Why is the ABC pushing this rot?
They look beautiful online, seem to offer a way to escape the mortgage trap and present an opportunity to downsize your possessions, but how simple is real life in a tiny house?
Fay (not her real name) and her partner live in a tiny house that they built themselves in the Perth metropolitan area.
She told Jessica Strutt on ABC Radio Perth that their tiny house is comfortable but that “the first thing you notice is that it gets messy really quickly”.
“The same surface has multiple uses so if you have something on that surface and you want to use it for something else you have to clear it up.
“If you are planning to do something you think, ‘I will have to do this first before I can do that’ — it’s a Tetris game.”
The biggest attraction of the tiny house for Fay, is in her mid-30s, was home ownership without a heavy mortgage.
“The main reason why I went to tiny was the financial side of things,” she said.
Fay’s tiny home is slightly more spacious than most, thanks to her partner.
“My partner is over two metres tall so I get to enjoy the extra height that we had to design into the tiny house so that he could be happy living in it,” she said.
“There is a certain lightness about it I suppose, because we do have fewer things.”
Other talkback callers had differing opinions about the rise of the tiny home:
Anon: “[I’m] 60, divorced [and] can’t access suitable accommodation. It is degrading, abusive and soul-destroying. A tiny home gives privacy, safety and security.”
Steve: “To me tiny homes are a waste of money. [People are] better off buying a good large caravan and at least the resale is really good. They have everything a tiny home has and a lot easier to be mobile on and off road.”
Luke: “I like the idea of tiny houses but where and how do you put the house? Do you rent a small place at a caravan park or can you just put it anywhere for free like you can do with camping in some locations?”
Disaster protection built-in
For talkback caller Wade, who spent about $30,000 building a tiny home on the back of an old fire truck, the financial freedom has also been a big plus.
“It’s just water and lights until we get solar and some water collection set up.”
Although he and his partner have had to become accustomed to living in very close quarters and having fewer possessions, they have also become “very good at communicating”, Wade explained.
Despite not owning the ground his home has been parked on, Wade’s tiny house on the back of a truck feels more secure than a traditional home.
“A big thing for me is, looking at the fires around the country, our home is now catastrophe and fire proof,” he said.
Dignity and security in old age
For Kim Connolly, president of the Australian Tiny House Association, tiny homes represent an answer to the urgent problem of older women facing homelessness, which no other housing type addresses.
“In my area we have a situation where especially older single women are ending up homeless, despite the fact that they have worked all their life … they have been productive members of society,” Ms Connolly said.
“In my area [Coffs Harbour], if you are on Newstart, 0.03 per cent of the rentals are affordable for you.
Ms Connolly does not live in a tiny house herself, but she has started building them and hopes to start a village offering the affordable homes for people in need to live in.
Ms Connolly said she was often asked why she supported tiny houses over granny flats and traditional caravans, and part of the reason was that with their higher ceilings and pitched rooves, tiny homes could feel more spacious, and were more secure than a granny flat.
“That’s the difference that I find with the older single women and men that I am talking to,” she said.
“I have been hearing stories of people who have paid into their children’s yards and got a granny flat built.
“Then the children get divorced and the money from the granny flat goes into the sale of the house and they lose their relationship with their children and their home.”
A roof over your head but no solid ground
While tiny houses could be built on the back of trailers to get around building regulations, they weigh several tonnes and often need connection to services including electricity, water and sewerage, and can be onerous to move.
Their mobility can be an advantage, but can also leave many tiny home dwellers in a legal grey area, renting space in backyards or rural properties without council knowledge or approval, and under the threat of discovery.
“Currently we are renting a property,” Fay said, but like many tiny house dwellers the construction was went without local council approval.
“There is a concern about eventually at some point in the future we might get thrown out.”
Is regulation the answer?
Ms Connolly has been hoping that councils would eventually develop regulations that allowed tiny houses to park legally, long-term, because the older people she has wanted to help need secure ground as well as a roof over their head.
“Those people tend to be a bit more cautious about investing $60,000 or $70,000 in a tiny house if they are worried that they are going to be told to move on, or [that] the neighbours will complain and then they won’t have anywhere to put their tiny house,” she said.
But Fay has been wary of regulation and the burden it may impose on her dream of living lighter.
“I do feel like when things get regulated then they might impose conditions that make it more complicated and more difficult or cause adverse outcomes,” she said.
“At the moment I’m enjoying being in this grey area.”
A tiny home IS a caravan. There is ZERO difference. Why is the ABC detemined to push the lie that there is difference in a lick of paint? It has no financial reason to do so we can only conclude that it is cultural.
We know the ABC is chock full of bourgeois progressives. Is that it? From their comfortable and fattened middle class homes, ABC editors are making themselves feel better about the total marginalisation from home ownership of entire generations of Australian kids?
Rebranding trailor trash as cool is a form of gaslighting. How will you ever catch up to a real house being out of the market? What happens when you grow up and discover you’re a vagrant with changing tastes? Where do you put the kids? Where do you fit an increased apetite for improved living standards? How do you accomodate an increased desire for security?
No doubt these questions are racist, sexist and caravanist. But these ABC disgraces need to take a glance at a basic model of human happiness. Let’s begin with Maslow’s heairachy of needs:
Once you get above oxygen, food and water, the next level of human survival, let alone contentment, revolves entirely around having a home in which to secure you family. The tiny house satisfies NONE of these needs.
We can perhaps comfort ourselves in the knowledge that the ABC’s well-housed bourgeois progressives are making a good fist of self-actualisation at the top of the pyramid.
We just need to add vicious hypocrisy to it.
