What are
tiny houses? Are they houses or
trailers? And where can they be
installed? A recent Zoning Practice article
examines these and other questions surrounding the tiny house movement.
As the
authors explain, the answers to these questions are not clear or obvious. To start, tiny houses are not houses at all. Rather,
they are recreational vehicles. The problem is that many people purchasing
these houses intend to use them for long-term or permanent occupancy, which
runs up against traditional building and zoning codes.
The authors
identify a host of barriers to installing tiny houses. To start, many communities will not allow a
tiny house to serve as a primary dwelling unit unless it is mounted on a
permanent foundation and connected to local utilities. Others have minimum
residential size limits that create a barrier to installing them. Even if the
tiny house is installed as an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on a lot that
already has a primary house or use, most communities will still apply the same
building, foundation, and utility requirements to ADUs that they do to primary
structures.
Although
most communities’ land use regulations are unprepared for tiny houses, the
authors suggest that existing RV park, manufactured home park, subdivision,
cohousing, and cottage development standards “provide a deep pool of content
from which tiny-house regulations can be tailored and developed.”
