so how many people here know what a tiny
house is yeah all right how many of you
feel like you could live in one maybe
not
let me reach the question how many
people work in jobs that you don’t feel
completely inspired by or maybe I’ve had
a dream that always felt just a bit out
of reach or maybe you just don’t feel
like you have enough time for yourself
or your family because for those of us
that live in tiny houses the definition
may be a home that’s under 400 square
feet but how we see it is a tool to live
a life that we choose it’s a tool that
we use to avoid the financial traps that
leave so many people treading water and
once you put your need for space up
against your need to achieve your dreams
the actual relevance of a tiny house it
becomes much more apparent see my dream
was never to be on television my dream
was to be a professional skier and when
I was in my early 20s I had this moment
where I felt that dream escaping me and
I knew that I need to make a big shift
in my life if I was going to actually
make it happen and so what I did was I
actually bought a motor home and I fixed
it up with everything I had and I took a
job a minimum-wage job for states away
in a place that I didn’t know anyone and
went out on this kind of big journey to
pursue the dream and the crazy thing was
it happened and I actually spent my late
20s in my early 30s traveling the world
getting paid to ski you know rubbing
elbows with my heroes and that sense of
satisfaction that gratification that
came with it was so profound I know that
it’s going to last with me for the rest
of my life and I can tell you a hundred
percent that it would have never
happened if I didn’t have the ability to
pare down on the financial demands of my
life so that I could really focus on
making this dream a reality so in 2011 I
built my first tiny home and shortly
after I’ve read a book by a hero of mine
and a visionary person named Jay Shafer
and in the book he talked about how the
Ottawa
industry had actually gone through this
process where they were confronted with
the need to affect their efficiency of
the vehicles and they did so in a short
time and the craziest thing is that they
didn’t actually jeopardize the power of
the engines and it’s this really
remarkable thing because now we have
vehicles that actually travel so much
further two to three times on the same
gallon of gasoline and at the same time
we’re going from zero to 60 in record
time and this is this very big concept
to me because what it really proves is
that efficiency and power are not
mutually exclusive and I find it really
useful when I’m actually applying the
same concept into my work as a tiny
house designer so efficiency when you’re
actually thinking about construction is
all about energy use so that’s heating
and cooling but it’s also cost it’s
about good use of materials it’s about
minimizing waste and the whole point or
the concept involved with a tiny house
is that by building very small but then
actually making these spaces very
high-functioning we can achieve
extremely efficient homes right so
efficiency is really it’s this kind of
thing that I work and my specialty is
actually these kind of transforming
solutions to make the maximizing the use
of a space however if I’m not careful
these clever contraptions they can
easily become cumbersome and when that
happens the entire value of that design
is lost so my goal is really is to
design multi-purpose solutions that work
as a fluid system and that’s when I
believe the true efficiency is achieved
now the power of a space really comes
down to someone’s appreciation of it and
whether it’s a big home or a small home
that really comes down to the
customization and making someone feel
like that space is theirs and that can
happen with something as little as just
a live edge countertop that they just
love or a clawfoot bathtub or maybe
stained-glass window for me is my spiral
staircase it’s this really a cute
adorable wood stove that I have that
heats my house it’s those things that
make me feel so comfortable when I’m
there for a lot of people what really
works is attaching sentimental items so
for example if I was to repurpose
somebody’s defunct old grand piano
that’s not going to work and then
actually repurpose it into something
that’s needed like a bed frame that’s a
very good example of a very powerful
design however the power of a home can
also be to facilitate growth in
someone’s life and that is where I
become extremely inspired so a really
good example of that would be say a
flight simulator that looks an
antiquated and it’s big and it doesn’t
belong in a tiny home but if this is the
item that can actually transform
someone’s life by letting the owner
achieve that long-held dream of becoming
a pilot and then that pilot’s license
actually turns into a job and the job
into a career that is an example of an
extremely powerful design that can
really change someone’s life so the same
way that a home has this power to propel
someone’s life forward the lack of a
home really can be a debilitated and
burden in this country we’ve gone
through a series of decades where the
cost of our housing has outpaced our
incomes to such a degree that we have
this growing homeless population and we
have families spending more and more of
their income every year on their housing
you see the tiny house movement is not a
fad based upon an effectuation with
everything small the tiny house movement
is a response to these growing
environmental and economic factors that
are only going to become more and more
extreme in years to come and many people
are looking at tiny homes as this
ability as this way to address these new
realities and the funny thing is tiny
houses are nothing new
you see in 1950 the average median home
size for a family of four was under a
thousand square feet and it’s hard to
believe now because the average median
home size now is twenty five hundred
square feet in 1999 when I started
building homes the average median income
was around $40,000 but the average home
sale price or the median home sale price
was a hundred and sixty thousand dollars
now fast forward of 2016 the median home
sale price in our country is over three
hundred thousand dollars and that’s an
increase of 93 percent in 17 years so
what that really means is that the cost
of our housing has been outpacing the
gains in our income by three times over
this period and if you actually factor
in inflation the median average wage in
this country has actually gone down by
two and a half percent during that time
and this is the first time in modern
history in America where our wages have
stayed stagnant for a decade and now
it’s been over two so how did this
happen well I’ll tell you a story when I
first started building tiny homes or not
tiny homes big homes in the early 2000s
we were doing major remodels and almost
entirely we were doing them for couples
who had already raised their family in a
much more modest home and what they were
doing is they were using the the equity
that had appreciated over the years to
reinvest in their home doubling the
square footage and actually right at the
moment where their need for the space
was the least and they weren’t doing it
because of their need for the space they
were doing it entirely based upon this
idea that their house was going to be a
retirement plan it was an investment and
the problem is when enough people start
looking at real estate strictly as an
investment is it turns into a
self-perpetuating cycle so the
appreciation of our housing is
completely
pending on the demand but that demand is
completely dependent on the expectation
of appreciation so what it’s done is
it’s taking a larger and larger portion
of our country’s net worth and actually
channeled it into real estate which is a
highly fluctuating asset and has left us
exposed as a country to housing
downturns and we felt the broad ripple
effects in 2008 when we had a bubble
that burst and what we did was to
mitigate the recession as well as also
try to boost the economy back up and
incur a recovery we lowered our interest
rates you see that’s the tool that we
use to actually start to incentivize
purchasing and borrowing of housing and
what’s happened is we actually it was
very successful it was a terrific thing
and the appreciation of our houses have
gained right back to the same point
where we were right before the bubble
burst in 2007 the only problem with that
is that our wages haven’t increased and
now we’ve actually lost the ability of
our most effective financial tool to
mitigate any future adjustment because
our interest rates are still as low as
they can go we can’t lower them anymore
and we already know that we have 8 to 10
thousand people per day entering
retirement age and the question that we
have to ask ourselves is what’s going to
happen when the baby boomers go to cash
in on their retirement plan
who’s going to absorb these homes you
see there’s a number of worries and
factors when thinking about who is going
to absorb the homes from retirees
because today in the economy although
the employment numbers are good the
wages are down plus younger generations
are actually coming out of college with
unprecedented levels of student loan
debt that is not percent actually that
is number in billions there on the left
and right now we’re at one point three
trillion
so that’s a really big issue because on
top of that attitudes are shifting you
know family sizes are smaller people are
moving around a lot more and there’s
this big trend to moving away from the
suburbs and into our city centers and
the bottom line is when the baby boomers
go to cash in on retirement plans
there’s a very good chance that they’re
going to be faced with the reality that
younger generations are in no position
to afford these large homes and are no
longer interested in a large home in the
suburbs now I know this sounds like a
very grave scenario but I’m not here to
give you a presentation about doom and
gloom I’m here to talk about opportunity
because here I see a perfect opportunity
to apply the same principles that we
learned about power and efficiency to
the needs of our housing sector you see
a tiny home could be a very powerful
tool for us to help us address these
issues however right now we have rules
that basically make living in a tiny
home virtually impossible the reality is
is the hardest part about living in a
tiny home is not how you pare down your
shoe collection contrary to popular
belief the hardest part is navigating
building codes and zoning requirements
that really limit their creation so
there is an issue going on
and people definitely recognize that
this is an issue so in 2016 I was part
of a delegation that actually
successfully articulated the need to
readjust and amend our building codes to
accommodate for tiny houses and in 2018
those amendments will be implemented and
now it’s up to the local municipalities
to adopt those recommendations however
the harder part facing tiny homes is
convincing zoning officials to actually
permit tiny homes into the community you
see the responsibility of zoning
officials is actually to look out for
the interests of the people within their
community and making sure that no policy
that they introduce is going to
negatively affect the property values is
number one now anytime that we start to
implement any kind of affordable housing
projects inevitably we end up lowering
the property values in the surrounding
area and that’s why everybody likes the
idea of affordable housing but it’s just
as long as it’s not in my backyard right
tiny homes have this unique ability to
actually create lower cost housing in
our communities without negatively
affecting the property values because we
can they can be dispersed they’re small
enough that they can fit into the cracks
of our already existing infrastructure
and that is a really big thing because
it actually does two things for us you
know every time that we actually
consolidate low-income housing or any
kind of affordable housing what we
inevitably create is we create a project
or we create a trailer park or we create
a slum and we end up perpetuating an
environment that continues the cycle of
poverty by cutting off low-income
individuals from access to opportunity
so fortunately there are a few squad a
few cities that are recognizing that
affordable housing needs to be
implemented better and many of them are
doing it by trying to encourage
something called backyard cottages or
basically mother-in-law apartments
essentially tiny homes on foundations in
backyards and they’re doing it to try to
tackle some of the big issues with the
need for urban density you know the need
for efficiency within our city as well
as low cost housing and ironically
traffic congestion
however these policies haven’t had the
desired effect that advocates like
myself had hoped because of one
important reason and that’s because
people that can afford to build a
backyard cottage or a tiny home in their
yard lack the financial incentive to
share that property with another family
and the flipside is that people that
actually could use the relief from
having a rentable space in their
backyard
are in no position to take on an extra
construction loan to actually make that
a reality so there is one important
precedence that’s happened in our
country which is making a major
distinction Fresno California has
rewritten their zoning ordinances to
allow tiny homes on wheels to be used as
accessory dwelling units on existing
properties of 6,000 feet or greater and
this is a really important distinction
because what it essentially allows is
for a family or a property owner who’s
struggling to pay their mortgage a
pathway to actually having relief by
using a tiny home in a partnership what
it also does is create a pathway for a
lower income family to move into an area
of greater affluence where their
children can grow up with more
opportunity and the thing that actually
makes it all work is that these can be
implemented in ways that don’t
negatively affect the surrounding
property values and it requires no
additional infrastructure cost from the
municipalities see I think that we all
want to live or we all want cities that
have space for our schoolteachers our
police officers the firemen the
carpenters the artists and the musicians
because that actually elevates the
quality of life for everyone in the
community and if a tiny house can be a
tool that we can use to address the
needs of expanded affordable housing as
well as providing a pathway for
struggling homeowners to avoid
foreclosure and actually address their
issues in a different way than selling
their property this is a very powerful
tool it’s a win-win scenario and in my
world that is the hallmark of good
design you see tiny home movement and
the tiny house movement continues to
grow despite major hurdles in legality
because tiny houses are not a fad tiny
houses are
response to this growing set of economic
and environmental factors in our country
and the reality is we all have incentive
right now to start looking for all the
tools available to us to address the
needs of a changing world thank you very
much
[Applause] [Music]