The Akron Legal News

Tiny homes have big appeal to some people

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: August 6, 2015

A collective impulse to downsize has taken form in the emerging “tiny home” trend that is sweeping the nation.

The structures typically measure less than 500 square feet, but tiny homes are not necessarily about sacrifice.

On the contrary, those who have taken the leap report deeper levels of satisfaction on many fronts and different motivations for making the switch to tiny living.

“There are big motivations from many angles, financial, space, how people control their lives,” said Darin Hadinger, instructor in fuel engineering and information technology at Hocking College. “There is a broad spectrum that captures a lot of why people do this.”

Hadinger has plans to build his own small dwelling but, in the meantime, has been helping a friend, Rose Nico, build the first tiny home to be placed on a piece of land that she owns in De Graff.

Nico, a single mother, funded Lovare Homestead through a Kickstarter campaign that reached its funding goal back in June.

She recently transported the house that Hadinger helped to build off-site onto the seven-acre parcel of land where she and others are now working to install a solar array.

Lovare will be open to six tiny home residents throughout the year and each home will ideally run on the community’s solar power grid.

Nico is currently vetting applicants who want to build their own tiny home and join the community.

“At first, I thought every applicant would be the same type of person,” Nico said, “but it’s really amazing how many different and diverse types of people have applied to live there.”

Older retiree couples, families, single people have all filled out applications, Nico said.

The city of De Graff recently approved the community to have homes that are not only on wheels (as many tiny homes are because of zoning laws) but that sit on a foundation.

“It’s a really nice community with people trying to help each other out,” said Hadinger. “Rose started out and she didn’t know how to use power tools, but it’s one of those situations where she learned and she got help from people like me and some others along the way and we still continue to support that.”

Tiny living is a subject that has gained such rapid popularity that several TV shows have recently popped up around the subject.

HGTV’s House Hunters franchise recently filmed an episode in Columbus for the second season of its spin-off show, Tiny House Hunters.

The episode will focus on Nils Root, who recently purchased a 442-square-foot condominium in the Short North.

Many tiny home residents, however, look to homeownership as a way to free themselves from the burdens of a traditional life and a mortgage payment. Though they can be up to 500 square feet, the average tiny home measures less than 200 square feet.

“There are multiple reasons to go in that direction, a lot of it, purely, is cost,” said Hadinger. “Some people just want to downsize and spend more of their life experiences outside, some people just want to leave less of a footprint.”

Hadinger, who often focuses on green building and solar energy in the classes he teaches, was living in a 2,200-square-foot home when he felt the need to downsize.

“I don’t need a McMansion or anything else,” he said. “Lowering my environmental impact is important to me so if I can take that stuff out and manage it, it leaves room for a lot of other things. That, and I’ve always been fascinated by how I can use a space better.”

As with his own home, Hadinger noticed that people in any house tend to use certain rooms more than others and to varying extents.

“People tend to spend their time in one or two areas,” he said. “But most people, if you look at the use of their homes, it’s a very small footprint.”

As he gears up to build his own tiny home, Hadinger currently rents an apartment, which he said is “still too much.”

“I spend most of my time outside the home, really,” he said “I’m very cognizant of the utilities I use and everything else and if I can control that in a smaller dwelling, that’s much better for me.”

Nico, on the other hand, said that her tiny home doesn’t seem that tiny to her.

“I had always been traveling around the world, living out of a backpack that was 1 square foot,” she said, laughing. “So moving up to something that is more than 100 square feet, that has been quite a change for me.”

The challenges that come along with tiny home living are many, the most obvious being the need to drastically curate belongings.

Since the tiny home trend has largely flown under the radar until recently, in many cities, zoning laws have also served as an impediment to people looking to live off the grid because the movement has outpaced public policy changes.

But in De Graff, Nico said she did not run into any negative reactions to her pitch to build Lovare Homestead or any stringent property laws, just a little bit of ignorance.

“The city officials never heard of tiny houses, composting toilets or living off grid,” she said. “So it did take a little bit of showing and being open and honest, but we haven’t had any problems, just a lot of explaining.”

For that reason, Nico said its important to read up on how to transition to a small space for those who plan to do so.

“You have to really research and see what’s good in your own county,” Nico sad. “But I’m positive that anyone who has the desire to do so, can do it legally.”

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