Why Tiny Houses Are Not the Solution
A candid look at a cute idea that is both foolish and insulting
There are several reasons (I thought of 12 but there are more) tiny houses are not the answer to getting homeless people housed.
We know that the huge majority of people outdoors want to get indoors. This point was made very strongly recently by Patricia Nix-Hodes, Director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, who exclaimed, “People experiencing homelessness want and need permanent housing. It is simply false to claim otherwise…” (Ald. Cappleman discusses 46th Ward walk/bike projects, and the LSD viaduct issue – Streetsblog Chicago).
This was said in response to Alderman Cappleman (Ward 46 Uptown) mentioning that attempts at giving homeless people housing were not very successful because the homeless people in question did not seem to want housing.
The great majority of the articles appearing in Chicago are positive about tiny houses and show the benefits. A couple times a year, this crazy idea comes out in the Chicago Reader, among other publications, complete with ideas on what the tiny houses can contain, what they might look like, and what people who already live in one think (Tiny-house living has pros and cons - Chicago Reader). Then the idea goes away again. A while later it comes back. The article mentions who likes them, how they can work, and reasons the silly homeless would probably like them. This tiny freight train of an idea rolls around town and people discuss it over drinks. Then the idea goes back into the toy tunnel to rest again for a while. Why does the tiny house idea go into storage again?
The tiny house idea is foolish and insulting.
So there it is out in the open. There are many reasons the tiny house approach would most likely never work in Chicago. It does not get the right people interested: aldermen, alderwoman, homeowners, taxpayers, investors, bankers, architects, and the real estate world.
Do people really think the tiny house solution through? The practicality of it? The cause of it? The need for it? The benefit of tiny houses over every other way to house the currently-nonhoused?
Maybe sitting on the toilet while you use a microwave sounds like fun. Would there be eccentric professors near a college campus who would think it is “cool” to live in a tiny house? Will they call and complain about being in an example? Would there be an old woman living in a shoe who would be relieved to finally be living in a house where she can listen to the radio while she is in the bath tub? Among other reasons, one often cited is that tiny houses are a whimsy and may often show people are interested in ecology (What Is A Tiny House? 12 Surprising Facts | Quicken Loans).
Since there are so many “cool” articles about the benefits of the tiny house solution, I will not try to balance this piece by showing the positive aspects. Instead, I will focus on the negative aspects—since they are usually overlooked almost entirely in those other pieces written about this foolish and disgusting idea on how to “help” the homeless.
It is almost as bad as the throngs of people who go around the city on a winter night with below-zero temperatures and offer hand-warmers to the homeless. How disgusting! Not fixing the problem and instead offering to keep their hands warm. Well, it is cheaper than giving them a place to live where they will be in, out of the cold.
1. Costs.
The amount of money needed to build these tiny houses is frequently discussed as being reasonable and cost-effective. In comparison to what? A recent article estimated the cost to be around $70,000 per house (Are tiny houses a solution to homelessness in Chicago? - Chicago Reader).
It really depends on who is paying for the tiny house and what is going to happen to it. Most people do not realize tiny houses are more expensive per square foot than regular houses are. Another issue is getting so much money to buy one—if it is an individual that is purchasing the little cabin (What Is A Tiny House? 12 Surprising Facts | Quicken Loans). It is one thing to decide to build one of these picturesque little cabins. Because then a major question arises.
2. Roll-out and leases.
A major question standing in front of the tiny house is “Is this a rental, a gift, or a sentence for the homeless?” Will the city give these structures away? Sell them? Offer them at a good discount? Rent them out? Offer short-term leases? Longer-term leases with option to buy?
Will the city give these tiny houses away free of charge? When other people have to work hard, struggle, and break their backs to pay their rent/mortgage/lot fees?
Consider the backlash of some people who feel the president should not excuse federal student loans. Think how taxpayers of this same ilk will feel when somebody across the street gets a free house to live in! Conservatives will be up in arms about that too! A recent visit of Senator Elizabeth Warren got the conservatives chasing after her to challenge her on the possible student loan cancellation they are angry (The View guest host to Warren: I paid off my student loans. Where's my reimbursement? – HotAir).
3. Design and placement.
So let’s say a tiny house is a few feet wide and a few feet deep—and might even have a loft or an upstairs area. How much bigger is the lot going to be than the house? How many of these things can be built on a typical lot? Will there be 10? Will there be a path—or a small alley or drive to allow access to cars? Will there be enough room to park a car near the tiny house? In front of it? In a space behind it in a sort of alley? In a tiny garage? The logistics present some real challenges. There are many different designs, but what will work in Chicago? Who shovels the alley? How do we fit a garbage truck down the alley? Move the cars? “At the end of the day” how do people actually live in these things and go to work and have a place to put their scooter when they get home at night? There are some very difficult questions indeed about implementation of a tiny house installation plan and the use of the dwellings once on site (How Zoning Laws Affect Tiny-House Owners (insider.com)).
4. Zoning.
In addition to the costs of building a tiny house, and then the costs of maintaining and sustaining it, the issue of zoning might be a swift-footed killer (8 Common Problems With Tiny Houses (+ How To Fix Them!) (godownsize.com)). Who will you have to know to get your tiny house approved? There is also a slight problem in Chicago, specifically. It is stated in the Municipal Code that temporary dwellings—most tiny house designs include wheels below instead of a foundation—are illegal in the city.
5. Scale and scope.
The mayor has just received a few more huge buckets of money to help disadvantaged persons with housing. We know there are 10,000 homeless families in the city (Study finds 10,000 families experienced homelessness in Chicago last year - Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com)). An educated person is needed to explain the answer to this question: What are the chances the mayor is going to seek or approve the construction of tiny houses all over town? The notion of the sight of 10,000 tiny houses all over Chicago is a ridiculous one. They would be everywhere. There would be nowhere in Chicago you could without seeing a bunch of them. This leads us to our next issue: not in my barrio!
6. Eyesore.
Those tiny houses are going to have to be beautiful, fit well into the design of the neighborhood, and probably should not really “look like” tiny houses. Just raise the issue with the wrong people and something akin to Armageddon arises.
Immediately, homeowners, business owners, and apartment/condo landlords are going to fight any sort of discussion about adding tiny houses to their neighborhoods. How will the tiny houses impact a neighborhood? Property values? Taxes? Water supply and sewage capacity? How would 100 households across the street affect your house? Your family? The safety, integrity, and services in your barrio? Will there suddenly be a bus going down your street? A dozen Ubers and Lyfts passing your home all day long?
I can guarantee the “eyesore” factor is suddenly going to kick in. Consider how much Chicago residents hate tents! And it makes no sense to build just a couple tiny houses and spread them out. Instead, for purposes of maintenance, it would seem it makes more sense to group the tiny houses. If nobody wants the tiny houses in their neighborhood—and nobody will because of the insane amount of property tax charged in the city—then spreading them out would impact assessments everywhere. Good luck with keeping thousands of Chicago homeowners in a good mood.
7. Ghetto.
Enter a solution: putting huge groupings of tiny houses together in sort of a subdivision or tiny-house-park or circus setup. Can the average adult who can read actually believe there is anyone who would think a tiny house enclave would be a good idea? Does it really sound like a good idea to put a bunch of people, who have been unhoused for one week to 10 years, together in very close proximity without enough room for patio chairs, bicycles, cars, gardens, garbage cans, a tomato plant, a doghouse, or a picnic table? What kind of life will such a ghetto offer? (Ghettoization (chicagohistory.org)).
Residents of Chicago already know, many of them, what it is like to live smashed together with neighbors in a ghetto. Will these be total strangers? What kinds of homeless people will they be? Law-abiding citizens? Persons with addiction problems? God-fearing Christians? Persons who have had contact with the justice system? Or just people who happen to have been sleeping outside for awhile?
8. Lack of privacy.
One immense problem is lack of privacy (8 Common Problems With Tiny Houses (+ How To Fix Them!) (godownsize.com)). This problem is often mentioned by people who already live/have lived in a tiny house. While you are cooking macaroni, you can hear (or see!) neighbors involved in arguments… or in intimate encounters. Personal discussions and interaction in your tiny house will be shared by everyone else in the tiny-house-park.
9. Segregation.
Now we need to get real when we talk about some community issues. We know that from 2018 numbers 80 percent of the homeless in Chicago are Black (2018-Fact-Sheet.pdf (pcdn.co)). It does not matter that only 39 percent of the people in Chicago are Black.
These numbers simply mean that Chicago is racist as hell.
In 2015, only 75 percent of the homeless in Chicago were Black (2015-Fact-Sheet.pdf (chicagohomeless.org)). These numbers mean Chicago is getting to be more racist.
These numbers also mean that if you are Black in this city, chances are pretty damn good you are homeless. (I keep talking about this, but people seem to not understand what I am saying.) Chicago has a huge problem with racism, inequity, lack of opportunity and jobs in Black neighborhoods, lack of safe areas for Black youth to assemble and interact, huge incursions of investment and gentrification destroying older established diverse communities such as Uptown where poor residents could afford to pay rents and mortgages, and a host of other examples.
So not only are we going to have a whole bunch of people living in tiny houses who are homeless, everybody is going to know they were homeless. I mean, if people know you live in a tiny house, that you were at least for a short time a non-housed resident of Chicago. Other people will not want to live in a tiny house—the homeless also do not want to. So you are set off automatically from the rest of society.
Plus, chances are very good you are going to be Black if you are living in one of these tiny dwellings. The entire tiny-house endeavor does a terrible thing to all Chicagoans: it brings racism to the surface, puts it in clear view, and parades it on a stage!
But what’s worse is, it makes the racism clear but does nothing at all to try to fix it!
So you’ve got racism, and segregation, and showcasing people in tiny houses. It gives you, homeless persons, quite an opportunity you will not want to pass up: to get out of living wherever (tent, car, somebody’s basement, a shelter, basement of a church, your cousin’s carport) you can go live in an almost 100 percent segregated community with a dwelling that also guarantees people will know you have been homeless before—which carries a great deal of stigma with it.
10. Stigma.
Putting a homeless person into a tiny house—with or without a family for that matter—is a slap in the face. It is a terrible insult, and I will explain to you why.
A tiny house minimizes the life of a person—so much so that only an idiot would not be able to see this. It means a homeless individual is not a real person. It means they do not deserve a whole apartment—even a studio! Their body, clothing, shoes, Christmas wrapping paper, and kitchen utensils must fit into a “tiny” space. These are not people. They are “undeserving poor” from the days of Reagan and the years of providing services with an eyedropper (The Deserving and Undeserving Poor: A Persistent Frame with Consequences - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly).
Goffman said that accepting the stigma assigned later in life is always the hardest (Example of stigma, type 3: Cultural Reader: Stigma and Social Identity by Erving Goffman – summary part 3 (culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.com)). People who have been relatively hidden while homeless are now going to be “showcased” by living in a tiny house. These are people who used to live “nowhere” and now must accept being part of a culture of loss, failure, addiction, incarceration, unhappiness, disappointment, and spectacle.
“Oh! You live in one of those tiny things!”
And what kind of a thing is the tiny house to live in? The use of the tiny house solution screams at the homeless individual that they do not deserve—and have no business expecting—to receive or get access to a real place to live. They do not need wrapping paper, or a dog, or a tomato plant. They need to take up as little space as possible.
11. Little space.
There are various problems with trying to live in a tiny house—the Internet is full of articles on this—and the most obvious one is the lack of space (20 Tiny House Problems That Might Get You Thinking Bigger | Cheapism.com). There is almost NO room to put anything, store anything, keep your clothing, books, pets, plants, shoes, boots, or W flag for when the Cubs win. Don’t people need some space to keep their “stuff?”
12. Less is less.
Now we enter the reality of why people want to assign their Chicago compatriots a tiny place to live. Unhoused residents of the city do not rank highly enough in the competition to receive a real place to live. Their lives are less, their race is less, their purpose is less.
You have to put them somewhere, so tiny-house advocates are saying: let’s put the homeless in a little box. Let’s close the lid. Let’s put the box on a shelf. Let’s say we solved the problem.