What is the tiny house movement?
Our society has a strong cultural norms about homes, usually people look to have as big a home as possible. In the 1990’s the “McMansion” trend as Mark Huffman and many more call it was a trend towards buying more house than you could really afford by taking out loans. Our society has grown more and more comfortable with paying for a home by the means of taking out loans. Debt has become socially acceptable. Previously the trend was to consume as much as possible and living off as much money as you possible could there is a new one popping up, the tiny house movement. The tiny house movement is a move away from loans and debt and towards simplicity and minimalism.
Tiny homes are exactly what their name describes. There are two main draws to living in a tiny homes the small simple space and the lower cost compared to a typical home. These small residences range from 100-400 square feet, basically the range from the size of a small camper that sits on the back of a truck to the relative size of a travel trailer. The small space forces people to downsize and remove excess items from their lives. Another advantage to living in a tiny home is the inexpensive cost. The cost of buying or building a tiny home is easily under $30,000. This means most tiny home owners don’t have home loans to pay off.
Economics
According to Constantine Von Hoffman from CBS MoneyWatch most Americans spend ⅓ to ½ of their income to pay for their homes. The tiny life points out that this stat equates to about 15 years worth of working. After knowing this stat I asked myself why I would ever join the current culture in America of buying a home on loan that you can’t afford to pay for if anything financially changes in your life. Tiny homes allow financial freedom, If you lose a job in theory you’re okay because you own a house instead of having to make payments each month so you also would have money saved up to survive. Many people use less and save more meaning they hover around $20,000 in the bank instead of $2000. Many millennials joined the tiny home trend because of college debt. It’s difficult to have kids in a tiny home because of such limited space. Many retirees also enjoy the lifestyle of living in a tiny home to save money and use less space. One man really embraced the idea behind downsizing and consuming less. His name is Daniel Norris.
Daniel Norris Downsizing
Daniel Norris is a pitcher for the Toronto blue Jays who makes millions for his baseball talent. He also lives in a 1978 Volkswagen camper. While Norris doesn’t live in a tiny homes he still is a very interesting example of the culturally deviant nature of downsizing.
Norris doesn’t feel a need to spend his millions, he prefers to live a simple and frugal life. He recalls a time when him and all of his teammates got their signing bonuses and went to the mall together, his teammates walked out with arm loads of electronics and shoes and other items that the could barely fit it all in their cars. Daniel Norris left the mall that day with a single T-shirt he found intriguing. Our society says “more more” and so many of us keep consuming but minimalists such as Norris don’t see the need to spend every dollar you can. Our idea of what a home should be is socially constructed. We should have as big a house as we can and try to get as much as we can because that’s what many people around us are doing. Many people look and Norris’ lifestyle and don’t understand why he is living like he is. Which a coffee brewer that doesn’t work very well and a van that doesn’t always start the first try. His unkempt beard and sleeping in his car is seen as deviant behavior.
I mean to say that I am not unbiased on this matter. I myself am about to buy a trailer to live in next year. Living minimally is an obvious interest of mine and hopefully I did it justice and showed you a little bit about the tiny house movement and its social relativity.
Here are the sources I mentioned in the reading as well as a few other articles to read if my blog post interests you:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/03/21/census-household-debt-report/2007195/
By: Zac Shomler
I really like that you wrote your blog on the tiny house movement! I have been following this movement for a few years now, and am absolutely in love with it. I've read a few different books on the tiny house movement, most recently Twelve by Twelve and New Slow City by William Powers, as well as The Big Tiny by Dee Williams and A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan.
ReplyDeleteI think the story about the baseball player, Daniel Norris, is really interesting because typically people who are seen downsizing are not the people with all of the money in the world. I think it is very admirable that although he has the money to live lavishly, he chooses not to. This is a trait that I wish more people in this world would adopt. There is a lot of information out there that can prove that overconsumption is responsible for much of the environmental degradation we see today, deforestation, pollution, erosion, etc, and it is time that we, inhabitants of the Earth start to take care of it. An interesting topic brought up in Twelve by Twelve by William Powers was the idea that we, as western citizens, often pass quick judgements about cultures and societies that consume less. The idea of living simply is often looked down on in the US, after all the average rate of consumption for Americans is equivalent to that of 35 Indians. It's ironic that we even call the tiny house movement "downsizing" as that is how the majority of the world lives to begin with. Powers proposes the idea that intact only 20% of the world is undeveloped while 20% is overdeveloped, leaving 60% of the world as perfectly developed, and I think this is a more healthy way to do things. Not only does it help us reevaluate the way we live our lives (do we really need another t-shirt or new shoes? probably not), but it helps us look at different cultures, one that naturally consume less in a new light. It is not okay that Westerners consume most of the worlds resources and contribute most to climate change, while countries that consume less are disproportionately effected by environmental disasters. It is time for a change, and I think that the tiny house movement is a great place to start.
Thanks for the great comment and good recommended books!
Delete"The tiny house movement is a move away from loans and debt and towards simplicity and minimalism."
ReplyDeleteI, too, come into this discussion with a biased view on the tiny house movement. Like other forms of alternative living opportunities that I see arising (community gardening in urban spaces, localism and farmers' markets, Etsy, etc.) it seems to favor those with greater life chances and mobility than others. Additionally, it definitely creates a subculture that pulls from those with more racial and economic privilege over those without, similar to the commune movement. Because tiny homes and downgrading of the consumeristic lifestyle offers greater savings and less dependency of real estate markets, I see potential for social movements to bud in this sector. It would be powerful for people beginning in lower class socioeconomic strata to feel included in this alternative lifestyle movement, along with all others.
That is an interesting comment on the tiny house movement, based on what Zac seemed to suggest many people who were purchasing these tiny home were college graduates, presumably people who come from middle or upper-class families. So it seems the tiny house movement is centered around people who have the economic means to participate in the consumer culture, but instead choose to reject it. The tiny house movement, based on what Zac suggested about it, does not seem to be inclusive to people of different socio-economic backgrounds. That may or may not be the case, but if it is the case I wonder why that is. I also wonder how it could be made more accessible to members of the lower class and whether members of the lower class would want to live this way.
DeleteThe tiny house movement seems like more than just a rejection of consumer culture, it also seems like a rejection of heteronormativity. As Zac said, "It’s difficult to have kids in a tiny home because of such limited space". These suggests that the people who are living in tiny homes, vans or trailers are also rejecting the expectation that they need to have a traditional family.
I completely agree our society is becoming ultra consumers when there is no need for it. On a day to day basis we consume and waste so much more than we actually need to live and sustain ourselves. The idea of downsizing is definitely beneficial for both economic and environmental reasons.
ReplyDelete