The direct democracy of New England town meeting has history on its side, but this government vehicle comes with brakes. People in Hadley stomped on them last week, rejecting a proposal to allow an unusual type of dwelling.
“Tiny house” fever is spreading, but these homes are illegal almost everywhere. And unlike other novel housing approaches that can run afoul of zoning, like Airbnb, this one stands in plain view.
Last year, Sarah Hastings, a recent Mount Holyoke College graduate, began living in a 190-square-foot home parking at 42 East St. on property rented from Ron and Donna Adams.
To continue to pioneer a lifestyle of less stuff and lower housing costs, Hastings had to win a zoning change. Her amendment lost 215-102 at Thursday’s annual Town Meeting. On Friday, in an email to the Gazette, Hastings was gracious. She said the session produced “some very insightful and passionate comments from residents … I feel like it was a very worthwhile effort and the conversations were compelling.” But she still has to move. We see several takeaways:
This housing option will win out eventually. While tiny houses are not legal in most places (99 percent of U.S. cities, according to the American Tiny House Association), they are gaining approval here and there, even in Nantucket.
After just 45 minutes of debate last month, that island’s Town Meeting OK’d use of tiny houses in residential neighborhoods provided they meet building codes. That’s a place famously touchy about appearances and property values, so passage of resident Isaiah Stover’s citizen’s petition is sure to inspire others.
In January, the city of Fresno, California, wrote approvals for tiny houses into its zoning. The structures must be on wheels (the preference for most owners) and be parked on a lot that’s home to a permanent structure.
Fresno is known for sprawl, so it’s odd to see it leading the way on development that minimizes land use. There’s at least one reason for that: being business-friendly. The city is home to California Tiny House, a company that makes these structures. The firm parked one of its homes in front of City Hall before the January vote.
Models for acceptance already exist. One of the biggest can be found around the Valley — the mobile home park. These are mobile homes serving as houses. Rather than being corralled in separate locations, where they connect to utilities and pay rent for a slab, modern tiny house owners want to be able to tuck into more conventional single-family neighborhoods. In trying to do so, they face the same problem Hastings encountered in Hadley.
Here in the Valley, other housing concepts have challenged set zoning rules and persevered, such as co-housing. Around the country, these little homes are clustering in eco-villages. The movement needs the safety and support of numbers.
Town Meeting isn’t always the best place to envision change. Opponents called tiny houses a bad fit for Hadley. One Planning Board member dismissed them as “student stuffers.”
People tend to vote their pocketbooks at Town Meeting, rather than looking for ways to advance someone else’s dream.
The tiny house movement stands a better chance of progressing in communities where a shared societal problem — such as the lack of affordable housing — demands to be addressed.
Opposition will relax in time. People of all ages are drawn to small dwellings. Young people are priced out of the traditional housing market and want to maintain smaller carbon footprints. Older people, including some of the 10,000 Baby Boomers who reach retirement age every day, want to free themselves of houses that are too big for their needs.
While other generations took to the road in RVs, many people today want to cut the fossil fuel cord and place their movable cottages within communities.
Another Hadley planner, William E. Dwyer, said after Thursday’s vote that Hastings was the first person to seek this approval. “We’ll see how it trends.”
Seen one way, it trends backwards. This sort of development is modeled on the way people used to cluster in New England towns. The tiny house? Thoreau built one at Walden Pond.