Tiny-house movement

The tiny-house movement is an architectural and social movement promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces. Tiny homes have been promoted as offering lower-cost and sometimes eco-friendly features within the housing market, and they have also been promoted a housing option for homeless individuals. However, the lack of clearly defined features and legality in many cases can cause issues for ownership, including being more expensive for the amount of area, vulnerability to natural disaster, lack of storage, difficulty hosting, smaller or lacking traditional home appliances, and legal and or zoning issues.
There is some variation in defining a tiny home, but there are examples and they are usually based on floorspace. However, tiny homes do not have clearly defined features and may be mobile and may or may not have traditional home features. One definition, according to the International Residential Code, a tiny house's floorspace is no larger than. In common language a tiny house and related movement can be larger than 400 ft² and Merriam-Webster says they can be up to 500 ft². One architectural firm used a threshold of 600 ft² to define a tiny home.

Introduction

The tiny home movement started in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and its popularity has increased globally and slowly defined itself. The movement's core involves living full-time in a very low floor area building, either fixed or mobile. The structures have found niches in areas of those trying to downsize, short-term rentals, disaster relief housing, homeless relief housing, and even art and/or YouTube projects.
In one case in Canada, tiny home owners got into legal trouble due to an issue with property rules for homes versus RV in that town. In several incidents, tiny houses have been in a legal gray area, using the rules for mobile homes yet having house-like characteristics. In some cases, tiny houses are simply very small houses with a foundation, plot, and traditional sewage and electrical hookups, while in other cases, they are more mobile, similar to an RV or mobile home.
Although tiny homes and mobile homes have existed previously, the tiny house movement and its viral popularity occurred at increasing levels in the 21st century. In the 2010s and 2020s, television shows featuring various aspects of tiny houses became popular. Some point to the start of the trend in 1997, when someone tried to live successfully in a very small house. After two decades, some have noted that part of the appeal is for niche applications, such as getting views on social media for interesting or shocking design, and one concern is that the concept has been over-hyped, thus generating unrealistic expectations.
Types of tiny houses that may be a part of this movement include shipping container homes, tiny cabins, small houseboats, bus conversions, and others. One of the differences between the tiny house movement and previous small living spaces is that they can have a higher cost per area than larger homes. Some concepts that go with the idea of the movement are about spending less money overall and using the space inside a house as effectively as possible.
In the 2020s, tiny house communities gained momentum in major U.S. cities as a response to the homelessness crisis, with their numbers growing rapidly despite offering only temporary relief.

In the United States

s were small, single-story buildings in use among urban Americans from the late 19th century through the Great Depression. Although few such houses contained more than two bedrooms, they provided accommodation for the blue-collar families in Southern U.S. cities like New Orleans.
The average size of newly constructed homes in the United States grew from in 1978 to in 2007, and further still to in 2013.
Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden are often quoted as an early inspiration for the tiny-house movement. The modern movement is considered to have started in the 1970s, with artists, such as Allan Wexler, investigating the idea of contemporary compact living. Early pioneers include Lloyd Kahn, author of Shelter, and Lester R. Walker, author of Tiny Houses. Sarah Susanka started the "counter-movement" for smaller houses, something she details in her book The Not So Big House.
Jay Shafer, another pioneer of the tiny-house movement, began working on his first tiny house — measuring — in Iowa in 1997; it was completed in 1999. Tiny houses on wheels were then popularized by Shafer, who designed and resided in a house for two months before founding the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. In 2002, Shafer co-founded the Small House Society along with Greg Johnson, Shay Salomon, and Nigel Valdez. Salomon and Valdez subsequently published their guide to the modern tiny-house movement, Little House on a Small Planet, in 2006, and Johnson published his memoir, Put Your Life on a Diet, in 2008.
With the Great Recession affecting the economy of the United States from 2007 to 2009, the tiny-house movement gained more traction due to its perceived affordability and environmentalist nature. Despite this, tiny-house purchases represented a minimal percentage of real estate transactions, with only approximately 1% of total home buyers at the time acquiring houses qualified to be labeled as tiny homes.
Small houses are also used as accessory dwelling units to serve as additional on-property housing for aging relatives or returning children, as a home office, or as a guest house. Tiny houses typically cost about $20,000 to $50,000 as of 2012.
In 2013, the Tiny House Fair at Yestermorrow, Vermont, was organized by Elaine Walker. At the event, Shafer suggested promoting ethical business practices and offering guidelines for the construction of tiny houses on wheels. Walker continued this effort in 2015, creating the non-profit organization American Tiny House Association.
Tiny houses have received considerable media coverage, with a television show on the movement, Tiny House Nation, airing in 2014, alongside the similar program Tiny House Hunters.

Globally

While the movement is most active in the United States, interest in tiny homes has been observed in other countries as well:

In Australia, designers such as Fred Schultz have created attention for the tiny-house movement. Owned by Grant Emans, Designer Eco Tiny Homes is Australia's largest tiny-home builder, creating roughly 100 tiny-homes annually out of 2 factories in Ulladulla. In 2022, Designer Eco Tiny Homes opened the world's first tiny-home showroom with a long home. In 2024, Konpak Tiny Homes launched Australia's first approved tiny home to the Australian public. Currently, many tiny home manufacturers design and build to meet the caravan regulations in efforts to avoid needing Council/Building approval. Although in practice, many of the buildings are not being weighed by the manufacturer and are indeed being sold over the 4.5 tonne weight limitation.
In Canada, the legality of tiny homes depends on the location of the home and whether it is mobile or stationary. In Toronto, a tiny home requires a building permit and a connection to the power grid. In December 2019, Edmonton introduced by-laws permitting the construction of tiny homes on foundations, removing the former minimum width requirement. Some municipalities consider buildings that are not connected to the city electricity grid and sewerage systems in violation of building codes, possibly to avoid incidents similar to the leaky condo crisis in British Columbia, which resulted in an overhaul of the province's building codes. Similarly, some mobile tiny homes have been rejected from spaces designed for recreational vehicles due to the tiny home failing to meet RV criteria. An "eco-village" of homes under in Okotoks known as the Homestead Project was proposed in 2017 but faced opposition from the Okotoks residents. Eventually, in August 2019, the council voted not to consider the project further after deciding to honor a petition with 3,000 signatures opposed to the development.
In France, the Ty Village opened its doors away from University of Rennes Saint-Brieuc campus in Brittany, in September 2019.
In Germany, the community of Vauban created 5,000 households on an old military base in Freiburg im Breisgau. The planned density of the building in that area was 50 dwelling units per acre. British architect Richard Horden, at the Technical University of Munich, developed the Micro Compact Home, a high-end small cube designed for 1–2 persons, with functional spaces for cooking, hygiene, dining/working, and sleeping.
In New Zealand, company-built units are called mobile homes and tiny houses on wheels. As of 2021, it tends to be a grassroots initiative. Bryce Langston – a filmmaker with a passion for small space design, permaculture, and downsized, eco-friendly living – has created short, documentary-style videos on small space living for YouTube via his channel and website Living Big in a Tiny House.
In Spain, Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores presented the House in a Suitcase.
In Sweden, a chef couple launched a forest-to-table movement, Stedsans in the Woods, out of tiny home cabins for rent in a Swedish forest. They have shared the blueprints for their A-frame cabins. Stedsans was declared bankrupt in March 2025 and the owners reportedly registered themselves as living abroad by the previous Christmas. They left behind animals and 158 barrels of human excrement. Waste water was allowed to flow into the forest. This was discovered by Dagens Nyheter and Politiken. The couple left Copenhagen in 2016 owing millions in kroner to Danish tax authorities. After setting up Stedsans they ended up owing six million Swedish krona to the Swedish tax authorities. They have since started a hotel in Guatemala.
In the United Kingdom, Tiny Eco Homes UK has developed several customizable tiny house models starting at £26,000. Dozens of homes are being used as primary residences across the UK and mainland Europe. Abito created intelligent living spaces apartments of in Manchester. Tiny House Scotland has created the "Nesthouse," a modular movable small eco-house to explore the possibilities of sustainable small-scale living in a highly insulated timber-framed structure with some passive house principles ensuring very low energy usage, with an estimated cost of €55,000. Northern Ireland has also seen a small but growing community of tiny house owners, although the planning rules do not specifically accommodate tiny houses, with the result being that the planning process for a tiny house would need to be decided upon on a case-by-case basis.
In Brazil, Tiny Houses Brazil was the first mini-house factory in the country, operating out of a shed on a farm property in Porangaba, São Paulo. The company develops projects and builds mini-houses on wheels. The houses are customized and built by hand with values of R$90,000.
In South Africa, the company Freedom Tiny Homes builds and sells tiny houses. The Tiny House Project is a non-profit working to promote tiny house living in Africa. They offer workshops and educational resources to encourage people to build their own tiny homes.