Chapter 1 from “Going Tiny: Failure + Opportunity in the Future of Affordable Housing”

CritDay note: The following is the first chapter of my recently released book, Going Tiny, on my experience building and living in a tiny house – which I’ve talked about a couple times before – affordable housing, and thinking about larger issues and offering alternative solutions as architects and designers. You can buy the book, paperback or eBook, on Amazon.

If you’ve picked up this book, you probably already know the craze. You’ve seen the shows on HGTV – Tiny House, Big Living, Tiny House Hunters, Tiny Luxury, Tiny Houses on Huge Plots of Land Because for Some Reason People are Still Watching This Show Even Though It Doesn’t Make Sense, and so on. Whatever the newest iteration is this week. It seems like they probably hired an intern to just sit in a coffee shop all day and think of puns to go with tiny houses and they pop out a season of it to see if it sticks.

Like most people who watch some ridiculous shows on home improvement networks, you might find yourself entertained, but probably leave the show thinking, “that’s cool, but I couldn’t ever do that.” I’m not here to change your mind; in fact, I’d agree with you. And I built my own tiny house (and still live in it). It’s not that you actually couldn’t – you’d be surprised at what you’re able to live with and within… it’s just probably not the best idea.

You probably don’t know who I am; that’s cool, because you probably shouldn’t. So who am I to tell you how to live your life? You’re right again; I mean, you do you, fam. I don’t care.

But my name is Davis Richardson – in case you missed that – and I can tell you that you probably shouldn’t build your dream house on a tiny flatbed trailer because that’s precisely what I did. And I don’t say that out of regret or because my experience has been a nightmare. Quite the opposite, in fact. I love my little house on a flatbed trailer. If I could do it all over again, I would – with a few changes, of course. I am a designer, after all. But if you want me to build you one? Well, let’s sit down and talk this through.

That’s what this book is – the conversation that would ensue if you were thinking about designing and building a tiny house on wheels. So let’s talk.

—

We all want a one-size-fits-all solution to our problems and our questions, don’t we? It is much easier when you’re talking (see also: arguing, tweeting, etc.) politics, to say “all we need to do is x” or “if y would just…” Life seems a lot simpler that way. It’s binary thinking.

And it’s a totally natural and understandable desire. Psychologically speaking, it makes sense that this kind of simplicity is what we’re after. Of course we want to know and believe what is true; we desire happiness, success, goodness. We desire to be correct in what we say and do. Black-and-white. Peanut butter-and-jelly. No-nonsense.

But if we’re talking about truth, the truth is this world in which we live is incredibly complex. It is rarely as black-and-white as we paint it to be in our own constructed realities. We simply cannot know everything, so we choose from the things we do know to construct what we believe to be real and true. Simple psychology tells us this – we reduce down the complexity and make simplified conclusions. There’s nothing wrong with this process in and of itself. Without it, the world would be entirely overwhelming, driving us into uncontrollable anxiety and stress.

But this psychological phenomenon is a two-sided coin. While this discernment allows us to formulate worldviews, discover truth, and develop opinions, the root cause is the same that leads to conspiracy theories (not that these are inherently wrong – everything should be questioned. But I’m confident the world is not run by Jay-Z and Beyoncé and some hidden Illuminati cult – even if Jay-Z and Beyoncé do kinda run the world). In fact, it is the same phenomenon that produces stereotypes, prejudice, racism, and all kinds of bigotry. We know the dangers of that. Sadly, we still know it all too well.

While the issue of sustainability and affordable housing are not the same kind of issue as racism, they are tied together. A common ancestor of these issues is injustice. I could write a whole separate book on racism and affordable housing, and maybe someday I will, but for now I will defer to those who have done so well before me in that regard (see “Evicted”)[1]. Let’s save the rest of that conversation for a different day.

Our cities today are becoming increasingly expensive to live in, and as people, especially millennials, move back to cities, we have to deal with this problem as it will get worse the longer it goes un- or under-addressed. What do people do when they like the city and have a good job, but can’t afford to live there anymore?

The suburbs.

What happens when young couples have kids and start families, seeking to set their children up in the best schools and with the best opportunities? And to live in the safest neighborhoods (or perceived “safety”)?[2]

The suburbs.

What happens when minorities in lower-income areas find themselves in “up-and-coming” neighborhoods, with new development, raised property values and taxes, and suddenly more white people? (this is called gentrification)

The suburbs.

But what’s so wrong with the suburbs? I grew up in the suburbs, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I was most certainly one of those kids whose parents wanted to set up them up for safety and success. And for that I’m thankful.

Aside from the strip mall consumerism, difficulty to find community, and overall lack of a cohesive aesthetic, the suburbs are inherently unsustainable. And who likes sitting in traffic? Reliance on automobiles is its calling card, and the effect of the auto industry on fossil fuel depletion and global warming has been well-documented.[3]

We need solutions. It would be easy to assess the problems, knowing we need quick solutions because growth isn’t slowing down any time soon and neither is global temperature rise. Human nature would tell us the solution probably lies in one simple thing.

The tiny house, right?

Millennials, who are getting married later, having kids later, if at all, and are more apt to live by themselves, are growing and moving to cities in droves. Their – our – lifestyles, collectively, are more nomadic, focused more on experiences than consumer goods. We apparently care more about good avocado toast than affording a mortgage (how hard can I roll my eyes?).[4] Somehow, it’s our fault that Applebee’s is dying and not the fact that the food is the actual manifestation of the suburbs in food form (can you tell I don’t really like the suburbs? Or Applebee’s?)[5]

We value flexibility over stability; millennials are much more likely to be politically progressive, caring about environmentalism and sustainability.[6] Part of the millennial ethic is a care for the world and those disadvantaged within.

We have entrepreneurial spirits, much less likely to be company men or women our whole lives like our parents or grandparents might have been, but taking multiple jobs and careers along the way. Or even making our own path.

So tiny houses make perfect sense, right?

You’re not wrong, my friend.

But just because something makes sense, in black-and-white, on paper, in a vacuum, doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate to the real world, with its intricacies, regulations, and hiccups.

We absolutely must rethink our relationship with housing and how much we’re willing to pay for it. While the tiny house offers a great alternative, it doesn’t represent the sole solution, a panacea to the poison plaguing contemporary cities.

This book will explore how tiny houses fall short in their ability to be a lasting solution to the current and coming housing crises in cities but seeks to extract the successes and lessons they’ve brought to the table in order to find the best way forward in affordable, sustainable, architecturally-significant housing.

After starting by telling my tiny house story here in the opening chapter, I’ll briefly lay out the history of the tiny house movement in Chapter 2, followed by the failures I’ve personally run into and the obstacles I see to the long-term future of the THOW – based both on my personal, anecdotal evidence and experience and on trends and research I’ve found on affordable housing and urbanism – in the following chapters, 3 and 4.

But it’s not all bad news – the second half of the book will focus on how we can use the THOW movement to find new solutions for the urban housing crisis in terms of affordability, sustainability, and design. I see the tiny house paving the way for other new affordable housing typologies, including:

· Microhousing

· Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs)

· Increased Single-Family Home Density

· Cohousing

· Retrofitting Obsolete Infrastructure

· Community Living to combat Homelessness

—

I decided to build my tiny house on wheels the summer after I graduated from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. At Harding, I received my Bachelor of Arts in Interior Design, and I also competed for the Bisons[7] as the catcher on the baseball team. HU is an NCAA Division II school, so we played a bunch of other colleges you’ve never heard of in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The towns we played in on the road made Searcy, population 20,000, feel like New York City when we returned.

I had a good career at Harding. My junior season, in 2015, I’d have the best year of my career, leading the team in most offensive categories and capping the year off with a few awards, including 1st-team Academic All-America. Going into my senior year, I was excited – amped and working for an even bigger year, personally and as a team. We had a large senior class coming back, some of my best friends, and we worked hard all offseason. Expectations, within and without, were high, naturally.

But It didn’t come together.

To this day, I really couldn’t tell you why. We worked hard. We prepared and focused on the right things. Our process and our work ethic were unmatched. And that was always our focus anyway – never on results. So even though I don’t look back on that season with regret, as a competitor, you always leave with a bad taste in your mouth when the results don’t fall the way you think they should have.

Personally, I had a down year, putting up career lows at the plate. I knew going into the season my chances of going on and playing professional baseball were slim, but any scouting interest I had garnered disappeared in 2016.

I left Arkansas that May and headed home for Atlanta, happy with my career and accomplishments, but still itching for something. I had always been an athlete, but that would not be my identity going forward.

I had to do something.

Something else. Something purposeful. Something with my hands, again.

In the fall, I’d be heading to Austin, Texas (like so many other millennials) to start graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, where I’d be pursuing my Masters in Architecture. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to be an architect. My late uncle, Jim Davis, was an architect in Atlanta under the prestigious architect John Portman. I had favored Uncle Jim growing up, and I was the closest thing to a son he had; we weren’t incredibly close, but he always took an interest in me and my creativity, fostering it by always gifting me books on architecture and the environment. As a kid, I didn’t really appreciate the field guides on rocks and birds he’d give to me at Christmas, but I’m so thankful for his influence now. Uncle Jim would pass away from lung cancer in the summer of 2016, two months before I’d complete Kinetohaus, the first built work of my architecture career.

At this point, I hadn’t yet figured out where I was even going to live in Austin in the fall. I had two months to find a place I could afford in a saturated market for renters and buyers, and I didn’t know the city in the least. I didn’t know the difference between Tarrytown – the affluent neighborhood – and Pflugerville – the way up north suburb.

Instead of succumbing, crossing my fingers, and hoping for the best on an overpriced and probably crappy apartment, I subverted the system.

Actually, the whole thing started as a joke.

My friend, Tanner Johnston, from Harding also happened to be from Atlanta and would be back there with his family for the summer, as well. We had talked about building something while we were both home – a coffee stand, a small piece of furniture, just something fun to keep us occupied.

Tanner made the mistake of sharing a video with me on Facebook of a student at UT who had built his own tiny house for $11,000 and lived in it while attending school. I had, of course, heard of tiny houses on wheels at this point, but had never even considered building one until this video. It just hit home – this kid could do it, so surely I could, right? And he goes to UT, so I guess there has to be somewhere in Austin for me to park it.

I jokingly commented “let’s do it!” but after thinking it through, crunching the numbers on the cost and the build process, I realized this was actually a legitimate option.

If only I could convince some people to help me. I’d need a partner in crime, parents willing to let me take over the driveway (and garage…and basement…), and a few other hands here and there.

Tanner had no hesitation dedicating his summer to helping me build my future home. What a friend, right? I owe him my life. The “project team” would also include my cousin, Mack Smith, an electrical engineer who would be the go-to on everything technical and tool-related. Mack and I had spent some time the last few summers when I would come home building small furniture projects in our free time. Nothing at the scale of a house, of course, but those projects with him were the only build experience I had, and somehow provided me with the false confidence that we could pull this thing off.

My parents were surprisingly on board with the idea, and so I dove in and bought the trailer. Over the course of nine weeks, we would take that flatbed trailer and turn it into a moving house – “Kinetohaus.”

It sounds so dumb to say out loud or to type out here on this page, but it never really occurred to me that building a house – even a tiny one on a trailer – was hard work. Perhaps it was simply out of my instinct to survive and have a house on such a tight deadline that summer, but once we made the decision, we got right down to business, putting in 10-12 hour days, seven days a week. It’s exhausting; although our middle class, blue collar work, and manual labor are practically a thing of the past in America today, I sure have a lot of respect for it.

—

Kinetohaus turned out pretty well, for my first build, I must say. Of course, I’d think that; I’m super biased. But objectively, I think there’s reason to believe that, too.

Throughout the building process, we were filmed by HGTV and were featured on an episode of “Tiny House, Big Living” in January 2017. I know – I poked fun at HGTV in the opening paragraph of this book. Biting the hand that feeds me I guess. But it was fun seeing the process of how film comes together – not to mention their sweet gear – even if it did make the days slower and longer, filming and re-filming scenes and interviews, and haggling with the producer who’s trying to force a specific answer out of you.

Even more exciting to me than the 22 minutes of fame from HGTV was the opportunity to showcase the house and present at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin the following March. The University hosts a series of panels, speakers, discussions, and events during the opening weekend of SXSW Interactive, and they thought the tiny house would be an interesting student project to showcase. We packed everything up, hauled it downtown, and parked right outside city hall, giving tours of the place (well, more like, “welcome to the house! This is it, this is all there is, sorry if that’s anticlimactic.”), and getting to speak about the process and some of the same things this book will be addressing.

The people have seemed to like what they’ve seen, and I’ve even listed the place on Airbnb, where it’s received positive feedback, as well. It’s far from perfect, and I’ll dive into more of what I learned later in the book, but all in all, it’s uplifting to see your designs come to life and learn from the process.

If you’ve enjoyed this, head over to Amazon and enjoy the rest.