At this very moment 50,000 people have setup housekeeping in a temporary city in the Nevada desert. If you don’t know much about the Burning Man Project you might find it surprising that this temporary city (Black Rock City) has an incredibly well thought out plan designed by architect Rod Garrett.

This year the art theme for the city is Metropolis: The Life of Cities… so naturally there is an increased awareness and focus on how to make it more livable. The inhabitants of Black Rock City are already very careful about leaving no trace when they leave, so it seems like a great community to spent a bit of focused time noodling over this growing concern – how to make communities more livable.

My brief exploration into the origins of the BlackRock City plan brought back a memory of a comment that Jim, one of my readers, made about needing a place just for tiny houses. Here’s part of what Jim said:

“What we need is a piece of land where we can all get together without zoning boards and such and do our thing. We do need an association of some sort and a publication to focus our efforts.”

I couldn’t agree more with Jim’s comment – and Black Rock City begins to provide a real world example of how this might be done.

My head spins with ideas of how this might take shape. The main challenge would be to find a piece of land in a location where a critical mass of full-time inhabitants could be achieved. It would also have to be located in a place where the existing local government was agreeable to such a sustainable city.

The financial critical mass may not be as hard to achieve as one might think. For example, 50,000 people attend burning man each year and each person pays about $300 each for a ticket. That means the managing organization must have a budget in the neighborhood of $15 million. So when I say things like, “We’re Stronger Together,” you can see what I mean by all the zeros.

Duplicating Burning Man is not really realistic but bringing together a group of motivated people large enough to finance such an endeavor may be within reach, especially if the project stayed focused on frugality, self-sufficiency, and  sustainability.

Here are some initial thoughts:

• Establish a true democracy – Maintain a separation of business & state… and keep the requisite beaurocracy small. Develop a simple way for people to discuss and vote on shared community issues. Keep the scale small enough to effectively promote self-governance.
• Make it self-sufficient and sustainable - Produce the things people need within the community without any required outside trade. Encourage trade with other communities, but avoid developing dependencies.
• Promote safe alternative housing – Use things like the international building codes as a guide but avoid getting bound-up in regulations. Use common sense and local expertise to keep homes safe.
• Encourage owner and community built housing – Come together to help others build mortgage-free simple homes.
• Finance the project by selling shares instead of physical lots – Imagine owning the right to live in a place while leaving the land itself shared by the community. Theoretically this would help promote a stronger sense of civic responsibility and discourage real estate profiteering.
• Keep things low-tech and frugal – Avoid centralized civic projects that require excessive setup costs and maintenance. Instead use small scale power systems, rainwater collection, solar and wind pumped wells, composting toilets, and greywater systems.
• Establish human scale businesses – Commerce and trade are one element that knits together communities. By all means a people should find ways to contribute to the community – just keep it on a human scale to promote more accountability.
• Embrace diversity – Diversity adds strength to everything from investment portfolios to ecosystems. If we allow our differences to divide us, things will fall apart. Instead focus on common values.
• Design shared places – To encourage cohesiveness build into the city plan shared places for work, play, worship, etc.
• Develop a model for including visitors – Instead of establishing a closed-door policy, set precedents for regular events and opportunities for visitors to share and learn. This may also include hosting an occasional large event that could help replenish the shared funds the community would need to grow.

This is really just a daydream, and a bit different from the eco-village or co-housing models. I’m really just describing what a modern version of an ancient Greek city-state might look like.

If a group of motivated people can put together a city for 50,000 people in the Nevada desert each year, and leave without a trace; it should be within reach to develop permanent small cities like the one I’ve begun to describe here. All you’d need is the right mix of people, the right location, and a critical mass.

There is an 80-acre parcel for sale virtually next door to the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, which is located in the north east corner of Missouri. Rural Missouri is one of those places that is very open to alternative & sustainable architecture making the creation of communities like Dancing Rabbit much more feasible. The rural location can also be a bit isolating which is why developing clusters of communities like this is essential. Luckily there are three such communities are already growing there, providing each other the beginnings of a much wider sustainable community, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, Red Earth Farms, and Sandhill Farm. The parcel for sale is outlined in black, and this is an actual Google Map so feel free to explore.

View Land and House Available Near Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in a larger map

Now imagine taking this 80-acre parcel, with an existing home built from an old church, and develop a new ecovillage based on living simply & sustainably in small homes. The seller is asking $240,000 for the property and since there is an existing home, a traditional mortgage is probably possible, unlike raw land. So theoretically this community could be started by one founder with a good work-from-home job or someone prepared with seed money. Another way to finance an endeavor like this could be to simply collect a few founders with the money, or credit & income, to make the initial investment.

The existing home could eventually serve as a common building, and with the bones of a church seem well suited to be turned back into a space co-owned by the community. It would be up to the founders and community members to decide what kind of community to grow here but it seems like an ideal location and the price seems very reasonable. To learn more about this 80-acre parcel for sale and continue to daydream the possibilities visit the Dancing Rabbit website.

Above are some photos of the main house. Below is a photo of some cob house dwelling neighbors at the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. To learn more about Ziggy’s cob house visit The Year of Mud: Cob and natural building. Photo by Stephen.

Ron Czecholinski from DIY Home Building is in the process of putting together a tiny house community, and is currently doing his due diligence in choosing a piece of land. The property he’s seriously looking at is six undeveloped lots in Asheville, North Carolina that have the potential for 6 to 10 small houses. Below is the location in a Google Map with a very rough outline of the property. The plat map below will give you a better idea of the property Ron is considering.

View Cottage Court Proposal in a larger map

Local zoning will allow one main house with a studio apartment (attached or in auxiliary building) on each lot. The homes would follow standards for North Carolina Healthy Built certification which include energy efficiency, non-toxic materials, and resource conservation. The houses will likely range in size between 300 and 700 square feet. The expected total cost of construction will be about $200 per square foot which will make the total estimated cost between $60,000 and $140,000 per house (or around $200,000 per lot).

At this phase Ron is looking for people that might be interested in joining him on this adventure. He invisions the community leveraging a light version of co-housing, a model for intentional neighbors. He would also like to setup a Sociocracy to help facilitate community decision making. While he has an interest as a founder and developer, anyone getting involved at the beginning will have an opportunity to help shape the initial community structure and house design.

Ron has been an owner-builder and professional contractor for over thirty years. Learn more about Ron Czecholinski on his website. If this sounds like a project you’d like to participate in contact Ron directly.

Below are some photos of Ron’s more recent renovation project.

Do property owners’ associations (POAs) and homeowner associations (HOAs) really protect home values and communities, or do they simply add another layer of bureaucrats and cost communities money?

I personally think the world would be a better place if most HOAs and POAs were dissolved.

Let me first set the stage. If you wanted to legally build a small house you have to deal with many layers of local government bureaucrats who all have a vested interest in enforcing the rules and regulations that have been handed down to them from policy makers. Typically the policies that are created do not actually address the core requirement, the need, but instead go onto dictating a common solution.

Core requirements are things like:

• A renewable water source,
• A low impact waste water system, and
• A power system to meet the needs of the homeowner.

Instead they typically tell you exactly what kind of water, waste, and power options you must use, with no exceptions. This initial roadblock, and the associated costs, typically results in making the property unbuildable by making it too costly.

But no property is unbuildable if your clever enough, and humans are a clever critters. The trouble is that the bureaucrats have been handed a strict rule book that lists specific solutions like:

• A municipal water hookup, or well,
• A municipal sewer hookup, or engineered septic system, and
• A grid power connection.

In other words, the bureaucrats aren’t always allowed to consider new or alternative solutions like:

• A rain water collection system,
• A composting toilet and grey water system, and
• An off-grid power system.

Luckily the off-grid power system alternative is starting to get more traction, but the others are still mostly unrecognized as viable options.

Another Layer to the Bureaucratic Cake

To add insult to injury the HOA/POA jumps in and adds more bureaucratic muck with their own set of rules, regulations, and dictated solutions. All of this is done in the name of protecting the community.

Sadly making changes to how local government is run is very difficult. On the bright side dissolving your HOA/POA could be just a vote away, although it’s probably best to consult an outside independent attorney and accounting firm prior to pulling the plug. 

Case Study – California Pines Property Owners’ Association

A case in point might be the California Pines Property Owners’ Association. I’ve been doing a lot of research about this notorious real estate subdivision in Modoc County, California. Construction began on California Pines in late 1960′s and by the time they were done cutting roads through the wilderness, they had 15,000 one-acre lots. Most of them remain vacant today.

I guess like so many people I’ve been attracted by the super low prices.  At the upcoming tax defaulted land auction it looks like you might be able to buy one of the more remote lots for about $2,000.

Since that sounded like a deal too good to be true, I did quite a bit of digging and discovered that the California Pines POA may be unintentionally contributing to the project’s apparent failure.

There are other obvious reasons for this enormous subdivision’s flop. It’s clear that in a county of 9,900 people, a 15,000 lot subdivision is totally unnecessary. Other contributing factors are things like the lack of utilities to most lots, a vast maze of dirt roads to maintain, inaccessibility in winter, little to do but hunt and hike, and the remote location in the northeast corner of California.

As a careful shopper I was on the lookout for red flags. I found some in old copy of the CC&Rs, (Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions), but a local realtor was able to fill in the rest. She told me that to build a home at California Pines, the POA requires that an engineered septic system ($20,000) and well ($10,000) must be built. The county doesn’t require an engineered septic and sounds friendly to owner-builders with reasonable proposals.

If the property has no grid power connection you’ll also need to spend money on an solar electric system ($5,000 to $15,000+). Wind turbines may also be an option, but I couldn’t get confirmation on that. By the time you’re ready to break ground on your remote off-grid house you’ve already shelled out approximately $35,000 to $45,000 in required improvements.

If I owned land there I’d want a POA that was bending over backwards to make it a viable place to own a cabin. Instead I found a POA that was 700 miles away in Anaheim, California that wasn’t able or willing to answer basic questions about the place over the telephone. They also refused to share a copy of the CC&Rs or organizations financials with me, a prospective buyer.

Unfortunately the main problem with dissolving this particular POA is that the property owners are scattered to the four winds and have had no way to connect with each other. So even if the majority agreed that dissolving or fixing this particular POA was the right thing to do, they can’t do it easily without the POAs help.

Every year the California Pines Property Owners’ Association collects a small $75 fee from property owners. When you do the math, that turns out to be $1,125,000 a year. Since they are a non-profit organization I checked online at the IRS to see how much they have reported in income, and this estimate was surprisingly accurate.

If you want to see you’re HOA/POAs tax returns, and they are a non-profit organization, you can go the extra step complete a form 4506-A and request inspection copies from the IRS directly.

No HOA/POA is perfect. But all community based organizations need to remain connected to the community and remain transparent to its members. Anytime an organization closes it doors to its members a changing of the guard and a full accounting is warranted.

If you own land at California Pines and want to connect with other property owners online I’ve setup a brand new blog and Facebook community to help you connect with connect past, future, and current property owners.

• californiapines.blogspot.com
• California Pines Facebook community

Conclusion

While I don’t want to turn this case study and general topic into a raking over the coals for the California Pines Property Owners’ Association, this cursory investigation has turned up a lot more questions than answers. Actually it’s beginning to seem like a great news story for an investigative reporter to pick up and explore. (hint hint)

At the very least this research has solidified my opinion that more bureaucracy only adds more murkiness to our lives, and that this kind of additional governance costs more than it pays.

I’ll conclude by saying that if your HOA/POA is not performing up to your expectations, confront them. If they are no longer serving the community consider moving to dissolve the organization. Begin by uniting with your neighbors and be sure to consult outside independent professional advisors, both legal and financial. Take control of the HOA/POA though a changing of the guard and then make it’s final act and expenditure its own dissolution.

We don’t need more bureaucrats in the world; we need more open minds and clever solutions especially around housing issues. Dissolve your HOA/POA today!

One of my Tiny House Living readers, Wayne, passed this onto me. A Kleingarten, or allotment gardening is similar to the community gardens you might find across America but have some significant differences.

The parcels typically range in size from 200 and 400 square meters each (2,100 to 4,300 square feet) and often include a structure (tiny house) for tool storage and shelter during visits. To provide  governance, member associations are formed to manage plot assignment and the collection of fees for leasing the land and common maintenance.

Typical allotment garden on Käferberg hill in Zürich, Switzerland

The land can be owned by a public, private or church entity and there can be several hundred gardens in one community. These were originally setup to help provide communities with a variety of benefits including providing those in need a place to grow food inexpensively.

It’s estimated that there are about three million individual allotment gardens across Europe today. The earliest allotment gardens mentioned in the Wikipedia article date back to the 1700′s and 1,800′s. You can read all about this on Wikipedia.org in English and in German.

We really should do something like this in America for people that need a little space to get back on their feet. I’ve written about this kind of idea before and small communities like this do exist in America, like Dignity Village, but they are often blocked by local governments and communities. I just can’t see how this kind of solution could be worse than the current situation.

Imagine self-governed groups setting up small sustainable villages like this on leased or donated land, growing their own food, taking pride in their life and work, and having a safe place to get back on their feet. The only real difference I’m suggesting is that the tiny homes in American allotment gardens should be habitable.

I would also go as far as to say they these should not be limited to those in severe need of housing but be made available for folks looking for a simpler lower cost life. In fact that would probably make the whole community function better by increasing the diversity of people living and gardening there. In fact not all the allotment gardeners would need to be residents but could still participate in the community.

I could continue to ramble on but I think you can now see that the sky is really the limit on positive benefits to our communities something like this could bring. I can hear the critics already arguing that low-cost communities like this could bring property values down farther and increase crime. I’d argue that our economy would recharge more quickly as more Americans became more productive, more self-reliant, and felt better about their life and future.

Wayne… thanks again for tipping me off to the Kleingarten.  Photo credit Wikipedia.

Update: Wayne just passed on this great website resource to me called Kleingartenverein Liebhartstal. (Also see the English translation.) It’s an example of one very successful allotment gardening association in Vienna, Austria.

I must admit I was a little disappointed to see so few tiny homes in the list of finalists for the Design It: Shelter Competition. It just seemed like a perfect opportunity for tiny houses to emerge; although I admit I didn’t make time to draw up an entry so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

Luckily next Wednesday, September 23rd 2009, is the extended entry deadline for another design competition called CLEAR VILLAGE. The challenge is to come up with an ideal vision of a sustainable village. While I have a lot on plate right now, the House for Khayelitsha and Simple Panelized Shelter plans are nearly complete; so I should be able to whip up a tiny house village design for this upcoming competition.

In the mean time read more about the competition at Inhabitat and the CLEAR VILLAGE website. Photo credit wikipedia commons.

Just in case you’re curious about the photo… it’s Taos Pueblo and will be the inspiration for my CLEAR VILLAGE entry.  The community has been continually inhabited for 1000 years. This particular structure was probably built between 1000 and 1450 A.D and is still the home of 150 people. You can learn more about this extremely sustainable village on their official website and wikipedia.

While I make my living as a web designer my education and training is as a potter… which has given me a particularly close bond to… well… dirt. Construction techniques like adobe, rammed earth, cob, and earthbag are really beginning to appeal to me more and more. There’s something about building a home from the earth on the building site that just seems smart, cheap too!

I stumbled on this humanitarian earthbag eco-village project in Uganda on the Earthbag Building Blog the other day and wanted to share it with you. You can also read about the project in much more detail at EarthbagBuilding.com. The design came out of a collaboration between the local people and a team made up of people from Japanese universities.

Photo credit to Sunny Tsai and the folks behind this Ecovillage in the East African Community.

This is an incredibly innovate orphanage design by TYIN, a student-run Norwegian non-profit organization focused on developing humanitarian architecture. Soe Ker Tie House is one of four projects recently completed in Thailand near the border with Burma. The design is the result of working closely with the local people and a utilization of local materials. The bamboo for the huts was harvested just a few kilometers from the building site. Some of the primary design challenges centered around collecting rainwater, natural cooling, and finding a safe way to handle sewage.

I’m especially impressed by how such sculptural forms could also be so utilitarian. It seems like every time you turn around you find another extreme architectural design that forgets that form must follow function. These little buildings don’t seem to leave anyone behind. In fact they are also a good reminder that a home doesn’t necessarily need to be complex or expensive to be incredible valuable. They are also a testament to the fact that a little clever design and craftsmanship can add a whole lot to the quality of life. Image credit to TYIN.

I haven’t been THIS excited about tiny houses since I first saw a photo of Jay Shafer’s tiny house. The Tiny House Project seems to be designed to take tiny house design (in general, not my blog) to the next level.

A group of architectural experts, artists, and sustainable living advocates have joined together and created a project with the mission to build a community of tiny houses that will teach the benefits of living simply. They will also be putting out a call for design entries. Here’s what they say on their website…

“The Tiny House Project will bring together a group of artists to help us explore how we, in America, live. Nine artists will create a neighborhood of tiny homes in order to ask some very interesting questions about the choices we make. Do our choices bring us joy? How do they shape our connections with the people around us? In what ways will our choices change the lives of future generations? The Tiny House Project is a public art experiment, and everyone is invited to participate.”

…and…

“The Tiny House Project will put out a call for submissions asking artists for tiny house project proposals. Specific criteria for these proposals are being developed with input from members of the Project’s Advisory Committee to ensure that the resulting structures meet artistic, environmental, structural and communication objectives. A qualified selection panel will choose nine tiny house projects from the pool of applicants to receive funding (a more detailed description of this two-stage call follows). Each artist/project team will be given a 7’ x 14’ trailer bed and $23,000 to cover the cost of materials and artists’ fees associated with designing and building a tiny house that will then be incorporated into a temporarily occupied micro-community and a follow-on traveling exhibition.”

If you’ve been following my madness and passion for tiny house design this past year you know how my imagination has just accelerated to warp-9. I really want to be one of those nine artists chosen, but the competition is going to be steep.

But I’m more excited to see The Tiny House Project become a huge success no matter who wins. I’m truly not in this for money, fame, glory, or feathers in my cap. I’m in it for the fun and because I honestly believe that tiny houses give us an opportunity to reflect on their own lives and how our choices make an enormous impact on our lives.

When we choose to live simply we choose freedom. We also make less of an impact on the planet, which is also terribly important, but the most immediate benefit is the lifting of burdens like those self-impose by taking on mountains of debt. Tiny houses are the physical manifestation and poetic expression of freedom, sustainability, and self-sufficiency.

If you’re interested in learning more just visit The Tiny House Project and take a look around. Be sure to subscribe to their RSS feed and sign up on their mailing list… and then… if you choose to enter the competition… I’ll meet you on the tiny house design field!

I’ll be the one thinking… blue sky… blue sky…

The photo is of my tiny free house roof. For the competition I’ll come up with something brand new.

This is a little off topic but a good example of one of the many problems simple owner-built tiny houses could solve… and a story worth listening to. I also hope that stories like this begin to wake up local governments all over America to the fact that blocking the construction of small, inexpensive, owner-built homes must be changed. An increase in safe alternative housing should be a big part of the economic solution. But I digress…

Oprah will be focusing on the recession on her show today. One of the stories is about the increasing number of tent cities popping up around America. The tent city they  spotlight in the story is just miles from where I live and in California’s state capital.

Below are still images from the video clips that are now on Oprah’s website. If you can’t be in front of the tube today when the story is on the air, you can get a preview on Oprah’s website right now or later. Very sad stuff. Photo credit Harpo Productions, Inc.

• Today’s Show Overview
• Article on Tent Cities
• Video on Tent Cities