Tiny home project aims to stabilize Detroit neighborhood

[Lowell]

...and provide homes for the homeless. "24 houses are planned for a two block area north of the community center's campus at Woodrow Wilson and Elmhurst Streets in the Dexter-Linwood neighborhood.

"The homes will be finished by the end of the summer.

"Once finished, they will be rented out to people who will "earn the property."
First, the houses "provide safe, clean and affordable housing for low-income individuals who will be able to become homeowners without having to qualify for a mortgage or pay interest."

"The new houses will also bring density to a neighborhood with a lot of vacancy.
The homes will also be energy-efficient."

Tiny is not defined but from the pictures, they are tiny but tidy looking.

[renf]

About 20 or more years ago, there was an attempt to build low-cost homes in Highland Park along streets such as Ferris if I remember correctly. The homes were prefabricated and very narrow so they could be delivered by a flatbed trailer. There were sold, I think, on land contract. A few survive and are well maintained but many others are, I believe, abandoned. I think the experiment to provide low-cost housing was a failure but some other know more about that effort.

[Király]

The Highland Park project was called North Pointe Village and it wasn't 20 years ago. It started in 2005 and ended up as a huge failure.

Story and photos here: http://www.detroiturbex.com/content/...nte/index.html

[jackie5275]

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016...house-hunters/

This is a humorous article about living in tiny houses. While I think the objective here is humor, he does bring up some good points about tiny house living.

[JBMcB]

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016...house-hunters/
This is a humorous article about living in tiny houses. While I think the objective here is humor, he does bring up some good points about tiny house living.

That article bounces between somewhat humorous and jerk-off-ish. I'm not sure how he labels people who live in tiny houses as "privileged," as the main reason for living in a small house is that it's affordable.

Which is odd that they are going in to Detroit - they are usually popular in areas with very high property values. The mortgage on a small piece of property and a small house is usually about the same, or a bit more, than rent on a lousy apartment in an expensive area. They are trying to build them in San Francisco and L.A. but the zoning laws are prohibitive:

http://www.techinsider.io/sf-tiny-house-village-2016-1

The main opponents are usually established land owners - making more small houses drives down the prices of existing houses and apartments. If you think about it, there really isn't a reason a house couldn't be a small as a small apartment, other than tipping supply and demand.

[Jason]

I think tiny homes as a concept doesn't work in reality and it's basically a very expensive hobby for DIY enthusiasts.

Small homes are fantastic for improving affordability.

However for a project like this, you could get much much more affordability by building townhouses. With that typology the buildings can share their utilities, and at the same time everyone gets a front and back yard.

The problem with tiny houses is that making a tiny house doesn't save costs on the expensive parts of the house, and can even make them more expensive depending on the situation. The extra wood framing to upgrade the house from being tiny to being small is not very expensive, and makes the rest of the project easier and more affordable. Not only that, but as far as heating and cooling goes [[heating a tiny vs a small volume), the shared walls of townhouses can reduce costs.

The advantage of single family houses over townhouses though, is that single family houses don't require a licensed architect, and I think there are other ways that make, as far as regulations go, single family houses easier to deal with.

I've thought about this topic before. First you want to design it so that it's compact but still pleasant, and you want to keep plumbing as absolutely simple as possible. Then you want to use the best mix of standard cheap wood frame, and prefab or off the shelf construction as possible, to minimize cost, and to make it easier for volunteers to do while still keeping quality up. And then make sure all of the detailing is simple and forgiving.

In my experience with habitat for humanity, they take generic floor plans, make them small, and then do a bad job of building them. They save money this way rather than designing houses that are inherently cheaper to build in the first place.

Luckily none of this has to be done from scratch because affordable housing projects have been completed in other countries at very low costs and high standards.

But I still think this is a very good project.

[Chicago48]

I think tiny homes as a concept doesn't work in reality and it's basically a very expensive hobby for DIY enthusiasts.

Small homes are fantastic for improving affordability.

However for a project like this, you could get much much more affordability by building townhouses. With that typology the buildings can share their utilities, and at the same time everyone gets a front and back yard.

The problem with tiny houses is that making a tiny house doesn't save costs on the expensive parts of the house, and can even make them more expensive depending on the situation. The extra wood framing to upgrade the house from being tiny to being small is not very expensive, and makes the rest of the project easier and more affordable. Not only that, but as far as heating and cooling goes [[heating a tiny vs a small volume), the shared walls of townhouses can reduce costs.

The advantage of single family houses over townhouses though, is that single family houses don't require a licensed architect, and I think there are other ways that make, as far as regulations go, single family houses easier to deal with.

I've thought about this topic before. First you want to design it so that it's compact but still pleasant, and you want to keep plumbing as absolutely simple as possible. Then you want to use the best mix of standard cheap wood frame, and prefab or off the shelf construction as possible, to minimize cost, and to make it easier for volunteers to do while still keeping quality up. And then make sure all of the detailing is simple and forgiving.

In my experience with habitat for humanity, they take generic floor plans, make them small, and then do a bad job of building them. They save money this way rather than designing houses that are inherently cheaper to build in the first place.

Luckily none of this has to be done from scratch because affordable housing projects have been completed in other countries at very low costs and high standards.

But I still think this is a very good project.

Does anybody watch Tiny House Nation? That show really gives you insight how hard it is to live in a tiny house. Those houses are only for one person, not a family.
The Northpointe Project in HP: I saw the pictures and it's devastating to see those homes waste away. They were overpriced! That's what the problem was. Who came up with that idea anyway?

[Király]

The Northpointe Project in HP: I saw the pictures and it's devastating to see those homes waste away. They were overpriced! That's what the problem was. Who came up with that idea anyway?

Remember 2005? When everybody believed that house prices in the USA never went down? That you could [[and many did) buy for investment and sell for double just a few years later? Countless people got rich on speculative investing and selling to people who believed their houses were as good as gold. Better, even.

Paying too much money for houses in 2005 wasn't just a Highland Park thing. It was an entire country thing. North Pointe Village was just an extreme example of it, and the fact that it happened at the tail end of the bubble made it all the worse.

[canuck]

Call me "Stupid", but I fail to see the value in building tiny houses in Detroit. There are plenty of alternatives on building small floorplan over tiny lots in the city, but tiny houses are totally nonsensical.

[Honky Tonk]

Does anybody watch Tiny House Nation? That show really gives you insight how hard it is to live in a tiny house. Those houses are only for one person, not a family.
The Northpointe Project in HP: I saw the pictures and it's devastating to see those homes waste away. They were overpriced! That's what the problem was. Who came up with that idea anyway?

Slick, fast talking, contractor sales staff.

[Wesley Mouch]

Call me "Stupid", but I fail to see the value in building tiny houses in Detroit. There are plenty of alternatives on building small floorplan over tiny lots in the city, but tiny houses are totally nonsensical.

Tiny Houses are hip these days, especially with kids. Concern for the environment and global warming mixed with a belief that larger houses are wasteful. I think they feel guilty for their [[typically) white privilege. Tiny Houses make them feel like they're doing something for the planet, which they know is doomed by fossil fuel use.

Two other factors. They cost less -- a further reduction is guilt.

Lastly, they reduce the cost of land in places like SF, Vancouver, or Seattle. They can be placed on existing lots as laneway [[aka alley) for example.

You're not stupid. These are problems, but they're not Detroit's problems.

[gvidas]

I don't think that North Pointe Village is really comparable to the project that the OP was talking about.

The tiny houses to be built in Dexter-Linwood are 300-400 sqft each. The sea of cookie-cutter houses that were to be North Pointe Village were all about 1000-1200 sqft.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Dexter-Linwood project. It's now clear to me that our 'tough love' approach to social problems has distinct limitations. I don't know if this truly qualifies as a housing-first project, so much as a homeownership project. But it's an interesting experiment.

[jackie5275]

That article bounces between somewhat humorous and jerk-off-ish. I'm not sure how he labels people who live in tiny houses as "privileged," as the main reason for living in a small house is that it's affordable.

I think the "privileged" part comes from people featured on the show he watches. I really don't know since I don't watch it myself.

[Wesley Mouch]

I don't think that North Pointe Village is really comparable to the project that the OP was talking about.

The tiny houses to be built in Dexter-Linwood are 300-400 sqft each. The sea of cookie-cutter houses that were to be North Pointe Village were all about 1000-1200 sqft.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Dexter-Linwood project. It's now clear to me that our 'tough love' approach to social problems has distinct limitations. I don't know if this truly qualifies as a housing-first project, so much as a homeownership project. But it's an interesting experiment.

Tiny House's are tangential to affordability, IMO. In SanFran where the land itself is worth 1/2 million -- of course it matters. In Detroit, the land is nearly free -- land costs have little to do with affordability. We could more easily subsidize renovation of abandoned housing that start an entirely new experiment that includes house size. That hasn't worked so well so far. Making the houses smaller has little to do with affordability in Detroit. Let's keep the small house experiments in high land cost areas.

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

Tiny Houses are hip these days, especially with kids. Concern for the environment and global warming mixed with a belief that larger houses are wasteful. I think they feel guilty for their [[typically) white privilege. Tiny Houses make them feel like they're doing something for the planet, which they know is doomed by fossil fuel use.

Two other factors. They cost less -- a further reduction is guilt.

Lastly, they reduce the cost of land in places like SF, Vancouver, or Seattle. They can be placed on existing lots as laneway [[aka alley) for example.

You're not stupid. These are problems, but they're not Detroit's problems.

I take those who like "tiny homes" at their word. I don't think its "guilt" as much as they don't fall for our society's quest for acquiring more, more and then more crap, and the debt and clutter that it involves. Maybe its because I am feeling that way these days too. My current house is about 45% as large as the one I had a few years ago, and still seems too big. If I buy a new shirt, I immediately donate two or three. For many, less really is more.

[bust]

It's likely true it wouldn't cost much more relative to the value and utility it would add if these were small houses instead of tiny ones. But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if one of the primary but unstated reasons this has been designed as a tiny house project is to reduce opposition from the large numbers of people inclined to oppose subsidized housing on principle.

From the very beginning of government subsidized housing programs in the U.S. a big part of the opposition surrounded two concerns:

1) That adding inexpensive housing stock would put downward pressure on the value of real estate in general;
2) A belief the government should not be "rewarding those who have proven unable to earn their own keep" because it is incompatible with "the American way".

These concerns contributed to all kinds of effects on the design of public housing. You can find exceptions, particularly when the housing was designed for middle-class white families and in some more recent examples, but for the most part:

1) It was located in undesirable neighborhoods;
2) It was built as cheaply as possible;
3) it was stark and unappealing in appearance, stripped of the usual ornamentation of the time;
4) It lacked many basic features common in other buildings [[specifics would vary, but examples include the lack of insulation to protect people from getting burned on steam pipes, elevators that would not stop on every floor...).

These features combined to appease much of the opposition. Building homes most people would not want where most people wouldn't want them satisfied most of those concerned about the value of their own property. A provision requiring equal numbers of housing units be destroyed as created helped even more. And building them cheap and ugly reduced opposition from those arguing the government should not be rewarding people they thought did not deserve it. Their own homes were visibly better.

I don't mean to argue against the tiny home project, but could there be some historical parallels with the situation today?

Meanwhile there are two aspects of the history of public housing in the U.S. that are irrelevant to today's discussion, but are crucial to the conversation overall and are often omitted.

First, a persuasive argument in favor of public housing was that it would stunt the growth of membership in the socialist and communist parties that was occurring during the depression. Public housing originally targeted the working poor, not the most indigent. It focused on the population that was growing increasingly interested in socialism and communism as potential solutions. Proponents argued that housing was the major aspect of their lives the poor sought to improve and that by addressing that need the government could stem the interest in socialism and communism. The government could furthermore provide the working poor an important stake in the system.

The second aspect, less frequently omitted, is how lack of maintenance so often resulted in public housing's rapid decay. Legislators see much less political benefit securing funding for maintenance than for announcing a splashy project that will be built new. Public housing was designed to be built cheap and ugly in the first place. It often lacked basic safety and convenience features most people would expect. Cost overruns and corruption often made the situation worse, resulting in the elimination of additional features. And after years of deferred maintenance many were no longer safe places to live.

On another thread a poster asked why this doesn't happen to buildings for wealthier people with the same basic tower in a park design. Two big reasons:

1) The devils are in the details: the safety and convenience features that were eliminated from so much public housing were not eliminated from the market rate homes for the wealthy. And they matter.
2) The maintenance that was so sorely lacking in public housing is generally abundant for the wealthy, in spades.

There is a third factor that gets us even further away from the current conversation. Historically, families lost their eligibility for public housing if their income increased above a low threshold. This resulted in fathers often having to make the painful decision to live elsewhere so their income was not counted, in order to preserve for his wife and children their family home. It also provided a powerful disincentive to taking a better-paying job. Thankfully those provisions were later eliminated, but not before for so many the damage was already done. A tragedy for the family. Terrible for the community too.

Please excuse any errors, omissions, and simplifications. These thoughts summarize research conducted many years ago. If you see any mistakes or hold a different opinion, don't hesitate to say so.

[SDCC]

As long as there is heat, A/C, and Comcast can hookup, I'm in.

[mwilbert]

Tiny House's are tangential to affordability, IMO. In SanFran where the land itself is worth 1/2 million -- of course it matters. In Detroit, the land is nearly free -- land costs have little to do with affordability. We could more easily subsidize renovation of abandoned housing that start an entirely new experiment that includes house size. That hasn't worked so well so far. Making the houses smaller has little to do with affordability in Detroit. Let's keep the small house experiments in high land cost areas.

This isn't right. Lot size matters in San Francisco and not in Detroit, but house size matters much more in Detroit. The percentage of the overall housing cost that is land in SF is very high, whereas in Detroit it is very low. But the cost of a building is similar. So if you halve the cost of a moderately priced building in Detroit, the overall cost goes down by almost half. If you halve the cost of a modestly priced building in San Francisco, the overall cost might go down by 20%.

Additionally, the cost of maintenance is probably higher in Detroit, and energy costs are lower in SF because of the more moderate climate, so in both those expense categories you would get extra benefit from a smaller house in Detroit relative to SF.

Tiny houses are still kind of silly relative to apartment or condo buildings, but they aren't sillier in Detroit than in SF.

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

The first tiny house is up and its cute as a button.

http://detroit.curbed.com/2016/9/9/1...ood-low-income

http://www.freep.com/story/news/loca...roit/90001520/

[Hypestyles]

Give people a leg up on owning something, very good.

[1953]

This project doesn't seem very sensible to me, but it is cute.

[One Shot]

How about fixing up all the free houses left in the city. They tout the classic details of these tiny houses that are faux materials. The leftover houses had quality built details in them! But these "down on their luck" "oppressed" types ran them all into the ground! Same will happen here but the contractors and associates will be paid and moved on and won't care.

[Richard]

I wonder what the property taxes are,if it costs $48,000 to build or $160 per sqft what is the finial price?

Is this the new version of a starter home?

Starting way back when you could mail order a Sears home there was and still is a company that you can order a expandable home.

You buy a city lot and the 1st phase was a one room with bathroom,you paid cash for it then as you saved more cash you could expand up to 2500 sqft if you wanted and it was all designed to look like it was supposed to verses somebody added on a bunch of additions.

In reply to Bust ... It was Mrs. Roosevelt that started government housing,she was driving through the immigrant slums of New York where they lived 10 in a tar paper shack with newspaper stapled or glued to the walls for insulation.

The whole concept was to provide a decent roof over ones head with indoor plumbing and a bathroom temporary until they got on their feet and could afford to move up and out.Utilitarian,nothing fancy as somewhat as an incentive to move up.It was never meant to become a long term or comfortable solution.

In Tampa the cigar factories built what they called Casitas for employee housing,narrow houses which evolved into the shotgun house.

You walked through the front door into the living room,then you went through the bed room and had a small bath on the side and the kitchen in the back.So maybe 10 foot wide and 25 foot long,they were called shotgun because you could stand in the front door and providing the bedroom door and back door was open you could shoot a shotgun straight line from front to back.

If you had guests everybody would know if you did not make the bed because they had to pass through the bedroom to get to the bathroom or kitchen.

They had a front porch and looked much like any other house of the day.

I could see if one was single,and scrimping to save money to buy a real house,but this seems to be more of selling a concept verses a financially viable situation for the buyer.

But as they tell me ...You make money off of the poor and not the rich.

I think it is limited to the percentage that could actually deal with the confined space aspect long term verses just a place to lay ones head at night temporary.

I tried it,living on a boat,then a houseboat,then in a RV,it was cool when I was young but it was stupid because it is not cheap living and it would have been cheaper just to rent an apartment or buy a house.Then I discovered hoarding.

The Casitas in Tampa that survived the termites and countless attempts at demolitions,arson etc. were restored and became a kinda neat little transient artist community who unfortunately do not really keep them up.

The rent to own puts some skin in the game so to speak,so who knows maybe this may work,maybe long term or maybe a revolving door of sorts.I do not see it really as a way to start out cheap then sell in a few years gaining equity to purchase a larger home as in a starter home.It seems at today's prices of homes in the city comparatively it seems to be a equity trap.

But if it works to put somebody in a home for $500 a month and they can save to buy something it would be worth it I guess.

But you will not take a homeless person and stick them in there on a rent to own and expect them to be able to pay rent because if they could they would not be homeless to begin with.

I would kinda lean from that aspect it maybe better to give the $48k to the people that bought the building that had the phone on top at least they are dealing with the whole process.

So is it an answer for those that are under employed? Can they find a decent apartment for $500 a month where they do not have to worry about maintenance or if a boiler breaks.

I am kinda also leaning towards this is feasible in a market where the real estate is very expensive.Most of the stories I have seen about the tiny house concepts have been kids putting them in their parents back yard or on a piece of land way out in the sticks.

If it is done with donations I guess nothing ventured nothing gained and it can be a write off in the end,looks neat and tidy in the pictures anyways.

[renf]

Thank you, Chicago48, for posting the interesting and discouraging story about North Pointe Village in Highland Park. I did not realize that it was started just 11 years ago.