THE man behind the Tiny Home movement lives in a house he built himself for just $5,000 and it weighs under 2,000 pounds.
Amid soaring house prices and millions of Americans struggling with cost of living pressures, Jay Shafer believes knows a better way to live.
Tiny home movement founder Jay Shafer pictured with his first house he built in the late 1990s[/caption]
Tiny home movement founder Jay Shafer has been building and living in tiny homes for more than two decade[/caption]
Known as the creator of the tiny home movement, Shafer, first came up with the idea when he was homeless in 1999.
He built the “Tumbleweed” house in Iowa when he desperately needed a place to live.
Zoning officials told him he would be able to camp out in his backyard on a property he purchased for just $50,000.
“I really lucked out,” Shafer told The U.S. Sun.
“While the building code would not allow for a house of that size that small, zoning officials could see no way around letting me camp out for as long as I was on my own property.
It was a really nice place to live. I was next to a cemetery so my neighbors were quiet but I was right next to the downtown area so close to the grocery store and all that
Jay Shafer
“It was a really nice place to live. I was next to a cemetery so my neighbors were quiet but I was right next to the downtown area so close to the grocery store and all that.”
By sitting his first house on wheels, Shafer was able to sidestep the permit rules governing houses.
Shafer said the movement was “created in direct response to what had become and remains, extensive unlawful enforcement of the IRC guidelines as law.”
“This is why so many tiny houses are on wheels,” Shafer said.
Shafer submitted a story for a magazine about the merits of small houses and the problems with zoning laws at the time, and then the idea took off.
Now over two decades since his first creation, the tiny home movement has become a global phenomenon promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces.
Tiny Homes are popular among millennials looking for affordable housing options, but have also gained traction among older generations looking to simplify their lives.
They have also been sold as a way to reduce a person’s carbon footprint, with people attracted to their cost efficiency, minimalist lifestyle and environmental sustainability.
Shafer now lives in Sebastopol, California in a tiny house which is just seven by eight feet, which he built himself.
He says he is only able to live in what he calls a “very expensive area” because of the cost-efficiency of his housing.
“It is a very beautiful area, we have redwoods, we have the ocean, we have the mountains,” Shafer said.
“It is very prime real estate normally sold for a very high price.”
According research from Realtor.com released earlier in October, California is the second most expensive states to live in behind Hawaii, with the state having “notoriously high prices for housing, gas, utilities and food.”
Shafer said he managed to build his house for such a low price point by salvaging most of the materials, meaning most of the house is built out of recycled inputs.
By keeping the kitchen and bathroom facilities outside the house, he was able to keep the footprint extremely small.
“I built it for $5000 and it was just persistence, but I didn’t have much money and I needed the house,” Shafer said.
“I owned some of the materials and a lot of salvaged materials but somehow I managed to pull it off but keeping the kitchen and bathroom outside was critical.”
HOMES RESPOND TO HOUSING SHORTFALL
Housing experts say the rise in tiny homes are in part due to an ongoing national housing shortage.
According to estimates from Realtor.com, the country is short between 2.3 million and 6.5 million housing units.
Experts say the housing shortfall is driving housing affordability issues in America, and that outdated zoning rules have hampered construction levels for decades.
The company says the shortfall is the “root cause” of ongoing housing affordability issues in America, blaming outdated zoning rules for hampering construction levels.
While the pandemic sparked a construction boom, the boom has fallen short of demand.
The US Census Bureau says about 1.45 million homes were completed in 2023, which was an increase from the year before.
Shafer said the housing crisis could have been predicted as far back as the 1990s, and called for a re-examination of zoning rules often preventing homes to be built.
“Even 25 years ago it was not hard to see how the housing crisis was already happening for a lot of us,” Shafer told The U.S. Sun.
“It became clearer in 2008, and I think that it’s just, the housing crisis has been perpetuated by a lot of bad laws that prohibit efficiency and affordable housing and until we fix those the crisis will continue.”
Some examples of bad laws named by Shafer include provisions stipulating the size of a room, which he says has “actually nothing to do with health and safety”.
