Zack Giffin, contractor and host of 'Tiny House Nation', joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss the growth of the tiny home movement and where advocates hope to expand in the future.

Cheddar Reveals

The American Tiny House Movement

Welcome back everyone to check reveals, brought to you by curiosity stream baker machado America is facing a housing crisis as americans get priced out of larger, more traditional homes? The growing response is thinking bigger about living smaller and for many growing the growing the best opportunities in the housing market may mean shrinking your space. So joining us now is Zack Giffin, contractor and host of tiny house nation zack, good to have you here. So what's driving this this tiny house movement that we're seeing in this country? And what are the factors contributing to the growth here? Hey baker, thanks for having me. Um you know, well, tiny homes obviously there's an affordability element that people are looking for. There's people that are looking to kind of live with a lighter ecological footprint. There's a lot of just a movement towards minimalism and freeing up your life. But in my mind it kind of really comes down to two things and one is that we just have not been building smaller homes in the last couple of decades. Right? So the starter homes, the smaller, more affordable tiny homes or like smaller homes are just not available. And then the second part is that our demographics have shifted right? People are getting married later, divorce rates are higher in older generations. And it just really means that there's this mismatch between the way that people are living now and the makeup of our population and our housing stock and the availability for smaller homes and more affordable homes. Yeah. Listen, that's a really fair point. I mean the tiny home moving could be a way to sort of avoid some of the financial trappings of the more traditional market, do you almost think like the tiny homes could pose an impactful solution to the housing crisis that we're seeing right now? I mean, it's honestly, we do need more housing because it's a it's a supply and demand equation, right? It's capitalism, but we need to make sure that we're building the type of homes that we actually need. And right now, our housing stock, like I said, it's disproportionately larger homes and we're just, we're we have this vacancy of smaller homes. And part of that is because, well, the older generations of are staying in their homes much later in life. And what that means is that we're not actually we're not allowing younger generations to occupy those spaces. And so by providing smaller homes that enables people to downsize in a desirable way. That's gonna free up a lot of those larger homes for families that actually need the space. Great point. And also, how can tiny homes maybe be a tool to enrich the neighborhoods and even urban centers also here? Well, that's a really good question, because, you know, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that, you know, when we have communities that, um, the firemen, the police officers, the school teachers are kind of priced out of that community. It's like everybody suffers, right? And also, I mean societies and communities are just more thriving when there's a space for people regardless of the phase of life that they're in, right? So for younger people who need more affordable housing for older people that are kind of in a place that they're being more conservative and kind of saving for retirement. Um, when our, when our neighborhoods don't have space for that type of people in that phase of life, then it really becomes a problem. And so that's kind of, I think where tiny homes can really fit into our existing infrastructure and really become a useful tool for us. All right. Besides maybe the space because that seems like the obvious sort of response here, What's the hardest part of moving into and living in a tiny house? Well, you kind of touched on it a little bit, you know, RVs are a huge thing right now because people want to travel, most tiny homes are on wheels and as such, they're running into kind of legal hurdles being treated like RVs and subject to limitations on occupancy. So now that's a big piece of the work that I do is try to push for some reforms in our zoning and our building codes to allow for tiny homes on wheels to be utilized for full time occupancy. Um, and we're getting a lot of traction around the country, different states and, and different cities that are opening up to it. So, I mean that's the biggest challenge. You know, it's not how you're going to fit your, your shoe collection into your home? It's really where you're gonna park it and how it's going to be legal. Um, and hopefully those obstacles are becoming overcome here very shortly. Do you almost think it's almost like for instance, home sharing service, like an Airbnb can help grow the tiny home market almost in a sense, like you're giving people like the test drive to see if they really sort of like it first. Well, that's a really good point and they are very popular as Airbnb s for good reason. You know, they're fun to stay in their cute, they're, you know, very clever. A lot of the designs are really fun to kind of see what people do with just such a small space. But I would say that Airbnb actually is kind of in vacation rental industry is kind of really contributed to the lack of affordable housing by kind of pulling housing off of the available market. So, you know, it's a little bit of a dual sided sword on that one because you know, as although tiny homes are a good option as a business investment for vacation rentals, it's also kind of we're kind of coming in as um, and trying to heal some of the damage that that industry has caused. All right zack, I only have time for one more question here with you and this is sort of the big one is the tiny Home movement. Is this a fad? Or is this here to stay in the long run? Well, I'm hoping that, you know, everybody can learn a bit from the tiny home movement just in terms of how we utilize space more efficiently, because it doesn't matter what size of home you have. We all have incentive to kind of utilize our resources as as well as we can. But yeah, that, you know, the environmental, the economic factors that have like really brought around the popularity of this movement, they're not going anywhere. So tiny homes are definitely here to stay. All right, Zack, Giffin, the contractor and host of Tiny House Nation. Zack. Thank you so much for joining us.