--- title: There May Be a Tiny House in Your Future. description: And that could be a good thing. Watch how more and more people are choosing to "live small" and love being part of a "tiny houses movement." canonical: https://time.com/130959/tiny-houses-with-big-ambitions/ author: Randy Stearns article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-29T19:40:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T08:52:55.166Z og:title: Would you consider living in a much smaller home? og:description: While McMansions seem to dominate the landscape, a counter movement toward tiny houses offers solutions to problems ranging from shrinking household budgets to chronic homelessness. og:url: https://time.com/130959/tiny-houses-with-big-ambitions/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Would you consider living in a much smaller home? twitter:description: While McMansions seem to dominate the landscape, a counter movement toward tiny houses offers solutions to problems ranging from shrinking household budgets to chronic homelessness. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Tiny Houses With Big Ambitions > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Each week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published weekly. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=22338ede-3786-4a24-b44d-f323b07ad575&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Less Is More: The Tiny House Movement [Watch (HLS stream): Less Is More: The Tiny House Movement](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/s7y9TwUs.m3u8) (5:04)  _Published 2014-05-30. Can houses as small as 84 square feet on wheels be the future for urban housing challenges? Watch this video on simplified housing that benefits the affluent and the poor._ by [Randy Stearns](https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/) ## Randy Stearns May 29, 2014 7:40 PM UTC by [Randy Stearns](https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/) ## Randy Stearns May 29, 2014 7:40 PM UTC Anyone who’s been to the suburbs in the past half-century knows that [American homes have been getting larger and more elaborate](http://www.salon.com/2014/04/13/let%5Fthem%5Feat%5Fmcmansions%5Fthe%5F1%5Fpercent%5Fincome%5Finequality%5Fand%5Fnew%5Ffashioned%5Famerican%5Fexess/) year after year. The average size of new homes has swelled by 50 percent since 1970, despite that the average family size decreased during the same period. And it’s not just here; similar trends have held sway in other prosperous, mostly Western countries. As with most things, a countertrend, focused on homes that are smaller and simpler than the norm, emerged in recent decades. Sometimes referred to as the “tiny house movement,” the concept describes efforts by architects, activists and frugal home owners to craft beautiful, highly functional houses of 1,000 square feet or less (some as small as 80 square feet). It’s both a practical response to soaring housing costs and shrinking incomes, and an idealistic expression of good design and sensible resource use. The most ardent advocates and early adopters of the concept were often looking to downsize and simplify their lives, create an affordable second home or find innovative ways to live outside the mainstream. Some small homes are on wheels and therefore resemble RVs, but they are built to last as long as traditional homes. Others represent clever architectural solutions to odd building lots or special design challenges. Aging baby-boomers see them as an efficient way to adapt to their changing needs. Most tiny houses are tailored for middle-class and wealthy families who made a conscious decision to “build better, not bigger.” But natural disasters like [Hurricane Katrina in 2005](http://www.sptimes.com/2006/01/28/Homes/The%5Fhouse%5Fthat%5FKatrin.shtml) and economic catastrophes like the Great Recession inspired many people to wonder if the movement might offer solutions to pressing housing crises, whether temporary or long-term. Cheaper to build and maintain, built mostly of ecologically friendly materials, requiring no building permits and taking up far less real estate than traditional houses, the appeal of “living small” is obvious to many people. Some imagine entire [villages built of tiny homes as solutions to homelessness](http://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/tiny-houses-big-idea-end-homelessness-n39316). The movement itself remains small, however promising. Only about one percent of home buyers today go for houses of 1,000 square feet or less. That may be changing as more people become familiar with the ideas that animate the movement and as middle-class finances remain precarious. Watch the video above and make up your own mind: Would you opt to live small if you could? ## Transcript [ MUSIC ]. Everyone was talking about tiny house communities, but no one was really stepping up to say hey what would this look like. Let's just try it out. I know so many tiny house communities all over the US that are springing up. Tiny house movement is saying this could work for seniors for example. I think there really is a such a thing as the architecture of community. And that this is a big part of what makes this place work. It took me three months and $ 10, 000 and voila, a little house. Welcome to my little house. This is where I do all of my great thinking. So composting toilet. And then every night I carry my dog up to the loft. So I was living in Portland, Oregon. I had a three bedroom house that came along with a $ 250, 000 mortgage. [ MUSIC ]. And one day I collapsed in a grocery store and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. And all of a sudden all of these things that I worked so hard to get didn't make sense anymore. When I was a kid and asked to draw a picture of home, it was a triangle plopped on top of a square. And for some reason it, it seemed to make sense, like, if I can do this thing, everything would get calm. You know, less complex. [ MUSIC ]. I think, I think there are a lot of things that have led people to think about how they live. So kitchen setup pretty basic. I bring water in in this jug. I think the downturn in the economy. I think there are more and more people vying for precious real estate. One burner stove. That's it. Tiny houses like this are being viewed as a solution for homelessness. And, and I do think they are a good solution for that. [ MUSIC ]. The one that's here in Olympia, of Quixote village, it's networking with city planners to develop a governance, that, you know, gives people a sense of autonomy and control of their own destiny. [ MUSIC ]. In 2007 the City of Olympia had passed some ordinances involving the use of the downtown area sidewalks in particular that was really had a huge impact on the folks that were living on those sidewalks. Then, so, they a occupied a city block essentially. And that was the beginning of what became a mobile tent camp moving from church property to church property for pretty much the next seven years. Out of that grew the notion of a permanent site. The initiative to make tiny houses really came from the residents themselves. It became obvious that their preference, their desire was to have their own space but to still be in community because community was such a strong part of their lives. [ MUSIC ]. I walked in the front door of the community building and there is a guy ironing a shirt, getting ready for a job interview and I just cried. It was just such a simple thing to be able to iron a shirt to get ready for a job interview. We've seen across the country in Olympia, Washington, in Madison, Wisconsin, outside of Austin, Texas, some other initiatives anywhere from like ten to 40 sort of little structures for the homeless population. We're here at Boneyard Studios, which is a tiny house community we started here in Washington, DC, a couple years ago. Boneyard in awesome. There are all of these vacant lots in DC that aren't really buildable. In, in the case of Boneyard it was this little wedged shape piece of property across the street from a cemetery. Tiny houses on wheels, traditionally in the US have either been in built in kind of rural areas or someone's backyard, and people have been talking a long time about trying to build communities and we just wanted to try it out sort of a pilot. And the idea is that maybe some of those vacant lots could be developed into residential use to address urban infill and our need for more housing. Well it isn't just about little houses. It's about the community and about having that mutual support. My decision to right size myself, not only saved me money, it really expanded my sense of community. But, it's transformative. That's kind of the transformation of living in a house. 144 square feet, you know, it's not much, but it's mine. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/130959/tiny-houses-with-big-ambitions/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/130959/tiny-houses-with-big-ambitions/"},"headline":"Tiny Houses With Big Ambitions","datePublished":"2014-05-29T19:40:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-01T08:52:55.166Z","description":"Is the tiny-houses movement a viable solution for American homeowners?","url":"https://time.com/130959/tiny-houses-with-big-ambitions/","keywords":["Living","Environment","Space","housing","Design","emergency"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Randy Stearns","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/randy-w-stearns/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/130959/tiny-houses-with-big-ambitions/","name":"Tiny Houses With Big Ambitions"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Less Is More: The Tiny House Movement","description":"Can houses as small as 84 square feet on wheels be the future for urban housing challenges? 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