Recently I was asked why I would build tiny home communities in cities, instead of high-density housing (apartments, condos, townhouses, or semi-detached homes) and my response was, that I wouldn’t. High-density housing makes sense for urban areas where the number of people housed per square foot is the priority, but for addressing housing needs, tiny home communities I feel are a better option. (I have used an apartment as the high-density form of housing in this example, but any traditional form of housing can be substituted.)

Let’s look at some of the benefits of tiny home communities:

• Minister Clark mentioned at the 2022 ROMA Conference that Ontario has a shortage of 1.2M homes.  60% of this population fits the tiny home demographic or over 800,000 people in housing need. At the time of writing, Ontario needs to add 536 homes per day, which can be 177 traditional homes and 359 tiny homes, to meet the needs of Ontarians in housing need by 2030 (the date CMHC planned to meet Canada’s housing needs through the administering the Federal Government’s multi-billion-dollar National Housing Strategy (NHS). This does not take into account emigration or immigration.
• One cannot determine whether someone in housing need would choose a tiny home over another form of housing because other housing options are not available. The question would become, would you rather live in a tiny home, or in your current state of housing?
• There are only a few builders that can build high-density housing, but there are many builders (including DIYers) that can build tiny homes. So tiny homes increase the number of builders that can work to address the housing shortage.
• It can take years before someone can move into a new apartment complex (from concept, through regulations, and construction) vs a tiny home can be move-in ready in a month. The time from concept to move-in is faster with tiny homes.
• The slowest part of building a tiny home community is building the infrastructure, but this is required of traditional developments as well. Once completed, adding tiny homes can more much faster than traditional housing.
• Building an apartment building takes a lot of capital, something only a few developers can afford and only a few investors will support. The cost to build tiny homes is born by the homeowner, so risk and cost are spread over a larger funding base.
• While the cost per square foot to construct a tiny home can be more than the same size apartment, the small size of a tiny home reduces the cost of acquisition, simply because it is small.
• Given housing as the base, a tiny home is the lowest cost of acquisition of any form of housing.
• The material required to build a tiny home is less than any other form of housing.
• Tiny homes are built to the same standards as other forms of housing, so their life expectancy is the same.
• There is no wasted space in a tiny home, in halls, empty or oversized rooms. This results in operating costs being lower than any other form of traditional housing.
• Tiny homes require less walking to live because they are designed for efficient use of space and living.
• When tiny home communities are built, the infrastructure for the whole community can be built at once, therefore at the lowest cost per site, but the homes can be added as required or when available. Connection times to the community typically take a couple of hours or less.
• Tiny home communities can be built where infrastructure doesn’t exist as tiny home communities can be designed to be self-sufficient.
• Tiny home communities can be built on existing farmland, in such a way to produce more crops than the farmland they replace, while providing housing. CropBoxes or other vertical containerized growing systems can produce the same quantity of crops as the land the community uses, using less water, fertilizer, and no pesticides, producing organic foods year-round.
• Additionally, factory-built tiny home advantages include:
  • Onsite construction waste can be reduced or eliminated, resulting in lee materials to the landfill, along with reduced construction costs.
  • They can be built year-round without the delays and damage caused by the elements.
  • They can benefit from volume materials purchase, repeatable building processes, from standardized designs. There are only so many ways to layout a tiny home’s interior.
  • They can be built faster than any other form of housing.
  • Once the build process is approved, they can be manufactured without the cost and delays that regular inspections can result in.
  • More labourers can be trained to assemble the components in a tiny home, creating new jobs, in many locations across the country while helping to address Canada’s housing crisis.