Almost exactly four years ago — in March 2021 — the Daily Post ran an op-ed about a “tiny home village” proposed by Dallas-based developers Legacy Alliance, to be built adjacent to the Walmart. The proposal was making its way through the Town planning process. As presented, the park would have contained about 45 rental spots.
The artist’s rendering is shown above.
The prospective village residents would be given a list of qualified tiny home builders from whom they could purchase their THOW — “Tiny Home On Wheels”. The proposal, as presented to the Town Planning Commission, suggested that a typical tiny home would cost about $60,000, and the loan payment plus the space rental would likely cost less than $1,000 a month.
Plus utilities, I am guessing. But still less than the cost of a typical studio apartment in Pagosa in 2021… and you would own your tiny home. Yes, you would become a ‘homeowner’. Or more accurately, you would become a ‘tiny homeowner’.
The park lease would have, we were told, a minimum one-year term. The cozy ‘village’ would include a community building with indoor storage units, also available for rent… to keep the tiny yards from filling up with all the household and recreational items that can’t fit inside a 400-square-foot tiny home.
THOWs appear to be available in a range of sizes, but if you want to tow the house behind your pickup truck without a special permit… according to TinyHouseDesign.com:
…it must conform to certain size limits. In most U.S. states this maximum size is 13.5-feet tall, 8.5-feet wide, and 40-feet long… 65-feet maximum including the tow vehicle…
The proposed Legacy Alliance development is not conceived as a temporary stopping place for people living on the road, however, but rather for people who want to settle in one place, long-term. The park lease would have, we were told, a minimum one-year term. The cozy ‘village’ would include a community building with indoor storage units, also available for rent… to keep the tiny yards from filling up with all the household and recreational items that can’t fit inside a 10×40 foot tiny home.
Residents would be required to build an outside deck attached to their home.
Although the project received positive feedback from the Town government, Legacy Alliance never moved forward with the proposal. The company instead decided to build a 50-unit LIHTC (“Low Income Haousing Tax Credit”) apartment complex. In order to qualify for LIHTC tax credits, the apartments must to rented out to households that qualify as “low income”. Which would be most of the employees working in Pagosa’s private sector, I would imagine. (As opposed to employees who have government jobs.)
Why the change of plans? I can’t say. I guess I should ask someone.
One question many people might have about a 400-square-foot tiny home:
Can a modern American family really live in a place that small?
Surely, part of the answer to that question depends on the size of the household. Because modern American families seem to be getting smaller and smaller with each passing day.
In May 2016, journalist Evan Comen summarized some research into the American housing sector conducted by the website Wall Street 24/7. Using various sources of information, the article estimated the average size of a newly-built American for each year from 1920 through 2014, along with the average floor area per person and the approximate number of new homes built each year.
The square footage of a home is one way of measuring its capacity. A family of 12 living in a 1,000 square foot home suggests a very different situation from a family of 3 living in the same size house.
Here in America, the size of an average home has grown over the past 100 years, while the size of an average family has shrunk.
The researchers estimated that, in 1920, the square footage of an average home was about 1,000 square feet, and it housed about 4.3 persons, providing ‘per person floor area’ of about 230 square feet. That year, about 250,000 new homes were built, to serve a U.S. population of 106 million. One new home for every 425 people.
Five years later, in 1925, America was enjoying the Roaring Twenties. A new home provided about the same floor area per person, but new home starts had increased to nearly 1 million per year.
In 1933, American was struggling through the Great Depression. The average home was slightly larger — about 1,200 square feet — but we saw only about 90,000 new home starts. Less than one-tenth the production compared to 1925.
Fast-forward to 1971. A new single family home now measures about 1,600 square feet, but now accommodates only about 3.1 persons, providing about 500 square feet per person. The American construction industry was cranking out about 2.4 million new homes per year, for a population of 205 million. A new home for every 85 people.
That was the peak of new home construction in the U.S.
In 1971.
The output in the years following fluctuated between around 1 million and 2 million per year, depending on economy. But things took a serious nosedive in 2009, when only about 550,000 new homes were built. That year, the average home had about 2,400 square feet of floor area, and housed about 2.6 people. So about 950 square feet per person.
For comparison:
1920: 230 square feet per person.
2009: 950 square feet per person.
Granted, Americans had become slightly taller and slightly more obese over those 89 years. But not by a factor of four.
How can we explain this “size inflation”? Why was the American construction industry building homes with four times the ‘per person floor area’ in 2009, compared to 1920?
What were Americans doing with all that extra space?
Disclosure: I currently serve on the Pagosa Housing Partners board of directors. Since 2018, PHP has been advocating for local solutions that can address the housing crisis in Pagosa Springs. This editorial does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the PHP board as a whole.
This editorial is an attempt to share some ideas about how we can ensure that working families and individuals. and retired families and individuals, are not driven out of the community by our ongoing housing crisis. One solution being tried in other communities is the “Tiny Home Village” concept. This concept is actually quite similar to an RV park, expect that “tiny homes” are not “vehicles” and are designed and built to be comfortable year ’round in a four-season climate, whereas RV owners generally pick up and move to a warmer climate for the winter months.
Back in 2021, Pagosa Housing Partners surveyed hundreds of employees in Archuleta County and found that most working households include only one or two persons. Here’s one of the results from our survey:
We note that, if this survey was accurate, more than half of the working families in Pagosa Springs — about 60% — consisted of one or two persons.
In 1920, the average American home provided about 230 square feet of floor space per person. That’s an average… suggesting that half of American homes provided less than 230 square feet per person.
A typical tiny home provides about 400 square feet of floor space, often with a sleeping loft above. Maybe enough room for a two-person family? Or even three people, if we want to get cozy?
Maybe you spend a lot of your time out on the deck? In the sunshine?
Read Part Four, tomorrow…