Tuesday, December 03, 2024

Tag: Tiny House

Advocates Urge Government to ‘Seriously Consider’ Tiny Homes as Solution to Housing Crisis

Owning a home has always been a dream for Tabatha Wiezczorek, but with the price of housing across much of the country through the roof she’s now looking at something smaller — a tiny home.

Ms Wiezczorek grew up in Newcastle and for a few years she was sleeping rough, unable to afford rent.

“I was homeless, I’d been homeless for about two years,” she said.

“I thought Cessnock was pretty cheap and it wasn’t too far away from Newcastle.”

Ms Wiezczorek decided to relocate to Cessnock, about 50 kilometres west of Newcastle, about 10 years ago.

“When I came out here it was a lot cheaper. It was under $300 a week to rent a three-bedroom house, she said.

“There’s nothing decent here now under $400 a week.”

The tiny house movement is booming — so why aren’t more of us actually living in them?

Despite early forecasts of a COVID-driven slump, house prices are now surging in many parts of Australia. This is further widening the gap between the housing “haves” and “have-nots”, and we are seeing related rises in housing stress, rental insecurity and homelessness.

In Australia and elsewhere a movement has emerged that supports tiny house living as an important response to the housing affordability crisis. One of us argued in 2017:

“[Tiny houses] have significant potential to be a catalyst for infill development, either as tiny house villages, or by relaxing planning schemes to allow owners and tenants to situate well-designed tiny houses on suburban lots.”