Tag: community

Tuesday Catch Up , Tiny Home Show, Rentals.ca, welcome Richard, and goodbye tiny homes.

Written by Founder on May 14, 2024. Posted in Founder's Blog, News, Rental News. No Comments on Tuesday Catch Up , Tiny Home Show, Rentals.ca, welcome Richard, and goodbye tiny homes.

I’m going to begin combining news items, so I can inform but not overwhelm. This will allow me to share more without generating a pile of email notices.

The Tiny Home Show in Ottawa this past weekend was a real success from my perspective. I made lots of great contacts with business people that are eager to help us move forward, along with many future tiny home community citizens. I love talking with everyone, sharing our vision of Less Space, More Life™ as it reinforces that this is a worthwhile pursuit. This year more than ever, the general response has been, “this is exactly what I am looking for, when can I move in?” Happily we are working on 2-projects now, one in Odessa, ON and the other in Elliot Lake, ON. This was the focus of our booth info, and my presentation to close the show, so if you missed it, I am polishing up the presentation and will post it here when complete.

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Scary news from our friends at Rentals.ca that the average asking rents for all residential property types in Canada increased by 9.3% year-over-year in April, reaching an average of $2,188 per month according to Rentals.ca and Urbanation’s latest National Rent Report. This rate of increase is an acceleration from the 8.8% annual increase recorded in March.

Key points from the summary:

Average asking rents in Canada increased by 9.3% year-over-year in April.
Rents have surged by a total of 32% since hitting their COVID-19 low in April 2021.
Purpose-built rentals outpaced condos with a growth rate of 13.1%.
Saskatchewan emerged as the provincial leader in annual rent growth, surpassing Alberta with an 18.4% increase.

May Rental Report

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Welcome to Richard Schumacher, P.Eng.

Richard has been helping me for the past few months bring the vision of tiny home community living into the “real world”. His years of experience as a Land Development Professional, has been somewhat frustrating at times, as I have been forced to face the challenges that being a developer actually involves.

He is a high performing professional with 20+ years of experience in real estate development, construction, entrepreneurship and start-ups. Known for exception people skills, adaptability to any environment, resourcefulness and finding collaborative and innovative solutions to complex problems. He believes in showing up and going the extra mile. He accepts the challenge, learns from failure and embraces the unknown.

His experience and controlled enthusiasm has been a welcome addition to our volunteer team. You can find him on LinkedIn here …

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Further on the topic of land development …

I have come to learn that the layers of bureaucracy that have evolved, while I understand have been created to protect, direct, and organize, have also become a nearly insurmountable barrier to development. And with each level of bureaucracy comes another round of costs, and who ultimately pays theses fees, the home-buyer. Initially the developer pays the costs with borrowed money for construction. This borrowed money also carries fees in addition to interest, so a simple $100 municipal fee may cost $125-150 by the time it reaches the home-buyer, depending on the length of time it takes the development to be sold, and there are many. Not that the developer is making money on this, it’s just that a development can cost millions to complete, all that carries interest and fees. Some may say this supports the reason to build more rental units, so the consumer isn’t burdened with these extra costs, but these costs still must be paid, and are some of the reason new purpose-built rental rates are so high.

With the current high interest rates, I have noticed a reduction in traditional construction. At the tiny home show this weekend, I had several developers approach me, interested in exploring tiny home community development. While the governments have been highlighting the advancements they are making in lowering barriers to development in the media, what hasn’t been mentioned is that new construct starts continues to decline. It can take years for a new builds to begin, so what we see now are high-density projects that may have started planning in 2014. It will take years for the effects of fighting to reduce inflation with high interest rates to be seen in housing development. I am hopeful that this will help our nimble, scalable tiny home community model to take hold in a big way.

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In closing, we are working to eliminate the phrase “tiny home” from our vocabulary. As a society, we tend to attach associations to words and phrases, and in many places “tiny home” has become associated with transient, trailer park, and slum. I gave our form of housing a lot of thought and realized that what we are building is communities of bachelor sized bungalows. Early on I moved away from the concept of homes on wheels, as this involved more explanation than I wanted to put into educating building officials. While I loved the idea of taking your home with you when you moved, we have since evolved the community concept to a national cooperative, that allows you to move within the network, without cost. Moving someone that has embraced a minimalistic lifestyle, doesn’t include moving all the “stuff” that makes moving a chore. So from here on, we will use Bachalows™ to refer to our form of permanent, inspected, building code compliant, bachelor sized bungalows, and look forward to explaining what these are every time someone asks.

Less Space More Life: A Tiny Town Podcast

Written by Founder on April 18, 2024. Posted in Communities, Founder's Blog. No Comments on Less Space More Life: A Tiny Town Podcast

Less Space More Life is a podcast exploring the future of tiny home living. Hosted by Chad and Matt from the Tiny Home Association (tinytownassociation.com) in Barrie, Ontario (Canada), this series spotlight on the opportunities and benefits of environmentally sustainable micro-housing, as well as the challenges to creating these new paths to affordable housing and home ownership.

Come on in. Make yourself at home! Less Space More Life is a podcast exploring the future of tiny home living. Hosted by Chad and Matt from the Tiny Home Association (tinytownassociation.com) in Barrie, Ontario (Canada), this series spotlight on the opportunities and benefits of environmentally sustainable micro-housing, as well as the challenges to creating these new paths to affordable housing and home ownership.

https://tinytownassociation.podbean.com

Get Involved

Written by Founder on February 9, 2024. Posted in Communities, Founder's Blog, News. 7 Comments on Get Involved

Are you interested in tiny home communities? Are you looking to live in a community, invest in a community, or support a community? Fill out our 3-question form and we’ll keep you updated on our progress in your area of interest. Together we can have an impact on affordable housing options in Canada. Sign up today! Tiny Town Communities – Get Involved

Welcome Tapestry Community Capital

Written by Founder on January 23, 2024. Posted in Founder's Blog, Funding News, News. No Comments on Welcome Tapestry Community Capital

We are pleased to announce our recent partnership with Tapestry Community Capital.

Tiny Town Association and Tapestry Community Capital partner to boost affordable housing financing

Ever looked into where your investments are going and ended up feeling a bit disheartened? Too many traditional investments funnel your money into harmful industries like fossil fuels, deforestation, and weapons.

What if you could invest directly into affordable, sustainable housing for your neighbours and earn healthy returns at the same time?

At Tiny Town Association, we’re excited to soon offer an opportunity to do just that. We’re partnering with Tapestry Community Capital, an organization supporting non-profits and community groups in raising investment for their crucial work.

More details about how you can invest in Tiny Town projects (like our proposed 82-home community in Elliot Lake) are to come in the next few months. But first, what is a community bond? And how can community bond investments support affordable housing in Canada?

Scaling up affordable housing in Canada

There’s no doubt about it — Canadians are facing a housing crisis.

People living on minimum wage or fixed income can’t afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in most major cities. And the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates we’ll need around 3.5 million new housing units by 2030 to restore affordability. Canada has the lowest number of available housing units per 1,000 people of all the G7 countries.

Non-profit affordable housing providers (like the Tiny Town Association!) have scalable, sustainable solutions. But to bring those solutions to communities, they need flexible financing solutions tailored to their terms and timelines.

Traditional lenders often base loans on a property’s anticipated income. When rents are adjusted below market value, resulting in decreased net income, lenders become hesitant to provide the required funding, creating a funding gap. This challenge is compounded for Canadian non-profit housing providers who cannot take on equity investment. Consequently, these organizations often navigate a complex web of multiple — sometimes over a dozen — financing sources, each with its own set of rules and requirements. It can be a major challenge to align their projects’ milestones and cash flow needs with their financing.

The solution: community bonds

Tapestry Community Capital offers a solution by supporting non-profit organizations in unlocking private capital through a social finance tool — the community bond. Unlike traditional bonds, community bonds not only provide a financial return but also offer investors a social or environmental return.

Community bonds are available to both institutional and retail investors, meaning even individuals with small amounts of available capital can support affordable housing (and other social purpose projects) right in their neighbourhood — helping to house the people who work in their local shops, supporting their disabled and elderly neighbours, and making a serious contribution to the effort to end homelessness in their community.

To date, Tapestry has supported qualified issuers in raising over $120 million in community investment from more than 4,000 community investors. This capital has been deployed by our partners to develop a range of essential community assets, including those in renewable energy, arts & culture, education, and affordable housing.

Benefits of community bonds

From financial capital to social capital, community bonds offer many benefits, including:

An increased pool of capital — community bonds create a new avenue for accessing private capital, addressing the funding gap for non-profit housing providers.
Flexibility and efficiency — with community bonds, issuers define bond terms that suit their project, making financing more predictable and efficient.
Funding catalyzation — a sold-out community bond raise illustrates community backing, enhancing the likelihood of securing other funding sources, including mortgage loans.
Increased community support — community bonds foster meaningful community engagement and allow community members to financially benefit from affordable housing developments.
Scalability and sustainability — more than 70% of community bond investors choose to reinvest their returns, creating a pool of capital for future projects.

Tapestry’s work in affordable housing

Currently, Tapestry supports eight diverse affordable housing providers in unlocking capital using community bonds. Explore some of their stories here.

Want to be the first to know about Tiny Town Association investment opportunities? Send us an email or sign up for our email newsletter here.

Canadian Business Owner – Multicultural Entrepreneurs Business Community – Conversation

Written by Founder on December 21, 2023. Posted in Communities, Founder's Blog, News. No Comments on Canadian Business Owner – Multicultural Entrepreneurs Business Community – Conversation

Thanks Rasheed, for the opportunity to share our affordable, tiny home community vision with your audience. The more we can get the word out, and help people to understand that our tiny home communities aren’t something to fear, they are just like any other, but smaller and more affordable. We feel our developments will also rekindle what has been lost in traditional housing, community. When the biggest room in your house is the outdoors, meeting and getting to know your neighbours is inevitable.

https://www.mebccanada.com/conversations.html

Tiny Home Show & Conference, a success!

Written by Founder on August 15, 2022. Posted in Founder's Blog. No Comments on Tiny Home Show & Conference, a success!

Well, the Tiny Home Show & Conference ended last weekend, August 7th and I have to say I am happy I attended. If you have an interest in tiny homes, in any aspect, plan to attend the next one. It was really worth it. I made a number of new connections with municipalities, as well as tiny prospective homeowners, builders, and suppliers. I also renewed some old acquaintances and shared our tiny home community vision. Well worth the time, cost, and effort as we gave away almost 3,000 promotional items! The promoters announced they plan to hold another, so watch the website or follow them on your fav social channel for the latest.

More exciting news to come. Stay tuned …

Thank you, members.

Written by Founder on June 28, 2021. Posted in Founder's Blog. No Comments on Thank you, members.

For all those that have taken the step to support the Association through your $25 annual membership fee, I have posted a set of plans that have been designed to meet the Ontario Building Code (OBC). This is an initiative that was possible by your support. The plans were created for use in the southeastern portion of Ontario, so modifications would be required to meet northern Ontario insulation/heating requirements. These plans can be the basis for discussions with a local building department about your own tiny home project. You will note that no wheel chassis system is shown in the plans. Our model is designed to be attached to the pier foundation when being lived in, then disconnected from the piers and attached to a wheeled chassis for relocating. This allows the home to meet the OBC and can meet the wide-load permit requirements when moving. The design is an improvement on the Logan32 plans, as a 1-bedroom self-contained unit that is comparable to a bachelor or 1-bedroom apartment. It is seniors-friendly (with no stairs and a shower instead of a tub) and could be modified to be fully accessible. This is planned to be the starship model home in our tiny home community developments.

Development > Development Proposals > Download Repository

Welcome Sheena

Written by Founder on September 14, 2018. Posted in Founder's Blog.

A shout-out today to Sheena Jardine-Olade who recently joined our Advisory Board. With a background in urban planning, arts, and culture, environmental management, stakeholder engagement and research, Sheena channels her experience and out-of-the-box thinking into innovative solutions and strategies that generate unique solutions.

I feel that Sheena will make a strong addition to the Board as she has already been actively helping with edits to the website content and grant applications. Her blog, the Tiny Home News will bring tiny home/community-related articles to the Association website. Welcome, Sheena!