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Tiny Home Show in Ancaster explores options for affordable housing, increased density
By Mike Pearson, Ancaster News, Wednesday, July 26, 2023
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Bianca Metz is living large in her tiny home.
Five years after downsizing from a Guelph condominium to the 240-square-foot tiny home she shares with her husband and five-year-old son, Metz has no regrets.
“I love that it allows my family to be closer together,” she said. “Living in close quarters, it encourages us to have conversations, to build our relationships and be better parents and better people. We don’t have a third bedroom to run to if things get hard, or a basement to go hide.”
Metz and her family enjoy country living in their tiny dwelling, situated in the Hamilton area on six acres of private land. The home is partially off-grid, with water, electricity, and a composting toilet. Their home is surrounded by gardens, bees and chickens.
“We spend a lot of time travelling now as a family. We have a certain sense of financial freedom. Our house allows us to live that way and it also allows us to have a relationship with nature,” Metz added.
Through her tiny home consulting firm, the Giving Tree, Metz guides others through the process of downsizing, finding a tiny home builder, making land lease arrangements, and dealing with applications and permits.
Metz is also a co-producer of the Tiny Home Show, returning to the Ancaster Fairgrounds this weekend.
When preparing to downsize, the key is learning to live in the space before you can design the space to suit your needs, Metz said.
Consumers have a few different options when it comes to setting up a tiny home, Metz noted. All of them will be discussed at the Tiny Home Show. Residents can buy a tiny home and “park it” legally in a land lease agreement. Investors can build an additional or secondary dwelling unit (SDU) like a granny suite or Airbnb unit. A third option is buying property to place — or build — a tiny home.
Metz would like to see municipalities fully embrace the concept of land leasing, to extend the opportunity of home ownership to more people.
“Then individuals can mortgage $200,000 instead of $1 million,” Metz said. “Once we get mortgages in place for tiny homes and we get property owners on board with hosting tiny home tenants, the rest will easily be accomplished.”
D'Arcy McNaughton, owner/designer at Acorn Tiny Homes, takes tiny home living to a whole new level with the Purple Heart Manor home he custom-designed for one of his clients.
Offering more than 500 square feet of space, the home features faux stone siding for a classic, English castle vibe. The exterior is clad in ethically sourced lumber made from dead standing trees, called “Ghostwood.”
There’s an eight-foot, solid mahogany front door with a custom stained-glass window. A luxury spa bathroom features a five-foot soaker tub and Victorian style vanity.
The kitchen features off-grid retro-style appliances. The living room includes a custom-made purple velvet couch, drop-down activities station and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
A main floor bedroom and loft provide sleeping areas for up to six people.
While tiny home living can be basic and minimal, Purple Heart Manor illustrates the possibilities are almost limitless. The home was designed for a client with a PhD in Medieval literature.
“We were going with something that had a Medieval vibe mixed with Hansel and Gretel,” McNaughton noted.
Purple Heart Manor will be available for tours at the Tiny Home Show.
For McNaughton, who also lives in a tiny home with his wife and son, Purple Heart Manor illustrates that tiny home dwellers don’t have to sacrifice the luxuries associated with conventional homes.
“Something like this is nice because it brings it into the mainstream and shows that it can be very esthetically pleasing. It can fit beautifully into the neighbourhood and will allow for a lot more acceptance by the general public,” he said.
While Purple Heart Manor’s price of $370,000 is still far below the cost of an average detached home or condominium in Hamilton, MacNaughton noted $200,000 will still buy a “comfortable” tiny home for a small family. Many builders offer bare-bones, unfinished tiny homes that occupants can customize on their own.
“Our houses, as a baseline, are built to be four-season livable, to exceed building-code requirements for insulation, and offer extra storage space,” McNaughton added.
Ken Bekendam is president and CEO of King Homes Inc. and legalsecondsuites.com, an architectural design, build and consulting company specializing in housing density and intensification. While he’s not directly involved in tiny homes, Bekendam specializes in creating secondary dwelling units (SDUs) through internal conversions of existing homes, or detached SDUs like coach houses and laneway homes.
Bekendam is seeing “incremental growing interest” in detached SDUs that could lead to further demand for the housing form.
But when it comes to adding more housing units, detached buildings like garage conversions are typically the last option explored. Bekendam noted 80 to 90 per cent of his company’s projects are internal conversions.
While he’s seeing more interest in laneway houses, for affordability reasons, Bekendam noted owners may face obstacles around financing, appraisal and lending.
For internal additions, for example, a home converted to a duplex or triplex can be appraised in part by comparing it to other properties in the area. But with a limited supply of comparable external SDUs, like converted garages, accurate appraisals are difficult.
“People aren’t getting the full appreciation right now,” Bekendam noted.
That partly explains why we haven’t seen an explosion of detached SDUs in Hamilton, despite favourable city zoning regulations, said Bekendam.
“We’re not seeing them pop up everywhere. The economics just aren’t 100 per cent solid.”
For external SDUs, property owners can expect to pay between $100,000 and $150,000 if they’re converting an existing, well-built garage. If you’re planning to create a new structure from scratch measuring 600 to 800 square feet, the cost could reach $400,000.
While they both cater to those looking to live smaller, Bekendam draws a clear distinction between tiny homes and external SDUs like laneway homes or converted garages.
Bekendam noted tiny homes are typically less than 300 square feet and designed to fit on a trailer frame.
Bekendam sees tiny homes as a niche product.
“Tiny homes are not going to fix the housing affordability issue or the housing crisis. But adding secondary dwelling units within existing houses and creating more dwelling units built to the Ontario building code is going to make an impact. We need housing types of all shapes and sizes. Tiny homes is one type of housing unit that’s very unique and interesting and has a very little footprint.”
At the Tiny Home Show, Bekendam will offer a presentation on the economics of tiny homes and SDUs, from an investment perspective.
The Tiny Home Show will also offer information and demonstrations on the practical side of tiny living, like setting up waterless toilets and off-grid systems.
More than 25 tiny home models will be available for public tours.
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