“I never imagined myself living in a tiny home [micromaison]but now I can’t imagine my life without her”, explains Jen Gressett. This freelance journalist explains on the website of the American channel CNBC that when her marriage ended, in 2018, she was living in a 278 square meter house near Boulder, Colorado.
Three years later, she moved into a modern 48 square meter mobile home at the bottom of the garden of a private property, where she pays a monthly rent of 663 euros. “I have a community of 160,000 followers on Instagram, where I share advice on living in a small house.”
In Toronto, Canada, Chauncey Birch had the idea in 2018 to build a three-bedroom maisonette on the driveway of his property, to accommodate future tenants, he relates to Globe and Mail.
Adapted regulations
“Mr. Birch is one of a growing number of property owners in Canada who are building second homes in their backyards. These structures go by many names, depending on the city where they are located: multi-generational apartment, alley house, backyard suite, or ancillary housing.” details the Canadian daily.
The newspaper reports that the cities of Toronto and Edmonton adopted bylaws a few years ago to allow the erection of these units. The interest in these houses, notes the publication, “grows amid rising property prices and housing shortages”.
These small housing units are also increasingly popular in California, which has also passed a law to allow owners to install them. Business Insider observe that the start-up Villa, in the San Francisco area, builds these houses in the factory and installs them on the properties. “They have their own address.” specifies the site, which notes that one of them was deposited in the backyard of a property in the Los Angeles area using a crane. Total cost of the operation, including landscaping: 323,870 euros.
The enthusiasm is such, noted FastCompany, that one of Airbnb’s co-founders, Joe Gebbia, set up a start-up, Samara, to build energy-efficient houses. A university research estimated that 1.5 million such units could be built in California. Which, concludes FastCompany, “could be a major tool in addressing the housing shortage in the state”.
