surgeries. It was about figuring out how to feed myself better and live in a manner that accommodates my condition.

I previously wanted to be an urban planner. I think the poor quality of a lot of the housing stock in this country contributes to health problems, as does our car-centered lifestyle. I have lived without a car for several years now. It is something fairly challenging to pull off in the U.S. (I now live in San Diego county, which has good public transit, but I was someplace without that when I gave up my car.)

I think the path forward to get people healthier in this country is more complicated than just making sure they can "afford" to see a doctor. I have not seen a doctor in several years. If you are healthy, it matters a lot less whether or not you can "afford" a doctor.

But have an upvote and thank you for commenting.

Conventional housing could be a health disaster for you and your son? Pardon me for asking but you are discussing it ... Is your illness something that would be recognized by mainstream science and medicine or is it something more, bohemian? Just curious.

My official diagnosis is "atypical cystic fibrosis."

My diagnosis is very recognized. But I have also been told "people like you don't get well" by a specialist. So the choices I have made to get well in defiance of that are not recognized as legitimate choices. Thus I didn't bother to argue with my landlord and I accepted that taking care of myself likely would lead to eviction. It took 18 months but it did lead to eviction.

I was just about to write, "If you have a blog, I will eagerly add it to my feed reader." But I looked at your profile, and you already do! Very exciting: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/

I actually have several websites. Assuming you are interested in homelessness per se, you might also be interested in this site of mine:

http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/

I go around downtown SD and hand out food/ talk to homeless for an org I'm active in. I wonder if we ever met?

I was in downtown for about six months. I left about 18 months ago. I have no idea if we ever met. There is a profile pic of me from that time in my personal blog (not my homeless blog), though seeing someone once more than 18 months ago might not stick with your memory.

Thanks for answering. I hope you're able to find a situation that works best for you as soon as possible; it sounds like you're making the best of what was dealt and setting an amazing example for your son.

ibogaine?

I don't really know what you are asking but it sounds like you are suggesting that I hallucinated my improved state of health? If so, no. I was living in a crappy apartment with mold issues and other issues. Being out of that environment was beneficial.

I suspect you'd be kinda shocked how well-educated and intelligent and capable a lot of homeless people actually are.

Maybe!

I wasn't trying to imply homeless == stupid, I apologize if it came off that way.

I understand homelessness is multifaceted and for some, even though intelligent, classic employment opportunities are not available/desirable for a whole host of reasons.

Also keep in mind that employment doesn't guarantee a home, either. And that not having a home (namely, not having an address) can be a barrier to gainful employment. There are a lot of unfortunate Catch-22s sprinkled around our bureaucracies.

The impression I got from your question wasn't that homeless people were incapable of intelligence, but rather that you thought intelligence was the exception, rather than the rule. This becomes a problem when, say, a rags-to-riches story comes around and people conclude not that this one person got a lucky break, but that this one person decided to stop being as stupid as the others. This in turn suggests that nothing is actually broken and homelessness is less an indicator of societal malfunction and more a casual nuisance.

That's true. It isn't simple "stupidity" or incompetence that lands people on the street. It is having one too many intractable problems (like an incurable medical condition and special needs kids) and too few resources to address them.

> You increasingly see things like 3 (or more) roommates sharing a three bedroom apartment designed with the nuclear family in mind.

I'm a student in New Zealand, and almost all students here have that sort of accommodation (we call them 'flats'). I actually really enjoy this arrangement, and would go as far as to say that it's close to the optimal living arrangement for unmarried people. You get all the benefits of friendship and community (almost a pseudo-family), while also paying less for rent, utilities, and food.

However, your post was phrased in a way that implied that this was a sub-optimal solution. Could you expand on your reasoning?

To be clear, I'm not trying to say that you're wrong; your post was insightful so I assume you've got good reasons for feeling the way you do.

For students, this is nice. However, in many US cities, adults with jobs who would like to have their own lifestyle are often forced to live this way because of pricing and availability.

Shared housing/flats works fine for many adults with jobs who "would like to have their own lifestyle." There are benefits and drawbacks to it, just like anything else. It's not for everybody, but it also doesn't make any sense to arbitrarily dismiss it as being "unsuitable for adults" as often seems to happen in this sort of discussion...

However, your post was phrased in a way that implied that this was a sub-optimal solution. Could you expand on your reasoning?

What works in other countries does not necessarily work in the U.S. We tend to have low population density and, as a culture, much more strongly value our independence.

Just one concrete example: A three bedroom apartment may come with one or two assigned parking spaces. If three unrelated adults live there and each has their own car, at least one of them will have to routinely park in "guest" parking. Further, in some places, it is quite hard to arrange this at all. The leases are generally intended for a family, subletting may not be acceptable, etc.

In many other countries, living without a car, walking and using public transit, etc. are far more feasible.

There are other issues, I am just trying to come up with something concrete to give as an example of why this does not readily translate from your country to mine. They don't have the same infrastructure, culture, etc. So the same living arrangement in two different places is not necessarily equal in quality of life.

Thanks for your reply; that makes a lot of sense.

However (just because I found it mildly amusing), you may be interested to know that the United State's population density is actually twice as large as that of New Zealand! In fact, New Zealand's population density is approximately equivalent to that of the U.K and Japan in 500 A.D.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_Zealand The demographics of New Zealand encompass the gender, ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 4.4 million people living in New Zealand. New Zealanders, informally known as "Kiwis", predominantly live in urban areas on the North Island.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populati...

A little googling suggests that most kiwis live in relatively dense urban areas. I find your wording confusing and perhaps we mean two different things but my general impression is that cities in New Zealand are generally more "urban" than where most Americans live.

Good point. I was just going off wolfram alpha's figures for average population density of both countries.

I could probably write a good blog post on it. But most people seem to think this entrenched history is irrelevant. So I see little reason at this time to put much effort into laying it all out.

I'm not sure how easy it is to get ahold of ebooks in your current situation, but if you have a chance take a look at Matt Yglesias's The Rent Is Too Damn High, in which he addresses similar themes albeit from a different perspective.

I'm an urban designer (not a planner but nearby). I agree with you that 'tiny houses' basically build in poverty. one of the key difficulties with housing is that the size to comfort chart is not linear. it drops off sharply at the low end and increases only slowly at the top end. this doesn't work well with a market system where the 'haves' end up with something big that doesn't really provide them much more than a mid-size home and the poor end up with a shoebox that makes living difficult. once in the west was the idea of having a safety net in social housing however this has been taken over by a high-rent system which increases productivity by forcing everyone to have an income to afford a roof over their head. this will be difficult to reverse however I think it will. Post war Hong Kong was economically driven by 80% government housing which in turn reduced the cost of employees (who didn't have to pay huge rent or mortgages). some smart state will realise this and compete in international businesses like tech. imagine the attraction for the youth if the next silicon valley had government provided housing.

This is very interesting.

I'm curious though, are you in SF still (you mentioned SFSU). I ask because, at least outside of SF, or at least in some parts of the country there are apartments built for roommates. They usually have 2 master bedrooms each with their own bathroom accessible only from that bedroom. They share the living room, dining room, and kitchen. SF seems to have none of that, mostly because there's so little new construction. It's mostly 2 or 3 bedroom places with 1 bathroom left over from 60-120 years ago.

I only really know LA, OC and SF but there's plenty of places built for roommates in LA and OC.

Not quite the same as boarding houses but still also not built for nuclear families.

I am in San Diego county. I took the class many years ago. I have never actually lived in San Francisco. I was living in Fairfield at the time, not SF. It was a mostly online class and I had to travel to San Francisco for in person class time only a few times. (There was also an internship portion which I was able to arrange more locally.)

Utah is on its way to eradicating chronic homelessness[0]. Quoting [0] here:

>> In 2005, one state defied "political feasibility" and began handing out free apartments to the homeless. These were neither temporary accommodations or shelters for the night. They were not welfare-to-work, or only if you're married, or just-take-this-drug-test: just free apartments, no strings attached. Nine years later, they've reduced long-term homelessness by 74% and are on track to eradicate it completely by 2015.

It actually saves money, due to decreased costs of law enforcement and emergency medical services. Homelessness is a problem of distribution, not supply. Since the housing crisis at the end of last decade, homeless and home vacancy have both been well-above average.

[0]http://www.policymic.com/articles/81507/the-most-unlikely-st...

Those articles don't have proof of savings. I want to believe it worked, but I'd like to see a report from the state of Utah charting ER visit costs and jail-time costs declining over the last 10 years.

Savings or not, it's humane.

Of course, no argument from me, but there are a whole lot of people who care more about money than suffering, so it'd be nice if it worked from a purely greed-is-good perspective as well.

Besides the pure cost savings of public services, I'd love to know about the second-order economics effects: the growth of the tax base, the founding of more small businesses and the increase in economic activity due to people (rightly or wrongly) feeling safer on the streets. One can imagine startups run by former homeless who have a unique perspective due to their experiences, or who have discovered inexpensive solutions to problems, or who simply would be the type to start a company if they hadn't hit some bad luck at some point.

Or even the (previously) homeless people contributing directly by being able to get jobs and pay taxes.

I've talked with more than a few folks who not having a place to shower, keep clean un-wrinkled clothes, and receive mail is holding them back from getting anything more than the most menial job if any.

Yes, getting mail is a big deal on the street. I have a list of options here:

http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2013/04/ma... Some are specific to San Diego and are homeless service centers that offer a mailing address as one of their services. But some are not. If you have state ID and a voter registration card, you can get a paid mailbox from a place like Mailboxes, Etc.

Since you know this is an issue, you could try putting together a listing of local resources (and borrow ideas from that page) and give out "business cards" with the info. Getting info on the street can be very challenging, especially when you first hit the street. (Just thinking out loud. No pressure. Honest.)

(I cannot really help with the other issues. I am pursuing freelance work and other options and I am often mistaken for middle class. So a) I kind of "blend" somewhat and b) I am not applying for a job.)

Good points.

Another issue which I hadn't considered until talking with a 50-ish homeless guy recently was language. His first (and only) language is English and while he was picking up work at a temp agency (and sleeping on their front doorstep) not being able to speak Spanish and communicate with co-workers in the class of work he was going for (hotel cleaning, dishwashing, landscaping, demolition, etc.) prevented him from getting/keeping a lot of jobs...

The program is relatively new. I'd expect there to be a latency period during which the formerly homeless adjust to their new lives and find employment before all the cost savings can be properly calculated.

Honestly, I suspect a net-zero effect on costs would be sufficient to justify the policy economically. That's less sexy than predicting savings, though.

I hope so, although I can imagine right-wing pundits grumbling about "the moral hazard of giving these folks homes on a silver plate, when so many spend the majority of their adult lives paying for theirs."

I see this question come up on here from time to time. I don't know much about homelessness in general, but I do have a brother who is a little mentally ill. Among other problems, he is incapable of keeping a place to live habitable. He utterly ruins a place over 2-3 years, gets evicted, and finds someone else who will rent to him (which is hard, he is blacklisted).

Something in him just won't train his dog, won't put food away, won't not get just angry enough to break things. Yet he appears like a reasonable person on the street. He spends most of his time at home too, so his life is pretty miserable surrounded by these miserable conditions.

We've tried hundreds of things to help him over the years, since I was a pre-teen, and it seems so intractable to help even just him, even with what should be enough money to support one person. It's hard to imagine how to solve the problem of all the world's homeless.

I think it's important in the context of this topic not to try to solve everything, or make the perfect the enemy of the good. Like, getting people indoors and off of the streets is a great, high-priority goal, and if the will can be mustered to give them homes, I'm all for it. Figuring out how to train them to live more like Martha Stewart than they do could be a separate problem.

I live on a boat, which has quite a lot of similarities to this. I have even less livingspace than these houses, but I've managed to fit everything I need and more into it. The marina I live in has a clubhouse which is the social hub, much like the common space that's talked about in the article.

Although the circumstances are very different (I live where I do entirely by choice, and don't suffer any of the other problems that I presume homeless people might) the physical living space is comparable, so I'll offer an opinion:

- Living in a small space is much less of a problem than people think. You quickly get used to it. You tend to be outside more though (which I think is a good thing)

- If you do live in a small space light is important. Small spaces without natural light don't work. I suspect that's one of the architectural reasons why the houses are seperate. The same goes for having a semi-private outdoor area.

- A common space is great because you meet other people. Again, the circumstances are very different but I've really enjoyed meeting people I can now call friends in our clubhouse.

- When living in a small space you have less belongings for obvious reasons. This is a good thing, which surprised me. Tyler Durden from Fight Club is spot on when he says "The things you own end up owning you"

This is a great project, and I hope it succeeds and spreads.

How is that style of living, expense wise? Would you estimate the cost of boat/maintenance/marina fees to be roughly comparable to renting, or does it cost much more?

That is the sort of thing that appeals to me, but I haven't really looked into it because it seems out of reach.

It's incredibly cheap, but you need to spend some time doing boat-things like painting fixing rust, etc. Timewise it's probably comparable to a house.

I bought the boat in Holland for around $50.000 in cash and spent around $10.000 fixing it up with insulation, heating, toilet etc. So basically all I pay now is marina rent ($100 a month) and diesel for heating and electricity.

This is in Copenhagen btw.

Considering the cost of a room in a shared apartment in Copenhagen is nearing $800 these days, that's pretty impressive, and relevant to my interests.

Is this a houseboat, power boat, sailboat? I've heard benchmarks of general maintenance for sailboats (even freshwater, ignoring the additional corrosive effects of salt air) that add up to several thousand dollars a year even when brand new (hull cleaning, paint, dockline replacements, the many many small parts that need to be replaced every few years to stay in seaworthy condition, etc). I'm curious how your experience compares.

Oh wow, that is extremely reasonable. I'll have to spend some more time researching this.

send me a mail if you have any questions - it's in my profile.

I've been homeless and a street-sleeper. In my experience this is a great thing to do, but it is one of many things that needs doing.

On pure housing, a small space is a great shelter, can provide security. But it can also be a trap. It should be viewed as temporary housing only, for a transition period between the streets and the stability and security of a "normal" living space.

It's a trap as it will be used against you, perceived by others as a weakness or reason to treat you differently, to discriminate.

It's a trap as it will impair ones ability to have the essential social mobility to at least get a firm hold on the lower rungs of society.

But it is needed.

And needed in addition to starter-homes, is a supportive community, mental health advice. It isn't enough to give a room with a roof and walk away, by the time someone reaches this point they are dysfunctional and need help figuring out how to function within the society of others. The entire time homeless is a trauma, and a trauma probably preceded it.

A room with a roof is something essential, but the person is likely suffering PTSD and has various other issues.

There is no magic cure to homelessness, but this is one of many small things that can help.

And when I first came off the street, I didn't know what to do. I put a mattress on the floor of the living room, next to a camping stove. The bedroom was a cavern I never visited, the kitchen just a place where there was a tap, and I didn't understand how there could be so much cupboard space. I basically backed into a corner of one room, I couldn't comprehend the space or what I was supposed to do with it. I didn't even have a carpet, and the only seat was ripped from a car. A roof isn't enough unfortunately.

Doesn't it seem wasteful to have four walls a few feet away from another four walls?

I'm open to the idea that it's more dignified to live in a unique, isolated dwelling, but it seems terribly inefficient to have 10 tiny houses versus a single-building condo with 10 dwellings of identical square footage.

Having lived in several row-homes, those air-gaps have several benefits. They act as firebreaks for pests and rot, actual fires, and significantly reduce cross-unit noise. They also allow (perhaps minimal) natural light in through the side.

I can't express how much I wish my apartment had just 1 window on the shared interior wall. It would turn a lightless cave into perfection.

I wonder what the energy trade off would be. I would think proper insulation (and heat from natural sunlight in winter) could work out to be more efficient than having the lights on in the middle of the day.

Does your apartment not have any windows at all?

At least in New York, I believe that a bedroom is required to have a window.

A bedroom may be required to have a window (and a closet), but an office, dining room, or "bonus" room doesn't. Thus you have apartments or houses, where people sleep in offices, dining rooms, etc. Legislating this just causes people to work around it.

The window requirement for a bedroom mainly stems from fire code - it's a second exit.

It has a window, it just on a side of the building that's in permanent shade. The view is worth it though, I can see ~15 miles from my porch since I'm on the side of a mountain (which causes the permanent shade since it wraps around ~270 degrees behind the building.

That's also my thought, but there may be more factors at play.

Any apartment building has significantly more regulations applying to it. Firewalls, lights in the stairwells (if multi-story), handicapped access, minimum sizes for doors and hallways, etc.. I don't know the whole story there.

The main thing from my point of view is that are these homes being built within walking distance of basic services (like a grocery store) and work opportunities?

You could still do one story "apartments," right? Like, literally just these same little houses, except each sharing a wall with the next.

If you use shared walls you will need proper soundproofing, and you can't do that in wood any longer. You'd have to build in bricks instead of wood and sheetrock, and if you do multistorey you'd have to put in a soundproofing layer in the floor as well.

It's a quality-of-life issue, and it's especially important to keep the peace in a confined space.

A colleague from Kenya said this: "If you can hear your neighbours you know you live in a slum." Americans have gotten used to poor quality in construction, which seems part of the appeal of single-family housing in the US, even if you plunk down half a million dollars it's still sheetrock and chipboard, it's shocking to see for any foreigner.

For this purpose, and on this scale, what you suggest is entirely unfit for purpose.

I'm not completely convinced that hearing neighbours is that large of a problem for that many people. I can hear everything through the walls in my $1800 studio apartment (a very modern building), but hey, maybe that's just another example of San Francisco being a horrible place to live.

As a contrasting anecdote: I've got an otherwise satisfactory shared living setup right now, but the fact that I can hear everything -- and hear everything well, especially conversation in the kitchen, footfalls on the main staircase adjacent to one wall, and footfalls in the room above mine -- essentially means I'm unable to sleep when and for as long as I choose (and often not getting as much sleep as I need). It's pretty common for +30db impulses to find their way through my walls and ceiling.

My options for fixing this problem seem to be moving, invest in soundproofing for a property I don't own, or somehow get a significant behavior modification program to take sustained root among 9 other people (some under 8 years of age).

All of them suck, but I'm leaning toward the first one.

Earplugs with an old cell phone shoved into your pillowcase to act as a vibrating alarm? Supplemented by some ambient noise (like a rain machine) as needed.

Worked wonders for me.

Moving was the solution for me. After a while irritating noises weight heavily on me and set me right on edge. Our 'new' house is unrenovated, old, draughty, damp, leaks and it very run down. I love it to bits and its problems are slowly being dealt to. Unlike problems caused by others, the other stuff is within my power to change.

My experience is that earplugs + ambient noise works OK for conversation and some limited higher frequency noise, but that it's essentially useless for the kind of low-frequency impulse noises that footfalls make.

I am guessing noise cancelling headphones are not a real option for sleeping, but maybe something like this exists in a form of speakers? It should be doable, you just need something to track where your ears are... I haven't seen anything like this yet though.

Again, I suspect the trick is impulses -- noise canceling tech I'm familiar with does pretty well with steady-state noise like jet engines or highway sounds, but not with sudden and short bursts like dropping a handful of dishes in the kitchen.

If there's something I'm not familiar with, though, I'd love to hear about it.

I don't think it's more dignified to live in an isolated dwelling (some the most expensive residences in the world are in apartment buildings), but it does really help with the Tragedy of the Commons. In my apartment building in San Francisco, people do all sorts of anti-social things like having their dog crap in an elevator and not cleaning it up, and as a result we have to pay considerable monthly fees for the building staff to manage these issues. Having a detached property makes it a lot harder to shirk your responsibilities -- if your dog craps it will be on your own property instead of in common space.

I'm not familiar with the floorplan but it might be necessary to have an extra window or two to let more light in. At least one of the designs in the article power was limited to 80W of solar panels. Can't afford to waste anything on artificial light with those constraints.

You could save nearly 40% building costs by having 10 adjacent units versus ten free-standing structures nearby. That money could go into more solar or to build more units.

You go from 40 exterior walls (10 units x 4 walls) to 4 exterior walls at about 60% of the area. I can't tackle the math mentally to figure out how the roofing situation changes, but I imagine it is drastically cheaper as well. The roof would be two very long sides instead of 20 small sides.

The more I think about it, the more I am coming around on the "dignity" argument and I think having a space that is completely "yours," including a porch, some steps, and some garden area, will increase the amount of ownership felt. Want pink flamingos? You've got a hundred square feet of lawn that's yours.

I think you can have the best of both worlds with alternating doors. A big long structure where every other door is on the same side of the building, such that each person gets a small porch, small "yard" and their own door. This still limits the natural light.

That would certainly provide some isolation from your direct neighbors. Not really sure if that would be a good or a bad thing.

That can be mitigated by having a common space outside, as well as having similar setups next door so that, while you might not see others in your own building, you'll be able to wave at people next door. And if enough people do that, and then go down to meet them in person, you'll start bumping into your own building-mates.

I'm not actually describing theory; I have a friend in Sweden who has made friends this way.

You could save nearly 40% building costs by having 10 adjacent units versus ten free-standing structures nearby.

There's more to construction costs than just walls and roofing. Plumbing, electrical, kitchen fixtures, heating...

Part of it could be that 10 tiny homes can be relocated a lot easier than a 10 unit building. These could possibly be "mass produced" in a large warehouse and transported to various places that can handle various numbers of them.

Smaller houses are not a bad trend, but smaller houses are often much less energy efficient due to thinner walls, lighter weight, less thermal mass.

If one does not live in a very temperate area such as Hawaii, this has consequences regarding the cost of heating and cooling that should be considered.

Many poor people for example live in single wide trailers. It is not uncommon for them to have winter heating bills in the range of $500-$1000, completely destroying their income budget and keeping them mired in poverty.

Another factor with small portable homes in particular is that they depreciate and one is almost never able to use them as collateral for a business loan to help their kids or nephews or other family members get started in a self owned business, which is something that is not a problem for those with full size houses. This inability to convert housing investment into investable liquid assets is another problem with small portable housing which keeps the poor poor.

For small houses to lift people from poverty, they would need to be much more energy efficient than they are typically made, unless the owners plan to try to get through the winter without heat.

I don't think the goal here is to lift them from poverty, I think it's just to give them a place to live.

There's no particular reason why a small home would be less energy efficient. I built a 120sqft studio apartment for about $10,000 that was so well insulated that it was actually cold inside during 85° heat.

> seven acres of land donated by Carmen Guidi

Yeah, good luck with that in major cities.

What if we took all the tiny houses and put them all in a shared building, with shared infrastructure and a tinier combined footprint?

We could call it... an apartment building.

Without careful management, you stand a chance of creating a "Hotel Carter"-esque situation where it is too easy for residents to adversely effect the lives of other residents. Some minimal amount of separation (even if it is only a few feet between each unit) and keeping things out in the air to aid in policing should be well-worth it.

The issue of land wouldn't be so bad if we had decent transportation around our cities. It shouldn't be necessary to own a car if you don't live downtown somewhere, although unfortunately it typically is.

You need at least 4 story tenements to make rail based public transport viable. You can go a bit less dense with buses but not much. Refer to 'Cities for a Small Planet'. Ricky Burdet at the LSE has done quite a bit of research into this.

I have wondered if you could build a building with plugable apartment modules that could be moved to other building when you wanted to move. Shipping crate apartments with standard utility hookups.

This gets proposed from time to time (was Buckminster Fuller's Dynaxion Home the first?), but I can never see how you'd move them without crating up all your possessions. And isn't that the worst aspect of moving home in a traditional manner...?

If the home is deliberately designed for this possibility, it might be easier than that. For instance, perhaps a grid of plugs to bolt your furniture into so that you only have to crate up looser items like books and vases? And you might be able to hide those under floorboard panels.

I've had a couple of relatives move mobile homes[1] and mostly it can down to boxing the dishes, taking the knick knacks off the wall, and tying the furniture together[2]. I'm more interested in the mass production aspect.

1) mostly eastern ND

2) lay big screen tv flat on bed

http://www.mac-containers.co.uk/temporary-container-housing....

No, I'm afraid they'd call it... a ghetto. Something special does happen when its "your" house. Is it special enough to avoid ghetto-ization? Its worth a try IMHO.

You should read more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe

You should read more. http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14435.html

I love how, despite the lessons of the inner-city projects, there's still this automatic urge to try to reduce the quality of life of the imaginary occupants as much as possible, right out of the gate.

Some of the most desirable and expensive homes in the world are in apartment blocks (eg the infamous One Hyde Park here in London). And on the other hand, some of the most despised and squalid homes in the world are detatched units (eg trailer parks).

It's not the layout of a home that governs the quality of life of its occupants. It's how well built it it, how well maintained it is, how well connected to work, infrastructure, amenities, and the larger community it is, how mixed its occupants are in income and occupation, how well cared for by police, fire, and health services it is, dozens of factors. But not whether it shares a wall with its neighbouring homes.

Large parts of Manhattan are another example. Small apartments, in huge apartment blocks producing deep urban canyons that let little light reach the windows... and yet some of the most expensive real estate in the country.

Somewhat tautologically, yes. Building and giving away homes is a solution to "involuntary lack of a home".

Of course the effective reality is not so simple. Done naively you are going to end up with little more than a tent city with a greater sense of permanence. Tent cities "solve 'homelessness'" in the strictest sense, but of course a satisfactory solution is more than that. They need to be accompanied by social programs designed to help people with a wide variety of problems (mostly having to do with joblessness and health (mental or otherwise)).

A shower and a roof solve an awful lot of problems, though.

Well, a standard shelter can provide a shower and a roof. Providing a safe, secure, and sanitary shower and roof is the tricky part. I think it is likely that this sort of setup could do that. Definitely worth pursuing.

Many municipalities adopt restrictive housing codes.

For instance, you cannot build a house less than X square feet in size.

You must have a lot size of X square feet (or this may be expressed in acres).

The international residential building code, which has some good things in it, but may be overkill for a smaller structure (like the ones mentioned, which are 320sf or less), must be followed.

These sorts of thing force compliance on 2000sf, multi-story dwellings with all kinds of complex systems; but is it needed for a well built but small, glorified storage shed? I would argue, "no".

Its absurd to buy a limited number of people regular houses when you could buy tiny houses for many more people.

To have a secure place to rest one's head and a place where you can take a shower and prepare food is enormously valuable.

If we redirected the resources granted to the middle and upper middle class through the mortgage tax deduction into tiny houses for those at the very bottom, we'd accomplish a lot more good.

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Do you have any evidence to support your begging theory? I would guess that the homeless go where they can get shelter without being arrested. But I haven't checked the research.

Homeless people congregate where there are services that are available to them. Predominantly, this means shelter and food. So homeless people will know when they can get food, from where, and this generally means places with high population density (it's much easier to walk from place to place in the city than in the suburbs!). In response to this, cities have passed a lot of NIMBY homeless shelter laws in their urban centers.

In Atlanta, there is a homeless shelter that is being closed down (it's currently in court) and the shelter can't relocate within the city because of laws on the size of homeless shelters. They were grandfathered in when the law was passed.

Source: I've spent a significant amount of time working with homeless shelters and on homeless policy.

Having done the "voluntarily homeless" thing, I can say that getting a full night's sleep without being harassed by cops with a hard-on for authority, and keeping clean enough to participate in society, are the common issues.

> I'm not sure how Japan does it, but last I saw, they don't have any homeless people wandering the streets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Japan

Guessing you just visited the wrong areas?

Before I googled, I had assumed it was because the homeless were pushed out to the suburbs, based on my understanding of Japanese city-tiering.

This article doesn't seem to tackle the very question it posed- is inexpensive housing actually the fix to the problem? From what I recall of past discussions, past experiments have suggested affordable housing is simply not the problem for many of the chronically homeless, and it is not clear that providing inexpensive (or even free) housing will be successful.

I get the impression that there is another benefit here. Each tenant has their own space to be responsible for. It's small enough to manage but maybe brings a sense of ownership that would be lacking in a regular municipal type shelter or shared apartment block.

> Each tenant has their own space to be responsible for.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, which is not my intent, in what way would they be responsible for them? If access to the homes is truly unconditional, why keep them in good shape? Or are you just suggesting that by giving people self-contained, separated dwellings, they will think of it more as "their home" and tend to take better care of it?

The big question left unanswered is: Do these houses have indoor plumbing, or is there a separate communal kitchen & bathroom?

I did some (very rough) math on how much it would cost to do this nationwide--in a nutshell, for the materials only, it would cost the 25%-50% of Americans who likely care enough to pay between $220-$441 as a one-time expense plus $2-$4 annual upkeep: http://schultkl.blogspot.com/2014/02/homeless-no-more-how-mu... . A thought experiment I did for my own benefit, mostly...like the article points out, there are architectural and design costs, labor costs, zoning and community buy-in issues, and so forth, and so forth.

The big key to fighting homelessness in the US would be bringing mental health care up to international standards.

And maybe take at least some care for returning veterans who often suffer from PTSD and end up on the streets...

The biggest local issue will be one of land and infrastructure. I've considered a tiny house as an option for infill granny unit, the "infrastructure" costs were more than the unit itself.

On a wider scale, land and infrastructure really are the keys. A colony of small houses is comparable to an RV/trailer park. Hookups are needed and some will prejudices and stigmas attached.

Curious to see where the movement goes. Locally here in Santa Cruz, some groups are pushing for "sanctuary camps" with no real plan on the land aspect.

I believe so, and it's a small price to pay to eliminate the homeless problem. I imagine the prices will only come down once we can "3D print" those homes.

I guess you mean to print the key components as bricks I think are easier handwritten.

Maybe not yet but something like this[1][2] is probably coming in the near future.

[1]http://innovation.uk.msn.com/design/the-3d-printer-that-can-... [2]http://www.contourcrafting.org/

Manna - Two Visions of Humanity's Future: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

The YMCA is already looking at pre-fab'd homes for homeless people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7258801

Why not just use caravans?

Second ones can surely be bought for about $5K each.

They recreated the trailer park?

Hmmmm, I don't think so...

Now seems like as good a time as any to get on my soapbox and proclaim the glories of Betteridge's law [0]. It has tremendous predictive power.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

And, in this case, it's wrong. But contributing to the conversation would have been unsurmountably challenging, yeah?

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