“Hey hipsters. Its not a tiny house. its a TRAILER. Its not a tiny house community. Its a TRAILER PARK. You are not “right sizing”. You are POOR.
“Hey hipsters. Its not a tiny house. its a TRAILER. Its not a tiny house community. Its a TRAILER PARK. You are not “right sizing”. You are POOR.
With millions leaving the job market, the U.S. is well into the Unemployment Movement, too. Next will be the Starvation Movement.
People living in their minivan set up on concrete blocks is happening now all over the USofA in the Land of Hopeless Change.
In true leftard fashion they suck and blow at the same time.. “the typical small or tiny house is around 100-400 square feet.” ..on the lower end that’s the size of a tent, the kind you see at Occupy and Anti-Poverty demonstrations.
…which therefore makes the tenants Tiny Tent Trash…
So that is what funemployment leads to? Who would have thought?
The tiny house craze started as a solution to limited budgets playing in the over heated cottage/rural markets within drive distance of the big metroplexes (yuppie metros want the cottage life their blue collar parents had but stagflation puts the markets beyond double income management salary – should have been the fist clue the economy was in the sink but narrow visioned, shallow yuppiedom only had eyes for gaining toys – even if the toys offered are pathetic potemkin versions of traditional middle class wealth.
Stage two was when greed head marketers were looking for a way to sell these glorified garden sheds with 0.09 acres for $200K – ca-ching! The eco-sustainable single family home is born and the greenie zombie hordes flock to put their green backs down on another shameless greed-fueled green marketing scam.
Tiny House communities are monuments to the depth of public ignorance of economics and lack of self respect. It’s not sustainability it’s super-inflated austerity stupid!
Seems to me it is a matter of personal choice (something conservatives hold dear.)
Those ascribing to the tiny house theory are making that choice their top priority. They are choosing to give up big screen TVs (so we won’t likely see this movement on reserves any time soon) and fancy granite kitchens, marble bathrooms, etc. etc. Most choose to do so for a period of time and then move on (most often they take a partner and/or have a child.)
Those living in trailers are not making their first choice but making the best housing decision they can afford. They aspire to big screen TVs, fancy kitchens and big bathrooms. They tend to stay there for a long time, sometimes multiple generations.
My conservative leaning son is working on saving enough money to buy a piece of acreage on which to put his tiny house (built out of shipping containers.) It is his choice (he could buy a small home in a village for what this will cost him. He wants the space around him and the challenge of living without all the conveniences people take for granted – 24/7 electricity, & running water, although I suspect he won’t give up internet access! He’s just come back from 9 months of backpacking in Australia and has a better understanding of what things are important to him and wants to see if he can merge that freedom from stuff with a ‘regular’ life with a job and social times with friends.
CanadianKate;
Sounds like your son has his head screwed on just fine. Nothing wrong with experimenting while young. Living within your means while doing it is the essence of conservatism IMHO.
UN Agenda 21 on full throttle. As long as the slave class has it’s 400sqft to sleep and poop in, and the state is the only source of food and transportation, all is well.
CanadianKate said: “Seems to me it is a matter of personal choice (something conservatives hold dear.)”
That would only be true if the buyers could afford a proper house but -chose- the smaller one for reasons other than dire necessity.
That is overwhelmingly not the case. These people are buying the shed-on-wheels to escape debt, not because they yearn for the cozy confines of 100sqft and neighbors five feet away.
Its poverty.
Not meaning to be a jerk, but I suggest your son’s experiment in country living will shortly include electricity and other “conveniences” after he finds out how much it sucks to be splitting wood in the dark after working all day. The cold does not go away just because you’re tired.
The acreage is a good idea though. Tell him to get a -big- lawn mower, or he’s going to be cutting the grass every single night. Grass never sleeps.
Point of order, Madam Speaker. We just moved from a trailer to a house. We have always been able to afford a house, but we liked being mortgage free for almost a decade. Further to that, we lived in an economically depressed area where we had doubts about dropping a quarter of a million dollars on a home. So we didn’t.
Not everyone who choses to live with less is poor. They just might be conservative.
Obamahuts for the new Obama economy. Transforming the US economy one trailer at a time. As an added bonus you get Obamacare, EBT cards good at any liquor store and an Obamaphone with every purchase.
A quarter million will buy you a room and a bus pass in Toronto.
The average American home is around 2600 square feet??? What a load of bs that is.
Sean said: “Further to that, we lived in an economically depressed area where we had doubts about dropping a quarter of a million dollars on a home.”
$250k will get you not much more than a chicken coop in Southern Ontario. That’s the point Sean. We’re POOR.
Do you realize that a decent house in Toronto (416) is almost a million bucks now? One that’s a falling down wreck is $500k+ depending on where it is. Question Sean: who’s got a million bucks to spend on a house? How do they even service that level of debt? But there’s a whole frickin’ city full of ’em. How is that even possible Sean?
The value of your money has been taken away. You and all of us have been robbed, and we voted for the robbers. Now our kids are buying trailers instead of houses, and you still think its voluntary. You think you are “choosing to live with less”, and its a moral victory.
You are deceived. It is a victory of Leftist propaganda, and you have made the “choice” to get by in a trailer because you either do that or pile up horrific debt.
Its not a choice. Its a f-ing tragedy.
100 square feet? 10’x10′. That’s the size of a large office cubicle.
The chocolate ration has been increased from 20gms to 14gms.
Dear Leader says you should be thanking him.
CORRECTION:
“Hey hipsters. Its not a tiny house. Its a TRAILER. Its not a tiny house community. Its a TRAILER PARK. You are not “right sizing”. You are TRAILER TRASH.”
Davers6
“who’s got a million bucks to spend on a house? How do they even service that level of debt?” Phantom
If you are in the civil service you have a lifetime on the dole, supported by ignorant taxpayers. Why not 2 million? the next generation of gobbling cockroaches, rug rats, have civil service
jobs locked up for generations.
“$250k will get you not much more than a chicken coop in Southern Ontario. That’s the point Sean. We’re POOR.”
Poor is relative. May I suggest relocating somewhere that sucks less, and where your dollar may stretch a bit further? While Alberta is not what it used to be, you can find a VERY nice home in a decent small town here for under $200K.
I can’t see any reason for anyone to continue living in Ontario. The majority of your electorate is obviously retarded. The fact that a shambling oaf like Rob Ford is the most ‘responsible’ choice in your province’s major city also doesn’t bode well. Time to move.
The first house I purchased was a shack in Regina. It was less than 600sqft and should have been condemned. I bought it for less than the half the value of the lot and it kept the rain and snow off my stuff for a year or so. Very practical but still a shack.
It was an investment and not a life style statement.
What these dipshits are trying to do is glorify failure and stagnation. Personally, I don’t care if anyone chooses to live in a shack or a trailer or van or tent. The problem here is these clowns are promoting the idea that people should embrace it as a moral imperative.
I actually don’t mind the whole small house thing. I just think it is funny that the millennials act like they invented the idea, when actually it is an idea that is as old as the hills. Build a small house. Then build onto it as needed. The house in which I was raised in northern New Brunswick was first built in the 1870’s, and was about the width of a trailer, but shorter, and with a second story. It has been added to at least 3 times since then, and now is a nice big ‘ol New Brunswick farmhouse. My dad still lives there today. In many ways this makes more sense than the current model of buying multiple homes, always looking to “upgrade”, always mortgaged to the hilt.
To me there is no shame in being poor and living within your means. Then you can build up as you can afford it. I sure wish I had done that. Now that I am going through a divorce, I might end up in a small home or a trailer yet. But I will tell you one thing: I will move heaven and earth to OWN it free and clear.
Um…………Ontario’s problem is their corrupt leftwing Liberal gubmint, slowly bankrupting Ontariowe, which once was Canada’s economic engine, but now seems satisfied to replicate the European experiment, which, though, failing miserably, they continue expecting a different result.
The leftwing Fiberals are all about socialist ideology, and paying off their komrades and apparatchiks to maintaint heir corrupt hold on power.
And of course, not taking responsibility for their decade long run of incompetent and corrupt government. Now its Ottawa’s fault that Ontariowe can’t spend billions on infrastructure spending. Its not just an Ontariowe problem though, all governments, from local to provincial, arte making fluffy items a priority (bike lanes, trails, ‘greenspace/parks’ etc), while ignoring their basic civil infrastructure for the past two decades.
Rob Ford isn’t the problem, that’s just optics.
As for The Phantom, well, we all take pride in our home and home province. I can’t see myself leaving BC, born and raised. Love the place. But, if the Dippers got elected, and make draconian changes to taxes, policy, borrowing, etc, I’m getting a transfer to Calgary as soon as I can.
Phantom, weigh it out, personally, I would leave Ontariowe for better pastures, the horse has left the barn, and is at Queen’s Park!
400 square feet?
These greedy punks.
Every earth conscious ghia lover knows 96 square feet is all you truly need. and that if you doubt their wisdom or actually laugh out loud, they wish you 18 square ft in their hatred.
Karl is correct. Building a small affordable house that grows with a family is an old small-town and farmstead tradition.
Despite what some comments are implying, there is nothing wrong with living frugally within one’s means rather than living in debt all your life.
Being frugal is using the money you get efficiently and avoiding unnecessary waste. That’s the way our grandparents and great-grandparents lived and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Being poor is often caused more by willful ignorance and foolish spending habits.
Some people obviously have a hate-on for silly hipster millennials, and they will bend any news article to that agenda.
The tiny house on wheels is nothing more than a variation on the growing practice of living in their parent’s basement until they can send them off to a retirement home and inherit the house. Most will be parking their TinyHouse in a friend’s or parent’s yard. In any case it’s better than living in a cardboard box under a bridge.
Well, not to worry, at least collectively we have reduced the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere by .00000001 degree.
And the average polar bear has cut 1.2 mm off the distance he has to swim to kill a seal or a climate scientist.
So all this sacrifice is probably worth it, I would say.
It would be more palatable if people didn’t pretend that their choice was not only practical but somehow superior. Some people choose a life of simplicity. Fine. Others choose this temporarily because it seems chic or revolutionary. That’s juvenile.
Just my thoughts.
“Despite what some comments are implying, there is nothing wrong with living frugally within one’s means rather than living in debt all your life.”
Of course, but there is something wrong when what used to be a norm now becomes a luxury and what used to be poverty now becoming the new frugal norm. Living in denial about it does not make it any less pathological.
And some people choose to go into unsupportable debt to buy big shiny noisy crap houses, Let us decry that and it’s proponents at least as much as these Tiny dwellers and sellers.
You tell ’em Tooner! They’re all just a bunch of stinkin’ consumer wh*res!!!!
Let us celebrate the nation’s smelly young beardoes, urban beekeepers, performance artists and vegan Megans!!!!
To put y’all in the right frame of mind, here’s a little tune from our good friends at Die Hipster.com!
http://diehipster.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/the-casio-man-billyburg-joel/
Honestly, I am absolutely shocked that the cultured and musically inclined Vitruvius hasn’t seen fit to present this for our delectation before. The man should be admonished.
Pathological? What a bunch of bullsh!t.
Justify that ridiculous assumption.
It really is self-explanatory, try reading it again and get back to me if some of the long words continue giving you problems.
I’ve lived in a trailer since 2007. I’m certainly not poor, not with total overheads including heat, light and internet coming in at under $500 a month. I’d love a house with a yard, but that would reduce my steak and salmon intake considerably. Not to mention eat into my travel and toys budget.
A lot of the BoC’s overprinting of money goes into real estate, driving prices to roughly three times what they should be. Throw in the taxes and hassles with the Regional Municipal District of (who apparently own your land) and living in something you can’t tow two counties over on a whim is a bad idea.
Living on Vancouver Island helps, but I’ve seen guys winterize in Fort Mac and at The Pines outside of Montreal. I’d still do it anywhere in Canada.
I don’t recall making fun of people who choose to “live small”, only the poseurs.
Your indignation has been noted.
Well, theoretically we could just shut up entirely about the apparent folly of the all the various choices made by all sorts of people we don’t actually know, but then what would we do for fun?