Housing Options

Inventing new life styles. Sometimes revisiting past options. Some became passé; others renewed our interest with new twists. Think Tiny Houses, for one; small, many built on trailer beds and movable; all self-contained and adequate for a focused, private life.

Unless you are over 50 and have trouble climbing a ladder to a sleeping loft, or soon will have that trouble! Some Tiny Houses have accommodated this drawback and provide a small bedroom with queen size bed. Short of closet space, but still adequate; and it eliminates sleeping lofts except for more agile guests.

Bathrooms are simple but adequate; kitchens come in a range of features from tiny to full size appliances. Lounge space is very limited; still it is workable.

A tiny house anchored to a plot of land with no wheels, is larger and has a square floor plan. These homes offer more living and dining space, good kitchens, and still a bedroom plus other sleeping arrangements. Closets and storage are an added feature plus a covered porch or deck. Now that adds a lot of usable value to the home.

If clustered in small communities of 8 or 10 homes, a neighborhood is made. Add a few of these clusters surrounding a common building housing a meeting space and common kitchen, and a community is born. 

Such communities can house elders, young single adults or couples as starter homes. Even better, place these tiny communities within a busy urban neighborhood and the amenities of the city are near these people. They, too, are near urban jobs that affordable housing allows them to access.

In rural towns and villages, especially those seeking new labor markets or new populations to expand their local communities and economic markets, affordable housing comes in these new packages that ought to be considered.

I’ve watched the Tiny Home Movement grow on cable television with interest. I’d even like to experience this lifestyle. In Illinois the heating and air conditioning would need careful planning, but the shared community building and proximity to neighbors would be a must. We are social people, after all. But then I wondered how many towns and cities would make room for these tiny villages to be built within their building code and land use ordinances. Most likely not many. Enlist aid from those communities and the tiny home movement might offer some amazing opportunities to us all.

All the above present elements that intersect for other locations as well. The important things remain these: affordable, modest size, connection to nearby residents to build sense of community, and adjacent to other communities of life, jobs, culture and medical facilities.

Tiny villages such as these usually do not contain kids or very many of them; schools would not need to fret about burgeoning attendance patterns. No, these villages would house elders and other adults hungry for social contact and modest housing options. And affordability.

The latter for elders speaks to the retirement funding issues that are now on our doorstep and begging for solution. Within 10 years this problem will be mammoth at current calculation. So what do we do about that? Perhaps we should be planning tiny villages as adjuncts to current neighborhoods. The possibilities are exciting and interesting to ponder.

June 12, 2018