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Tiny houses entice budget-conscious Americans (AFP)
In a country that nearly always believes bigger is better—think supersize fries, giant cars and 10-gallon hats—more and more Americans are downsizing their living quarters. Welcome to the world of tiny homes, most of them less than 400 square feet (less than 40 square meters), which savvy buyers are snapping up for their minimalist appeal and much smaller carbon footprints. The tiny homes revolution, which includes those on foundations and those on wheels, began a few decades ago, but the financial crisis of 2008 and the coming-of-age of millennials gave it a new impetus. The proliferation of home improvement shows on networks like HGTV fueled the trend, inspiring customers ready to personalize their own small living spaces.
Cost is one of the driving factors—a tiny home of just over 200 square feet with a customized interior can go for about $50,000—a massive savings over a McMansion in the suburbs.
[...] Despite the advantages, the tiny homes movement is far from widespread. Rough estimates put the number of tiny homes in the United States at a little more than 10,000. The first sticking point is financing—would-be homeowners are finding it impossible to get traditional loans for non-traditional houses. Banks are instead offering medium-term loans of up to seven years—at significantly higher interest rates than regular loans. But the main obstacle is a legal one: most municipalities and towns ban residents from living year-round in anything on wheels, and often have statutes requiring homes to be at least 900 square feet.
[...] To vault over the many legal hurdles, many tiny home buyers are setting up their places without permits from local urban planning officials. But others are opting for tiny house communities, which are on solid legal footing and are sprouting up all over. Tiny Estates in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania took over a former campground and obtained the necessary permits to accommodate tiny homes on wheels. "It's important to go to your town meetings, your borough meetings and just say, 'Hey, here's what they are'," says Berrier. "It's not some clandestine little sketchy thing. These are beautiful tiny houses, well designed. If anything, they add property value to things."
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:11PM (2 children)
Personally I just like a smaller house (small is relative but for me about 60 m^2 -- or 650 feet^2) cause there is just less to clean -- which is important cause cleaning is boring as hell. It's a comfortable amount of space for one person.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:46PM
We're a family of 4, and we've settled around 2100 square feet as our preferred size. We had the larger 3000+ square foot houses, and the extra space was more extra work and maintenance expense than it was extra enjoyment.
On the other hand, we have acquaintances with 4000+ square foot houses for 2 and 3 people, and they use the space to house their stuff - because he who dies with the most toys wins, in their minds.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 21 2019, @12:54AM
Our primary residence is a to-me spacious 75m2 attic flat downtown, which is way more than my partner and I need (now or for ever, we're childfree). We use the previous flat as our office, that's just 42m2, and being ground floor is probably the one we'll keep for retirement. 42 is definitely cosy, 75 is definitel large. We don't have much in the way of chattels, which helps. Small is beautiful.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:17PM (2 children)
Here I am hoping to read sale statistics, environmental points and cost of ownership analysis for some 3D printed modular factory made houses when phys.org of all things is linking trailers with wooden panels, rafters and trusses... I want my 5min back.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:26PM
https://www.businessinsider.com/3d-homes-that-take-24-hours-and-less-than-4000-to-print-2018-9 [businessinsider.com]
https://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-cut-costs-with-tiny-living/ [thesimpledollar.com]
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/tiny-house-cost-expenses-258495 [apartmenttherapy.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:51PM
Newsflash: tiny houses are (mostly) trailers - generally smallish trailers with some hand-worked finishing.
They're cute, they're cheap - for my taste they're a little too small for more than 2 people to live long term.
The big thing that tiny houses are doing is empowering people to skirt the building codes and choose which ones they want to comply with for their personal dwelling. This is nothing new, but a generation is waking up to the possibilities (for the previous generation's take on the subject reference The Who [google.com])
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:24PM (22 children)
Those look like mobile homes in the pictures? Are they actually mobile homes?
Mobile homes historically have been a kind of investment trap for the people that live in them. They depreciate in value like a vehicle instead of increasing in value like land; you have to pay a rent on land and can be removed with no recourse if the land owner so pleases.
The problem isn't the production quality. They're often decently made. It's just that they are a long term losing proposition. Some day your home will be worthless, and you'll be driven off the land with nothing to show for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:45PM (16 children)
Why not buy the land and put a mobile home on it?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:34PM (15 children)
If you go to the trouble, and have the money, to buy land why wouldn't you just build a house on it then? Unless you have some kind of mobile home fetish.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:45PM (13 children)
Because at the moment I have $30-50k I want to spend instead of $100k+...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:55PM (1 child)
Seems like I chose the right neighborhood - not only will you not be getting a mobile to live in near me, you won't even afford a lot.
Buying a cheap mobile and slapping it on a cheap piece of land is what Red State America is built from, as counterintuitive as that may seem.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @01:05AM
Well I'm torn between that and $500k condo with $20k in fees and taxes per year. I'd rather just save my money and wait out the crash. I may run some goats milk experiments while I'm at it too.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday June 20 2019, @06:20PM (8 children)
Well for under $30K you can buy a brand new fully loaded 26~27 foot travel trailer. Most of the "Tiny Homes" I've seen are just heavy wood frame boxes on trailers that require a very large truck to tow.
https://rv.campingworld.com/rvclass/used-travel-trailer-rvs [campingworld.com]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:28PM (7 children)
If travel trailers are like RVs they don't wear very well at all. A year of actually living in an RV wears it out pretty bad. They don't have enough ventilation so you get mold issues.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 21 2019, @03:07AM (6 children)
Beg to differ. Lived in a travel trailer for 24 years. Mold was not a problem. Roof maintenance was a nuisance (needs to be resealed at least every other year, or you will have leaks) but otherwise... depends on the trailer. An old Airstream or Rollohome can stay in very good shape for decades, with just ordinary maintenance. Solid wood interior (and you can still get this) holds up far better than composite. Main difficulty is sufficient insulation for extreme conditions (hot or cold) -- generally you need to build some surrounding structure to ward off sun or preserve heat (and prevent your pipes from freezing, if you're hooked up).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday June 21 2019, @02:20PM (5 children)
Interesting. I wonder if that's an issue with my sample size (n=2) or a real difference in travel trailers and RVs?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 21 2019, @05:00PM (4 children)
Don't know...I've lived in two different travel trailers (always in harsh conditions), and used two others for long term storage, all very different makes and quality. Still own one of 'em, and it's a 1974 model. Might be partly differences in quality of workmanship (eg. Airstream), but I suspect more the fact that most people don't know how much roof maintenance any sort of mobile home (on an RV or its own chassis) needs to stay watertight, because the durn things FLEX, both the frame moving in the wind or on the road, and the metal skin being subject to temperature creep. Seams dry out and start microleaks. Uncoated aluminum corrodes, eventually gets porous, and then you get seeping right though the skin. Let that go on long enough and you'll get frame rot inside the roof and along the bottom, and maybe the floor rots out too.
There's commonly some condensation inside the metal skin, tho that's not a big problem if the whole is weathertight and the interior gets occasional ventilation. Might be an issue in Louisiana or Florida where nothing ever really dries out. But I expect it's a problem there with regular houses, too. But mold otherwise? I'd be up there resealing the roof, cuz that's probably the root of the problem.
Biggest difference in interior durability is the same as we see in cheap modular homes: solid wood outlasts composite and plastic by a wide margin, even if you're careful. My original trailer had all solid wood interior, and it was still in good shape when the whole was finally retired -- at 52 years old, having been lived in fulltime most of its life (accumulated storm damage/repairs finally caught up with the exterior). The one I still have has a better frame (it has a mobile home undercarriage, which is serious overkill), interior not nearly as good, but still livable.
My sister has been shopping for a trailer for extended use, and I will say I've not been at all impressed with most of 'em -- don't like the suspension (WAY too soft, especially with that high center of gravity too many have to avoid the expense of wheel wells -- fucking *hazardous* in a crosswind), not impressed with most of the layouts (looks homey, but not very efficient if you need it for more than a weekend), and what's with all the poorly fitted cheapass plastic in a $40,000 trailer??!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday June 21 2019, @09:01PM (3 children)
The problem we had with the RVs (early 90s Winnebago and late 90's? Allegro) wasn't with the roof. That part was ok. For ventilation they had one or two pop-up roof vents, and one window that would open. That wasn't sufficient to ventilate them. The breath of three people sleeping in it plus steam from washing and cooking, would condense on the coldest surfaces, the windows. There was nowhere for that water to go, and the water soaked into the walls and upholstery. This delaminated the wallpaper and caused super annoying/gross mold issues.
... add to that the heater couldn't keep up with the windows being open and it wasn't a great time.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday June 22 2019, @12:51AM (2 children)
Yeah, heating 'em with propane in cold weather is an exercise in futility. I had a wood/coal stove in mine and that was comfy, but not practical for everyone (and a lot of work). But it sounds like your real problem was lack of insulation, so the interior walls never did warm up, hence condensation where you don't expect it -- I didn't have that problem with myself and several dogs in the trailer, but mine was pretty well insulated, as they go.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday June 22 2019, @02:51AM (1 child)
A couple of times we lit up all four burners on the (gas) stove to warm it up quick. It worked, but I was worried about Carbon Monoxide poisoning the whole time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Saturday June 22 2019, @03:37AM
The way to do that is to just use one burner (or two if it's really cold -- like below zero), and put a nice thick clay flowerpot upside-down over the burner, turned down as low as it will reliably stay lit and burn all blue. Yeah, it'll produce some CO but no worse than if you were cooking over it, and it's a rare trailer that's so airtight that CO is a serious problem, plus there's generally some venting over the stove that sucks it up. -- This method is considerably more efficient than using the propane furnace, where most of the heat goes up the chimney. And your propane lasts weeks, not days.
And if you need humidifying (not you :) sit a tin can half-full of water on top of the pot.
Learned this trick (and used it for many years) from someone who was heating an entire 10x50 trailer with just one burner, with outdoor temps just above freezing.
CO getting to a problem level causes a vague but persistently unpleasant headache, so at least if you're awake, you can get reasonable warning. This was how I discovered a busted vent pipe in my current house (which has a real furnace), tho it didn't set off the CO monitor.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday June 21 2019, @12:25AM (1 child)
As pointed out by OP, you will therefore lose those $30-50k over the next few years.
Unless you're allergic to other people, use the 30k as a downpayment on a real condo, which doesn't have have to be bigger than a tiny house, but will appreciate.
Or, 50k will pay for rent in many places for many years, without the inherent risks of ownership.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @01:08AM
Why will the land be worth zero?
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Sunday June 23 2019, @05:59AM
Because they are cheap, many are actually decently well built, and you don't mind used you can pick one up for next to nothing. You'll also have your house a lot quicker than building it too.
It's a place to live and if you aren't planning on moving anywhere soon who cares about the depreciation? Besides, many times the real value when you sell is the land and not the buildings. The added value of any house you build is going to be less than the cost of the building materials and the labor.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:45PM (4 children)
So the problem with "mobile" (largely stationary) homes isn't the depreciation, it's that the people don't usually own them or the land they are on. There's nothing inherently wrong with some cheap, off-grid tiny house, or even a depreciating mobile home, it's just the finances involved. The parasites involved were covered on a recent episode of John Oliver.
I think the kind of person who would jump on the tiny house trend would either have enough money to own the land it's on, or be relatively poor but realize the importance of owning the land. It's possible that they could get cheap land in some rural or remote area, save money by building the tiny house on their own, add some solar panels, and try to be mostly self-reliant. They will even be able to get a high speed internet connection from SpaceX or OneWeb.
This kind of lifestyle should be encouraged, and legal barriers should certainly be removed. Maybe Phoenix666 is doing it, IDK?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:00PM
Damn it...you made me google "john oliver-tiny homes".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCC8fPQOaxU [youtube.com]
But, there he is talking about manufactured or mobile home "parks", which is true. If you are low income and living in one of these places you are toast. But if you have your own land to park it on it might be worth it. The only cravat is that in highly developed areas you will have to deal with sewage disposal, well drilling (or some source of safe water) and local land use ordinances.
Now of course if your land happened to be in the Mississippi River Basin this spring, you could have just hooked up and moved it to higher ground.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 21 2019, @03:13AM (2 children)
I just did some real estate hunting for a friend in southern Ohio. Found numerous nice lots for sale for $10k or so. Lots of decent houses (mostly modulars or doublewides, but in good shape) under $50k. This isn't so unusual all across the farming midwest. Yeah, you can't get the 6 figure tech job there, but neither will you be a debt slave to your mortgage forever and anon.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday June 21 2019, @09:05PM (1 child)
Watch those $10k properties. It's easy to get excited and then find out the land doesn't pass a perc test for a septic system and/or the closest electrical utility is half a mile (and $8,000 in facility costs) away.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday June 22 2019, @12:44AM
Oh yeah, can be a host of reasons why a property (or a whole area) is bargain-priced. Or at least bargain-priced by coastal lights... about 10 years ago an acquaintance of my sister bought a fairly nice older house in North Dakota for (are you sitting down?) $5000. Same house in San Francisco is a million bucks.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:43PM (1 child)
If I was going to go this route I'd prefer to buy surplus shipping containers and use those. A family we're friends with moved to the Florida Keys and joined three of them to make their home. They had to evac for the last hurricane. When they went back to take a look the tidal surge had moved them around the property but they were intact so they got some heavy machinery and towed them back into position and resumed. It's a pretty powerful advertisement for how tough they are.
Shipping containers have been hip for a while now, too, so nobody has to worry about being thought weird.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:55PM
Neighbors hate 'em, and by the time you get a steel box insulated and put in sufficient windows, it's no longer a cheap alternative. They can be made very nice, but not for any cheaper than an equally nice structure from scratch out of concrete. One thing I do like about the containers is that they come with a baseline of toughness that you don't find in wood frame construction.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @12:52PM (4 children)
Kind of like clown cars, and almost as practical.
There have always been people who want to live in a log cabin or a treehouse or a sailboat or whatever. That's fine. These are good for the same sorts of people. They are not a good idea in general. Normal people who simply don't need a lot of space can save a lot of money by just getting a studio apartment. (And compared to the typical tiny house, which is about as spacious as a dorm room, a studio apartment will seem like a palace).
Cities know these things have zero appeal outside of the specific person who wants it, and that means they'll have to condemn and demolish it later. No wonder they make it hard to build them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:57PM (3 children)
Talk about cheap living: sailboats. Dockage in major metro areas for cheap, often less than 1/2 rent of a studio apartment, and you can purchase a pretty big pretty nice fiberglass tub for 20mpg.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:44PM (1 child)
About how many parsecs is that?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @10:06PM
Don't know how $20K got transmogrified into 20mpg, but if you look at used boats for awhile, you'll notice the $20K boundary between garbage and nice stuff yourself.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:36PM
+1 for boats. My friend lives aboard a in a '72 Chris Craft Commander 41 and there is plenty of room for 2 people or a couple and a kiddo. The covered slip costs him ~$330/month including potable water and he has his own electric meter.
A comparable apartment would be ~$1200 minimum.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:41PM (2 children)
When I was growing up there was a stigma about growing up in a house with wheels under it. Now you call it a tiny house and it's chic.
:/
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:03PM
They don't necessarily have wheels.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:00PM
I think the stigma came from the type of people who often chose the very economical living options found in mobile home parks.
Where I grew up there were massive mobile home parks inhabited by snowbirds, usually upper middleclass folks who kept two or more homes and they just had a cheap one in the south for when it got unpleasant to live near the kids in wintertime.
Now, decades later, the original owners of those park houses have all died and the neighborhoods tend to decay down to the bottom tier of the rental market.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:26PM (1 child)
I understand that getting ahead today can seem nearly impossible, and McMansions are an aberration of a different time. But at least here there's a ton of mid-20th century housing stock around.
They are affordable ones for lower middle class incomes and above that are worth their money. About the "carbon footprint", I guess that's virtue signaling speak for energy efficiency, there's a bunch of options that could make sense in a place you're planning to stay for at least five years. Incidental ones, like replacing incandescents with LEDs, to durable ones, like replacing a 30 year old furnace when it dies.
As an AC, I don't need to virtue signal, so I can say that I bought my large for this area 2000 sq ft 3 BR house primarily because of the expected liquidity of the market, should I want to sell. Energy efficiency is something I consider, but amortization periods would have to be commensurate.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:19PM
Obviously you don't live in central or southern California.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SunTzuWarmaster on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:34PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:00PM (8 children)
Okay, I somewhat understand the wheels thing -- parking your RV or mobile home somewhere is not a permanent residence. And, as other comments have noted, not owning the land a structure is parked on often creates other issues for both towns and residents.
However, a strict ban on homes under 900 square feet? Why? While I don't live there now, I spent a significant chunk of my adult life living in apartments under 900 square feet, and I was perfectly happy, with plenty of space. You throw in a few kids and it could get tight, but lots of adults choose not to have big families or to live alone.
So, if I prefer a smaller living space with all its advantages -- less to clean and maintain, better energy efficiency, lower initial cost, few stupid "storage" areas that most people just use to accumulate junk they never use throughout their lives -- what are my options? I have to live in an apartment/condo and share walls and noise and annoying neighbors all around? What if I just want a normal plot of land in a town, but a nice space around me like most people who own houses enjoy, but not pay for space I don't want?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:27PM (2 children)
Why? Because then the building suppliers wouldn't be able to sell you twice as much material as you want. Really though, the major reason is the entire system that is stacked so heavily against affordable housing. In this case, "property values" need to be defended. If you build a small house next to a somebody else's house, "there goes the neighborhood". Historically, smaller houses were occupied by the poors. Oh no honey, we've got to move. Them n****** is moving in! Even though it's illegal to put it that way now, that's what they're still thinking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:03PM
I see many openly non-racist people suddenly change their tune once they own property. Say Agatha's kids got into trouble in the big city. She sends them off to old Aunt Millie living by herself in a safe neighborhood so that they "stay out of trouble". Problem is, they create the trouble, and once the rival gang they cheated out of a deal sprays the house with machine gun fire, you don't want to be the last person holding on to your property there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @09:16PM
Funny, I think about 98% of the people on these HGTV shows are white.
Housing discrimination is a real thing, but you're way off the mark here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @09:02PM (4 children)
Because 900 square feet is about the minimum size for a viable house. It's enough for a living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen - all small, but large enough to hold normal sized appliances and furniture.
Anyone trying to build a "house" smaller than that is most likely trying to abuse the system and do something that properly requires industrial or agricultural zoning, or is a land speculator, or something. The city also knows that extremely odd buildings, even if built in good faith, tend to depress property values. Nobody wants that.
Even if you don't care about the resale value of your property, the city does. Nobody wants to buy a tiny house. The few people who want one generally want to design them for their specific needs. When those change in five years, there will be a house that's useful to absolutely nobody, and it will have to be torn down.
Construction costs are not the whole story of homeownership. Property tax, upkeep, landscaping, utilities, etc. If the difference between 300 square feet and 900 square feet is keeping you from buying, you should be renting.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 21 2019, @12:46AM (2 children)
Someone needs to get up from the computer and go see the world.
Would you like to guess how many billions of people in this planet hopelessly dream of living in more than 900sqft ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @01:00AM (1 child)
Because most American cities aspire to be the slums of Mumbai?
I think you've proved my point.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 21 2019, @01:06AM
Mine was that stating a house was only viable above 900 square feet is absolutely and demonstrably stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @06:03AM
My first home was 550 square feet. It was more than enough for my parents, siblings, and myself. It also had normal sized furniture and all the rooms you mentioned. Just because you can't imagine a house like that being functional, doesn't mean they aren't. I, personally, don't understand how families of 5 need 1500 square feet. From my point of view, it is just more room for their junk, as opposed to being room to live in. And I can barely process the stories I see childless couples living in 2500+ houses. If anything, I believe there should be maximum sizes of homes in neighborhoods to help prevent McMansion Hell.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @06:18PM
I looked at the article. They look like the sort of thing I've seen for decades in trailer parks. I don't mean camp grounds, I mean the intended to be placed and rarely moved type of trailer. Admittedly, I like the new wood siding look in the article better than the older style aluminum/vinyl siding but that goes for the more traditional house on a foundation too.
It's about time cities re-thought the minimum acceptable size of a house on a lot.
(Score: 0, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Friday June 21 2019, @07:05AM (1 child)
I saw that the United States, when they host a dignitary, such as the head of China, head of India, they put up a cheap tent by the White House and I thought that was inappropriate. And I called David Axelrod at the White House. The purpose of the call was to offer the United States, free of charge, a $100-million-plus ballroom for the White House so they could host dignitaries. I said I build ballrooms. Beautiful ballrooms. You can go to Tampa and check one of them out for yourself. I see you have these state dinners on the lawn there in these shitty little tents. Let me build you a ballroom you can assemble and take apart. Trust me, it'll look great!!!!
(Score: 3, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday June 22 2019, @02:55AM
The tents out on the national mall are, if I recall correctly, a Doctors without Borders or Red Cross demonstration of the type of equipment they have in refugee camps. It was an interesting tour.
By the way, thanks for not firing back at Iran. It'd be pretty awesome if we made it through a whole presidency without another war. I understand that you can't just sit there and let them build nukes, and I don't envy that responsibility.