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“The city of Los Angeles has worked very hard to brand these as tiny homes as if they are a housing solution, which they absolutely are not,” said Shayla Myers, a senior attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “In reality, these are tiny sheds.” — The New York Times
Firsthand accounts of what it’s like to live inside one of the eleven tiny home villages scattered across parts of the San Fernando Valley and northeast LA often underscore their value as bulwarks against unsheltered homelessness in the city. Feedback from on-site mental health professionals... View full entry
Past Aga Khan Award winner and 2021 Soane Medalist Marina Tabassum was recently featured in a short CNN profile of her ongoing Khudi Bari project in the coastal region of her native Bangladesh. The concept, which seeks to deliver mobile two-level residential structures to a largely landless... View full entry
The drama over the project provides a window into just how hard it is for the city to scale up its housing and shelter system, even as a recent report from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) estimated it would take more than 6,000 extra temporary and permanent beds to solve the crisis on the streets. It also puts into sharp relief how easily neighborhood opposition can derail a project, even when the funding and space is available — and the need is clear. — San Francisco Chronicle
The Mission district parking lot is scheduled to become an affordable housing development with construction beginning in 2025 and the tiny homes program was expected to fill the gap. “It's always the same hand wringing,” housing advocate Sam Moss told the Chronicle. “It’s... View full entry
At a time when permanent supportive housing takes years to build and the average cost per unit has climbed to nearly $600,000, the cost of these tiny homes came to about $68,000 each, or roughly $35,000 per bed, according to De León’s office.
In his speeches, De León likes to ask, “in what parallel universe” is it better to leave people on the street than move them into various forms of temporary housing while awaiting more permanent housing?
— LA Times
LA Times columnist Steve Lopez visited the second-newest in a string of tiny home developments opened in November in a space that had previously been sparsely used as a parking lot for the Eagle Rock Recreation Center and co-owned and operated by the city, county, and utilities giant SoCal Edison... View full entry
Valencia-based architecture firm Fran Silvestre Arquitectos has completed a compact, open, single-level home in Spain as part of a project that seeks to simplify and streamline the production of good design and construction. Called NIU, the system integrates all of the necessary phases of... View full entry
The red-hot housing market has made it difficult for adults, especially Millennials and single families, to afford decent accommodations. With the increasingly popular tiny home movement, it's become clear that this appealing lifestyle trend is turning into a viable solution to the looming housing... View full entry
Refuge, one of Houston's leading developers, in conjunction with architecture firms Brett Zamore Design and Gibson Design, Inc., have created the mini-development of one- and two-bedroom homes, each between about 600 and 800 square feet, packed with amenities for modern living. — Culture Map Houston
According to Culture Map, the homes feature open floor plans, plenty of patio space and are "far from being crammed or crowded." One of the homes is currently valued at $249,900, Culture Map reports. View full entry
Backyard cottages typically provide affordable housing in already developed neighborhoods. They’re one way Boise city leaders hope to rein in runaway rents and house prices.
On Tuesday, the Boise City Council voted unanimously to relax city regulations on these units to encourage more density and affordable housing.
— idahostatesman.com
Bigger and better Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) are headed to Boise, Idaho, where city officials have embraced a series of measures that could spur the development of new ADUs in the city. ADUs, for example, will now be able to include up to two bedrooms and up to 700 square feet of... View full entry
Yves Béhar, the founder of the San Francisco-based design firm fuseproject, has teamed up with building startup ICON and housing charity New Story to bring about what they describe as "the world's first 3D-printed community." Last year, ICON and New Story went to SXSW 2018 and announced the... View full entry
