Browsing Facebook, I came across an NPR story, "Architect's Dream House: Less Than 200 Square Feet." The story is about an architect who lost her house to foreclosure and couldn't get another mortgage. She decided to build a "tiny house" by herself and spend only $11,000 on it. Her house is now under 200 square feet. Great idea!
The thing that caught my ear was that she lives in Idaho and said that she didn't live in an RV because RV's aren't built for the climate. I beg to differ.
The tiny house movement is great and it's a step in the right direction for bucking big banks, life-long mortgages, and rent-market ripoffs, but why all the new materials? There are RV's bigger than this lady's tiny house sitting on lots, rotting, all over the country. With a few nifty inventions, the right RV is good down to at least negative 31 Fahrenheit by my experience.
My gripe here is that when people build something resembling a house on a flatbed trailer, it makes NPR. When someone repurposes a Winnebago, people get dismissed as redneck, trailer trash. Is it because people have been re-purposing RV's for decades in situations of individual poverty? Is it because it's now stylish to try to buck the system by living in a tiny house? It seems that there are some class issues and stereotypes at work for how these sorts of lifestyles are covered.
My RV-dwelling choice is rooted directly from the tiny house movement -- I just chose to repurpose something that already existed and was going to just go to waste, rather than building something new with new building materials. Gladly, I won't be making the news, but it sure is odd that the well-to-do build a house on a flatbed and it makes news, but those of us recycling and doing the exact same thing for the same reasons get no such attention -- instead we just get assigned a stereotype.
Here's the article, it's well worth checking out:
http://www.npr.org/2013/12/27/257560971/architects-dream-house-less-than-200-square-feet
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