Over the last few years, the tiny home craze has been on the rise. More and more American families are ditching the dream of an expansive house filled to the brim with furniture and belongings, in favor of a tiny home that offers simplicity and clean living. Unfortunately, state and local governments have presented numerous challenges and hurdles for tiny home buyers to overcome. As a result, mainstream home manufacturers, like Clayton, have started to get in on the trend. Here's how things are looking.
Tiny homes offer the promise of a much simpler life. Many young couples and retirees look to tiny homes as a way to escape consumerism, live frugally, and ditch the clutter that comes with a full-size home. This is especially true for people who love to travel and hate the idea of having a big empty home to deal with while they're away. In addition, as we become more aware of global living conditions, we can see that tiny living is commonplace in other parts of the world, so why shouldn't we be doing the same thing? For proponents of tiny living, it is as much a personal decision as it is a cause for good.
Up until this point, many tiny home dwellers have had to cut their own path here in the US, where builders are always focused on bigger and fancier homes. A lot of these dwellings were built by hand or converted from other structures that were not intended to be lived in full time such as shipping containers, sheds, campers, etc. In most cases, the tiny homes we see on TV are not permanently secured to the ground and they do not meet local building codes for safety or sanitary living. This covers everything from minimum room sizes to the type of foundation being used. In many cases, municipalities have blocked tiny homes altogether because they do not see them as a reasonable means for family living, nor a productive use of land that will add value to the community. There have been serious questions about the safety of these tiny homes in the event of bad weather or other unexpected circumstances.