If you haven’t seen the latest news and information about our Eco-village project, check out the full details here: https://tinytownassociation.com/odessa-eco-village
We’ve now added information about:
If your interested in a new future of living, check out the latest news, as there are only 27-openings in the community!
A BIG thank you to everyone that stopped by to say hi at the Tiny Home Show last Saturday and Sunday at the Ancaster Fairgrounds. Everyone’s positive enthusiasm was rejuvenating, and the interest in tiny home communities was reaffirming. I was glad that all age groups showed interest and a desire to live in our small modular home community. Based on the questions many people asked at the show, I will prepare a series of posts that provide insight.
The community focus has expanded over the years. Not only are people looking for affordable and attainable housing. but they are missing the community aspect in today’s world. We will continue to expand the “community” component of Tiny Town developments. We want to encourage you to share your thoughts on what that would look like to you, so we are holding a draw for a Tiny Town Association t-shirt. Images of the t-shirt can be seen in the photo of me in our Tiny Home Show booth. (One of the few times there wasn’t a lineup of people waiting to chat.)
Entry into the draw is simple. In your own words, tell us what would make living in our small modular developments a community. Is it the amenities, the social interaction (where/how that would happen), the community layout? Anything is possible. You may only submit one story which will enter you into the draw. The draw is random, we are not judging your thoughts, so every entry is an opportunity to win. The Tiny Town Association reserves the right to incorporate your ideas into our community model and will give kudos in return. We also may share all or part of your submission on the website, in print or use in presentations. If your story is under 250 words, we will award 1-entry and over 250 words we will award 2-entries. 1-additional entry will be awarded if you include a sketch or drawing to help illustrate your story, and 5-additional entries will be awarded if you send a link to a short video you create that explains and/or illustrates your thoughts. A small, medium, or large shirt will be mailed to the winner. Entries can be sent to
We have been connecting with municipalities across the province about developing tiny home communities, emails sent to over 400 and here are the results so far.
Stay tuned for more news as we begin working through the development process. Who will be the home of the first “Showcase” community?
Subscribe to your news feed below to see if an affordable micro/tiny/small home community is coming to a municipality/township/city/town near you.
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
After posting our Logan36 RFP, we received some concept drawings to our specifications. NRB Inc. has provided a design that we feel best captures our tiny home vision. You will note that there are only windows and doors on 1-side of the home. This is to enhance privacy within Pocket Communities and our Tiny Town community design.
https://www.nrb-inc.com
NRB is our primary tiny home provider for our Pocket Community and Tiny Town projects.
I know things have been quiet here the last while, but that doesn’t mean tings have stopped, in fact there is more happening than ever before.
First I want to welcome Melissa Robar as Communications Manager and Sean Warring as Research Manager. Both bring a lot of experience and enthusiasm to the project. You can read their bios by clicking on their photo’s from the Advisory Board page.
Our focus this year despite the global pandemic, is to prepare for the building of a Demonstration Tiny Town. This project will become a living, affordable tiny home community, include a neighbourhood where invited delegations of city administrators will be able to experience the community lifestyle and provide an opportunity to visually display our Tiny Town vision. We have identified a number of ways that tiny homes can fit into society, with Tiny Towns providing a unique supportive community experience. The project proposal details are posted here.
The project proposal has been sent to each provincial/territorial housing Ministry, CMHC and the Prime Minister’s office. We are working to send it out to all 124 first level cities we have identified as Tiny Town hosts. Our list of host cities can be found here.
More to come…
We have been working on the Tiny Town Manifesto, a compilation/summary of the way we see that tiny homes on wheels (THOWs) can integrate into society. As a not-for-profit Association, our goal is to enable THOWs as a housing option for anyone that is looking for an affordable, minimalistic form of housing. Whether you are a single, couple, new potential homeowner or retiring empty-nester, tiny homes could be the answer you are looking for in an easy to maintain, affordable to operate, community-oriented lifestyle home.
Each version of the Manifesto we publish builds on the last to develop the concept and provide a path that individuals, companies, cities, municipalities, and countries can incorporate to integrate tiny homes into society. We aren’t looking to change the way people live, we simply want THOWs to be an option for anyone.
I just wanted to take a moment to clarify what the Tiny Town Association is and is not for those that have not visited our website. We do not own or operate any tiny home communities but are advocating for governments to make changes to allow people to live tiny. We have identified 4 key ways that zoning bylaws can change to accommodate tiny homes, and while we have an affinity for our Tiny Town concept (hence the Association name), we strongly support all ways that allow tiny homes to exist alongside traditional housing.
We are advocating for tiny homes on vacant land/lots, as inFILL housing, in Pocket Communities, and in Tiny Towns. Expanded explanations are on our website, but in a nutshell, here is what we mean:
Vacant land is rural, divided but undeveloped land that an individual tiny homeowner would purchase, make the needed improvement to and live on. Building lots are the same but within a city. In both these scenarios, we expect that the city/municipality would assess a tax rate equal to the smallest traditional house size that could be built on the land, in place of the tiny home. The land is owned by the tiny homeowner.
InFILL Housing is where a homeowner with a big enough yard that met the city requirements could apply and receive an annual permit to provide services for and rent space to a tiny homeowner. This would be like the coach house or laneway housing model that many cities are adopting, but for tiny homes on wheels. The site is rented by the tiny homeowner.
Pocket Communities would be developed on vacant lots within a city. The lots would either be cooperatively owned or owned by a developer. Cooperative Pocket Communities would be permanent sites, whereas undeveloped sites we expect would be temporary. However, some temporary communities could exist for many years. The site is rented by the tiny homeowner, but in the coop model, they could have the stability and rent geared to cost that a coop offers.
Tiny Towns we feel are the most exciting and offer the most potential for tiny home living. Cooperatively owned and built on rural properties of 100 acres or more, we envision that they would be connected to their host city through public transit. Tiny home sites would be larger than within the city and offer lots of community space. The towns themselves would be off-grid providing the utility services to its citizens in an environmentally responsible way. We see this growing into a network of Tiny Towns connected to all major cities so that a tiny homeowner can relocate to another city (for work or family) in a similar way that traditional homeowners would, but taking their tiny home with them when they move. The site is rented by the coop-member tiny homeowner enjoying a cost-based rental rate.
How Income is a Factor in the Tiny Home Market
As we reviewed our notes to date from the past 5 sessions, the point we concluded from the income/age statistics didn’t identify the relationship. While the numbers proved that all household demographics could afford a tiny house, what we didn’t see at the time was a relationship between affordability and tiny home ownership. We have now made the association and are ready to apply the formula to our demographics.
We expect that tiny homes will be considered as an option for many different reasons in the future, but today the strongest interest comes from people looking for an affordable housing solution.
This can be extrapolated to suggest that those with more financial means, would be less interested in owning a tiny home. For our calculations, we have determined that an inverse relationship, meaning that the more a person or couple has available to spend, the less likely they are to spend it on a tiny home. We will call this the Affluence Factor (AF).
What we have done is taken our prospective tiny home buyer’s market after applying the disability and health factors, broken each age category apart by applying our single, couple and single parent percentages, applied the AF to each, then reassembled the groups by age. The following chart shows the market-to-date before and after the AF is applied. This reduced the market size by almost 49%.
Health as a Factor of Tiny Home Living
Today we look at how health could affect each age groups’ propensity to live tiny. Statistics on health, in general, are elusive and we have loosely applied what we could assemble to our target groups.
First, we applied a “Prevalence to Disabilities”. The purpose was to identify that some people in each age category would not be able to or not feel comfortable living without assistance. While this does not apply specifically to tiny homes, it does relate to all forms of accommodation and living arrangements. Overall, we calculated 18.73% of the target group would be affected by disabilities making tiny home living an unfavorable choice.
Next, we looked at how health issues would affect some people’s ability and desire to live tiny. We have used Hypertension as the indicator. In general terms, hypertension is abnormally high blood pressure, indicating a state of great psychological stress. It can be an indicator of current conditions or developing conditions, so we felt it could also dictate the comfort-level of prospective tiny home owners. This was used to further reduce the number of potential tiny homeowners by 20.24% when the age-grouped percentages were applied.
The chart below begins with the tiny homeowner’s market potential that we have developed up to and including Householder demographics, shown in column 1, then the Disability factors are applied to move to column 2 and lastly, the Hypertension factor is applied in column 3.
While it is difficult to accurately predict the true impact health and physical ability will have on independent tiny home living, we feel that these adjustments are reasonable, based on the historical data available.
